Posted on 09/05/2003 11:03:37 AM PDT by Dog Gone
CALL IT THE NEW white flight.
Traditional white flight abandoned urban schools in the wake of integration or in the face of influxes of immigrants.
The new white flight is different.
Parents are seeking private schools or searching for magnet programs in schools other than their attendance zones not because they think their school is deteriorating or dangerous.
They're worried their children can't compete.
They're not fleeing the "worst" schools, but the "best."
Welcome to the world of the 10 percent rule. That's the alternative to affirmative action at Texas universities backed by then-Gov. George W. Bush.
Instead of achieving diversity through weighted formulas, the University of Texas and others are required to admit students who graduated from the top 10 percent of their class, whether it was the lowest-performing school in Texas or the highest.
So now some parents, afraid their children won't rank in the top 10 percent at their local high school, are seeking alternatives.
One such mother has a bright new ninth-grader with a younger sister in middle school. She chose not to send her older girl to Bellaire High School, one of the area's highest performers. One consideration, she said, was the 10 percent rule.
"Frankly, I don't think she can compete with the Asians," she said.
School officials are reluctant to discuss ethnic differences. Bellaire Principal Tim Salem says he doesn't have statistics on how many Asians are in the school's top 10 percent.
But the school does attract a lot of Asian students -- 17 percent of its student body, the highest of any Houston ISD high school.
Councilman Gordon Quan says he knows of Asian families who keep their homes elsewhere in Houston but rent apartments in the Bellaire neighborhood because they see it as the best school.
This may help explain why school officials say they haven't noticed any drop-off in class size from white families going elsewhere.
Meanwhile, Bruce Walker, vice president for admissions at the University of Texas, says Asians are thriving under the 10 percent rule. They make up an estimated 18 percent of this year's freshman class, but were just 3 percent of high school graduates last spring.
Walker said the importance of the 10 percent rule has grown. Last year 52 percent of incoming freshman were admitted under the 10 percent rule. This year the number jumped to an estimated 69 percent of all admissions. Ten-percenters were three-quarters of Texas freshmen admitted.
Whatever the role Asian students play, it is indeed tough to make it into Bellaire's top 10 percent. Salem says parents frequently express concern. Bill Lawson, former principal and now area superintendent, said he heard such concerns from parents "on a daily basis."
Last year's graduating class of 681 featured 41 National Merit semifinalists.
"Last year we had 33 students in the fall with 4.0 or higher grade point averages who were in the second quartile," said head counselor Shirley Raby. She explained that advanced-placement classes were weighted so an "A" was worth more than the normal four points.
That means that 33 students with perfect grades weren't in the top quarter of the class, much less the top 10 percent.
But Raby said unless parents are dead set on getting their children into the University of Texas, they shouldn't be so concerned.
"Last year we sent two to Harvard, one to Yale, nine or ten to Stanford, ten to twelve to Rice, two to Duke, one or two to MIT and one to Princeton," she said. Some of those weren't in the top 10 percent.
One, she said, was turned down by UT-Austin but received a scholarship to Boston University.
"The universities know what kind of school we are and take that into account," she said.
Raby said parents who see Bellaire as a rich kids' school, or one that caters only to its brightest students, are wrong.
"A quarter of our students are from families that qualify for reduced-price or free lunches," she said, adding that the district lines include low-income immigrant areas.
And, she said, students are admitted into any class they want to take and are served attentively no matter their academic level.
But the mother mentioned above remains skeptical.
"I don't know, but I've heard that if you're not in the top 10 percent you don't get the coddling you get if you are," she said.
And so her child is in private school.
Trust me, lady - you don't want your kids at UT.
Send 'em to A&M.
I own a cheap second home in a rural part of Texas, and his grades would easily have put him in the top 10% of the high school there. In the end, we decided to just hope that he could work himself into the top 10% by the time he had to apply to college.
It didn't work, and he missed the cutoff. Fortunately, he prepared hard for the SAT test and he scored high enough to get into his first choice of university. But the competition is brutal.
The sad reality is that a high percentage of Top 10%ers from inner city schools drop out at the end the first semester of college. But they took the spot of better-prepared students who went to better schools.
Self-fulfilling prophecy.
I'd like to ask this woman whether she wants her kid to get into college, or to become well-educated?
Wording it differently, does she want her kid to get good grades, or to learn?
Invest in one of those prep classes for SAT when the time comes. They make a serious difference, and a high SAT score will overcome the class standing.
Dare I suggest this could have been racial quotas in action?
Yup, I dare.
Excellent advice ! Thanks !
I wonder how many people realize that they are not slaves to diplomas and test scores. There are other ways to skin the cat.
The 10% rule is a clever idea to even things up. Let the individual's own selfish motives work to acheive the greater good...sorta like the concept of capitalism. I wonder if it works as well as capitalism does.
Exactly the same thought occurred to me - can be generalized even more. Regardless of the system, eventually the brightest or most able will find their way to the top.
It is, it was, and will always be survival of the fittest - however you camouflage it, and whether you find that offensive or not!!
While there was certainly a racial element in the wake of a dismantled AA system in Texas, that's not what closed the deal. The 10% rule enjoyed widespread support in the state because with it's rural population in excess of 20%, Texas isn't as urban as many states.
One of the downsides to rural living is the school systems are often by necessity more limited than their larger urban counterparts. I was living in a small Texas town of 882 when this was debated, as was oft pointed out, our high school was too small to offer AP courses, only offered a foriegn language when a teacher was available, didn't offer calculus etc, but our kids were competing against urban kids who did have access to these things.
So for good or for bad, rural Texan's saw this as a chance for their kids to have a shot at good schooling, and THAT closed the deal. The author, a Houstonite, obviously didn't get it.
Some kids are getting accepted who clearly are not cut out for the intense academic pressures of those universities. It does, however, keep minority enrollment to levels roughly equivalent to pre-Hopwood numbers.
But the real negative effects are seen on those students in exceptional suburban high schools with overwhelming numbers of kids that come from families of highly-educated and intelligent parents. The kids are going to be largely superior students themselves, but it's impossible for all of them to be in the top 10% of their class. 90% of them will have a very tough time getting into the University of Texas or Texas A&M.
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