Affirmative Action

Research related to Affirmative Action

A Public Laboratory Dewey Barely Imagined: The Emerging Model of School Governance and Legal Reform

Public school reform raises the prospect of a broader redefinition of our very democracy.

Diversity Challenged: Evidence on the Impact of Affirmative Action

In the courts and in referenda campaigns, affirmative action in college admissions is under full-scale attack. Though it was designed to help resolve a variety of serious racial problems, affirmative action's survival may turn on just one question--whether or not the educational value of diversity is sufficiently compelling to justify consideration of race as a factor in deciding whom to admit to colleges and universities.

The Hopwood Decision in Texas as an Attack on Latino Access to Selective Higher Education Programs

This paper looks at the effects of the Hopwood decision on Latino students and examines factors impacting Latino students' access to higher education.

Diversity and Legal Education: Student Experiences in Leading Law Schools

This study reports on the experiences of students captured in a high response-rate survey administered by the Gallup Poll at two of the nation's most competitive law schools, Harvard Law School and the University of Michigan Law School, as well as through data collected through an email/internet survey at five other law schools. The data indicate that the Supreme Court was correct in its conclusions about the impact of diversity in Bakke and earlier higher education decisions.

Reconfiguring Admissions to Serve the Mission of Selective Public Higher Education

This paper first spells out several of these consequences of basing admissions solely on high-stakes standardized, norm-referenced tests . It then considers whether HSSNRTs are technically adequate to justify such consequences. Next, it offers a principled resolution to the debate between advocates of score-ranked admissions and proponents of diversity.