Bush Plan Aids College Skills, Educators Say

 BY JACK WHEAT
 jwheat@herald.com

 Higher education officials say the most promising element of Gov. Jeb Bush's
 plan to eliminate race in state university admissions is his head-on attack on the
 ``pipeline problem'' -- the fact that too few minority students are in the academic
 circuits that lead to college.

 The plan is Bush's counterpoint to the anti-affirmative action movement that's
 gaining steam in Florida.

 In the short term, Bush wants the Board of Regents, which oversees the 10 public
 universities, to ban consideration of race in admission decisions. But to preserve
 minority access, he will ask regents next week in Jacksonville to guarantee that
 students who complete the state's college-prep curriculum and graduate in the
 top 20 percent of their class will be admitted to a state university, although not
 necessarily the one they want.

 For the long term, he wants the Legislature to provide money for low-performing
 high schools -- most of which have large minority enrollments -- to better prepare
 students for the SAT college admission test, and to increase need-based financial
 aid.

 Commissioner of Education Tom Gallagher, who is also a regent and has worked
 with Bush on his plan, pledges to step up efforts to encourage students to take
 the college-prep classes.

 Gallagher said Bush's plan is important because it focuses not only on getting
 minorities onto university campuses, but on their ability to succeed once they get
 there.

 State University System Chancellor Adam Herbert praised the plan for its
 emphasis on preparing ``students for the rigors of a university career.''

 The plan is particularly needed by the University of Florida, said Interim Provost
 David Colburn, a longtime history professor. ``We need some help in the public
 schools.''

 If anti-affirmative action sentiments escalate into the powerful type of crusade that
 swept California earlier in the decade, UF, the state's most selective university, is
 likely to become a prime target.

 In California, anti-affirmative action campaigners made the University of California
 at Berkeley a lightning rod because of admission and scholarship preferences for
 minority students.

 UF officials expect to receive more than 22,000 applications next year for 6,000
 freshman slots. The pile of rejection slips mailed out each year causes plenty of
 resentment, Colburn said.

 Though UF's black enrollment has grown to about 2,500, it only represents about
 6 percent of the 43,000 student body, about the same percentage as a decade
 ago. Hispanic enrollment has grown steadily, too, to 3,600, or 9.4 percent.

 Those figures lag behind statewide enrollment numbers of 15.4 percent black and
 14.4 percent Hispanic.

 ``We think the diversity that's here is an asset, and we'd like to be more reflective
 of society as a whole,'' Colburn said.

 The challenge is recruiting minority students whose high school education
 prepares them to hold their own at a school like UF where the average SAT score
 for entering freshmen is about 1,200, and the high school grade point average in
 college-prep classes is higher than 3.9, Colburn said.

 Minority students who can compete academically at UF also are in high demand
 at schools around the country, Colburn said.

 He's trying to recruit a black Florida A&M University professor's son to UF, he
 said. ``His son has been offered a $100,000 scholarship from Case-Western
 Reserve. The competition is really extraordinarily tough.''

 UF offers scholarships to promising minority students. And if minority applicants'
 grades are up to par but the SAT score is a little low, or vice versa, UF will
 probably admit them, Colburn said. Under Bush's plan, state universities could
 continue offering minority scholarships.

 In the 1990s, UF has risen from No. 31 in the country to No. 4 in recruitment of
 National Achievement Scholars, a program for top black academic talent run by
 the National Merit scholarship program. UF has similar success at enrolling
 National Hispanic Scholars and National Merit Scholars, Colburn said.

 The primary reason for the stiff competition, he said, is the persistent
 achievement gap between minority and white students in Florida and across the
 country.

 In 1996, 3 percent of Florida's black fourth- and eighth-graders and 8 percent of
 Hispanic fourth- and eighth-graders scored above the basic proficiency level on
 the National Assessment of Education math tests, according to the Education
 Trust, a national advocacy group.

 Among white non-Hispanic students, 21 percent of fourth-graders scored above
 par, as did 26 percent of eighth-graders.

 Florida minority students have higher dropout rates and lower SAT scores, the
 national report showed.

 Bush said state Department of Education statistics similarly reflect the
 achievement gap. But the governor said it's really a gap between the children of
 privilege and children of poverty.

 ``A generation ago, race and ethnic-based preferences were appropriate because
 segregation was a matter of policy,'' a statement from Bush's office said. ``Now
 the gaps that have been created are more a result of the lack of opportunity than
 overt racial or ethnic discrimination.''
 

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Carl Gutiérrez-Jones
Department of English
University of California, Santa Barbara
e-mail: carlgj@humanitas.ucsb.edu