SACRAMENTO, CA -- As he proclaims a new era in state government, incoming Governor Gray Davis is trotting
out a number of old and very bad ideas. Take, for example, Davis’ plan to increase the number of certain
minorities at University of California campuses. Currently, the top 12.5 percent of high school graduates statewide are eligible for admission to the UC system. In his inaugural speech, Davis pledged to "seek to ensure diversity and fair play" by guaranteeing UC admission for all students who finish in the top four percent of each California high school. This plan is nearly a carbon copy of SCA 7, a state constitutional amendment introduced last year by State Senator Teresa Hughes (D-Los Angeles).

Under Hughes’ amendment, students who ranked in the upper four percent of their graduating high-school
class at their particular high school, based mostly on grade-point average, would have been automatically
entitled to admission to the University of California. Hughes eventually amended the plan so that the top 12.5
percent, rather than the top four percent, of a high school’s graduating class would have been designated
eligible for UC, while the top four percent of the class would have been guaranteed admission to their
first choice of UC campuses. None of the versions of Hughes’ constitutional amendment received much support
from her fellow Democrats. For instance, after hearing Senator Hughes’ pitch for her legislation, the
California Postsecondary Education Commission (on which I happen to sit), which has both Democrat and
Republican members, unanimously decided to oppose Hughes’ amendment.

It came as no surprise that the measure eventually died in the Democrat-controlled Senate Constitutional
Amendments Committee. Like Davis’ current proposal, Hughes’ plan was both patently unfair to students and
destructive to schools’ incentives to improve.

For example, it would have actually encouraged students to attend low-performing schools since it would be
easier to get into the top four percent of a graduating class at a poorly performing school than one with a
high level of achievement. Further, students entering the UC from low-performing schools would be more likely
to either need remedial help or to flunk out, a situation that already burdens both the UC and Cal State systems.

Conversely, students at high-performing schools, such as Lowell High School in San Francisco, where 38
percent of the 1995 graduating class was UC eligible, would have been severely and unfairly punished under a
four percent cap. Finally, if the top four percent of a high school’s graduating class were automatically
eligible for UC admission, regardless of the quality of the school’s curriculum and performance, then there
would be little incentive for that school to improve.

The key to higher minority participation in higher education is not rigged incentives nor racial preferences, but the failing K-12 system. If Davis wants a real "four-percent solution" to California, there is a better way to go about it.

The governor should take the students attending the worst performing four percent of the state’s public
schools and give them a voucher that would allow them to attend better schools. Given the success of vouchers
in improving student performance, such a school-choice option would increase the number of minorities in the
UC system--and those students would know that they got there based on merit.

-- Lance T. Izumi