Group calling for more minority students in Magnet programs is on the right track

MCPS magnet programs at Eastern Middle School, Takoma Park Middle School and Roberto Clemente Middle School have come into the limelight recently after a group called the African-American Parents of Magnet School Applicants (AAPMSA) asked that the application process for the magnets be halted due to a lack of racial diversity in the programs. The group argued that the programs are inherently racist and accept a disproportionately low number of minority students, especially blacks and Hispanics, according to the Silver Chips Online article Parent group calls magnet program biased.

The critics of the AAPMSA, who have been posted at length on Silver Chips Online, state that the disparity between white students and other students begins to develop in elementary school and the problem should be addressed there. True. But while it is essential that elementary schools start addressing the achievement gap, the middle school years are certainly not too late to help correct an injustice.

The sudden jump in minority acceptances to the three programs evident this year shows that MCPS is taking great steps towards achieving equality, but is not quite there. The magnet minority acceptance rates show drastic improvements from the previous year (2004) according to the Silver Chips story More blacks accepted into magnets, with a jump of 310 percent at Takoma, an increase of 300 percent at Roberto Clemente and a 30 percent increase at Eastern in minority acceptances. However, there is still more work to be done to achieve equality between white and non-white students in magnet acceptances.

While fully 22.1 percent of the county is African American, according to the MCPS website, only 12.2 percent of the acceptances to the Eastern Middle School magnet, and only 12.9 percent of the acceptances to Roberto Clemente Middle School magnet for 2005 are black, according to the same Silver Chips article. Additionally, while fully 18.7 percent of the students enrolled in MCPS are Hispanic, only 4.1 and 4.3 percent of the acceptances to the Eastern Middle School and Roberto Clemente Middle School magnets respectively, are Hispanic.

Generally, minority students begin kindergarten at a level lower than white students, and the disparity between the two groups only increases after years of schooling. While allowing minority students to take higher-level magnet classes in middle school by accepting them to the magnets might be considered a radical step towards closing that gap, it should not be.

De Facto discrimination

Although the tests and entrance processes for the Middle School magnets no longer reflect their racist roots in the beliefs of Eugenicists, people who believed that race was directly correlated with intelligence, there is still much inequality in the process.

The reasons for these inequities are unclear, but the effects are not. According to a memorandum sent to the Board of Education by the AAPMSA, in an average of the acceptances for the 2004, 2003 and 2002 years, only 5 percent of African American applicants were admitted to the Takoma Park middle school magnet program, as were only 7 percent of Hispanic applicants, compared to fully 22 percent of the White applicants. The statistics provided for the Eastern magnet show a similar, although slightly more even, picture.

Regardless of the reasons for these disparities, they must be corrected, and admitting more minority students is certainly an appropriate way to accomplish this.

Many critics of the AAPMSA state that Asians are minorities just as the African Americans are. However, when it comes to middle school magnet programs, Asians are certainly not being discriminated against. Asians, who make up only 14.3 percent of the students in MCPS, account for fully 48 percent of the students admitted to the Takoma Park Middle School magnet in 2004. White students, who make up 44.6 percent of MCPS students totaled a relatively small 46 percent of the 2004 Takoma Park Middle School acceptances, according to the Silver Chips Online article Parent group calls magnet program biased. While the reason for this statistical discrepancy in favor of Asians is not easily explained, the extremely low numbers of blacks and Hispanics in the magnet programs are far more troubling.

Acceptance does not equal success

Acceptance to the magnet programs is decided to some degree, by tests. While testing is an excellent way to compare students from different backgrounds against a standard, even the most scrutinized of tests, like the SAT, have problems and do a poor job of actually predicting achievement.

The SAT is supposed to predict college achievement and provide for the most ideal pool of applicants to a college. However, the SAT is an extremely poor predictor of college achievement and an even poorer predictor of lifetime achievement. According to fairtest.org, a 100-point difference between two students on the SAT (with other variables held constant) predicts an improvement of a .01-point gain in college GPA. Additionally, Bates College, which dropped testing requirements in 1990, found that those who did not submit scores to the school scored an average of 160 points lower on the 1600 scale of the SAT than those who did submit SAT scores. However, a study of college grades revealed that this difference resulted in an average GPA difference of only .05. Additionally, the SAT is far weaker than that at predicting success for female students and minority students, according to the same article.

According to Virginia Tucker, Director of Enriched and Innovative Instruction for MCPS, the two main standardized tests used for admission to the middle school manget programs are the Advanced Raven Progressive Matrices Test and the Advanced SCAT test. The Advanced Raven is supposed to be a non-verbal measure of "observation and thinking," according to the Raven website. The Advanced SCAT is a test of verbal and mathematical reasoning, borrowed from Johns Hopkins University talent search.

An immense amount of money is poured into the SAT each year to make it more fair, while relatively little is put into revamping the magnet acceptance tests. Neither the Raven, which is well-scrutinized, nor the SCAT, which is not, come anywhere near the level of scrutiny given to the SAT. Therefore, one can infer that the same disparity between test score and actual achievement, if not a larger one, exists.

The many benefits of diversity

As in anything for which there are acceptance requirements, there are students who fall barely outside of the acceptance range for the programs. These students could certainly be expected to do well in the programs, according to Peter Ostrander, coordinator of the Roberto Clemente Middle School magnet programs. "There are definitely more students out there that could do well that we can't take. We wouldn't have a wait pool otherwise," Ostrander said. If the magnet programs specially selected the minority students from these larger ranges, a much more diverse acceptance pool could be generated, which would benefit the both programs and children immensely if accepted.

Accepting them would be beneficial not only to those accepted, but also to the magnet programs as a whole. A study conducted at the University of Michigan by Patricia Gurin (University of Michigan), Biren "Ratnesh" A. Nagda (University of Washington) and Gretchen E. Lopez (Colgate University) indicated the numerous benefits, both academic and personal, of a diverse environment. The study found that those who were in a highly diverse learning environment (meaning integrated classrooms) were generally better at understanding other people's points of view, were more aware of commonalities between groups and had a more normalized view of the role of conflict in social life. In short, those who were in a highly diverse environment ended up being as more well-rounded, understanding individuals.

The middle school magnets surely want to create not only strong students academically, but strong people generally. In the workplace and in life, social skills are extremely important for being successful, and a highly diverse learning environment helps to cultivate those social skills.

Allowing more children from minority groups into the Montgomery County middle school magnet programs would not weaken these programs with "unqualified students," but merely strengthen them by allowing for greater diversity. Accepting minority students who fall just outside of the acceptance range for the programs would allow the schools to have a lot more diversity and would help to make up for any unfairness that the acceptance tests themselves impart to the process.