This page contains a chronological record of major news items related to Affirmative Action. The news section is subdivided by year: 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006. Please e-mail your suggestions.
This page was last revised August 3, 2006. (AAD Home Page)
A Chronological Record of News and Events Related to Affirmative Action
News and Announcements: 2000
December 18, 2000: The U.S. Education Department's Office for Civil Rights released its fourth and final version of a guidebook on the use of standardized tests in admissions and other student-placement decisions. The 92-page document is largely the same as the previous draft, released in July, which was significantly altered and toned down from the highly contentious original guidelines, released in April 1999.
December 13, 2000: A federal judge upholds the University of Michigan's use of affirmative action in admissions.
December 7, 2000: A coalition of foundations, colleges, and government agencies joined Wednesday to announce the creation of a new entity aimed at increasing access to higher education for minority and low-income students. The Pathways to College Network plans to identify successful college-preparation programs and find a way to replicate them ( See article in The Chronicle of Higher Education).
November 17, 2000: Follow the University of Michigan Court Case by viewing U-M Court Case News Articles.
November 16, 2000: U-M goes to court today to defend its affirmative action. Admissions outcome could set a precedent.
November 7, 2000: See news on Affirmative Action and Election 2000.
October 17, 2000: Several Fortune 500 companies, such as Microsoft, Lucent, Texaco and Johnson & Johnson, announce their support of the University of Michigan legal battle to protect its affirmative action admissions policy. Click here for news story.
October 17, 2000: A New York Times editorial announces that the latest issue of the Journal of Economic Literature provides an 85-page review of over 200 serious scientific studies of affirmative action. Harry Holzer of Georgetown University and David Neumark of Michigan State University "discover that affirmative action produces tangible benefits for women, for minority entrepreneurs, students and workers and for the overall economy."
October 16, 2000: A state law designed to diversify colleges in Texas is being hindered by the federal privacy act. The law, which was signed by Texas Gov. George W. Bush in 1997 as an alternative to affirmative action, guarantees students ranked in the top 10 percent of their high school graduating classes a spot at the state's public colleges and universities. However, because of the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act, colleges and universities cannot identify which students have placed in the top 10. Click here for news story.
August 16, 2000: The University of Georgia plans to appeal a recent federal court decision that calls the school's use of affirmative action in admissions unconstitutional.
April 11, 2000: The US Commission on Civil Rights releases a report
that strongly condemns the popular and now-prevalent practice of replacing affirmative
action policies with statistical policies, whereby the top percentage of high-school
students are guaranteed admission to public colleges. In the week preceding
the report, the Commission voted to approve a statement that characterizes the
class-rank plans as "experimental responses to the attacks on affirmative action"
that are, in some ways, regressive because they exploit segregated schools.
The plans are "no substitute for strong race-conscious affirmative action in
higher education," the commission claims. Members of the Commission noted that
the Texas 10-percent policy is better than those in California and Florida in
one area: Texas guarantees admission to the state's flagship institutions,
while the other two states promise only a spot at a public
institution. Even so, she said, the number of minority students at the University
of Texas at Austin is nearly the same as before the federal-court decision there
that ended affirmative action, although the number of
applications from minority students to the university has increased.
Last fall, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush voluntarily ended the use of affirmative action
in admissions at the state's 10 public universities and replaced it with a plan
to automatically admit the top 20 percent of high-school graduating classes.
Officials in Pennsylvania's state-university system have been discussing a 15-percent
criterion, although the system would not end affirmative-action policies at
this point.
April 4, 2000: The University of California announces that the number of minority students admitted to the freshman class has exceeded that of 1997, the last year that affirmative action was used in the admissions process. But the number of black and Hispanic students admitted to the most-competitive and elite UC campuses continues to lag behind, supporting the claim that the system is evolving in a two-tier, racially segregated manner.
March 20, 2000: The Supreme Court allows a lower-court decision
on the issue of race-conscious policy to stand. The ruling it allowed
to stand focused mainly on the Montgomery County, Md., school system's policy
of denying transfers to certain students to maintain racial balance in its schools.
The Fourth Circuit ruling struck down the school board's policy of disallowing
transfers. The lawsuit challenging the policy was filed by the parents
of a white first grader who was denied permission to transfer to a magnet school
in 1998 to help keep his neighborhood school racially balanced. In 1996, the
Supreme Court also let stand a 1996 federal appeals-court ruling that struck
down the use of race-based admissions policies by public colleges in the Fifth
Circuit, which encompasses Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. The Fourth Circuit
decision applies to Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and
West Virginia.
Also today: At a panel at the American Council on Education conference,
university officials show how bans on affirmative action policies have produced
innovative diversity policies in return, including intensive recruitment practices
and expanded scholarship programs.
March 9, 2000: The President's Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans announces that colleges must make more of an effort to reach, recruit, enroll, and educate Latinos, in order to secure the economic well-being of all Americans. The leader of the commission, Guillermo Linares, a member of the New York City Council, argued that states, schools, and colleges must work together or risk leaving large numbers of people without the skills to get good jobs. "If the university system is not prepared to face up to that challenge, we will have a situation that is already difficult for Hispanic students get worse," he said. Commission officials concluded that, if the Hispanic population were to attend college at the same rate as non-Hispanic white Americans do, the earnings of Hispanic workers would grow by about $118-billion, and the country's tax coffers by $41-billion, commission officials concluded.
March 7, 2000: Thousands march to the state capitol in Florida in order to protest Governor Jeb Bush's Executive Order eliminating race and gender considerations in university admissions and state contracting. Observers predict various national reactions.
February 25, 2000: The U.S. Department of Education criticizes Florida's decision to end affirmative action policies.
February 17, 2000: The Florida Board of Regents votes unanimously to support Gov. Jeb Bush's "One Florida" plan.
January 18, 2000: Two Florida state law-makers protest Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's "One Florida" plan by conducting a 1960s style sit-in at the Lt. Governor's Office.
AAD Home Page | News 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | State Initiatives and Propositions | Discrimination | Economics | Quotas | Merit | Culture | Individual & Group Rights | Gender | Race | UC | Legislation | Court Cases