Another Remnant Of Rod Paige

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Our View: 10 percent admissions rule needs to be scrapped

By: The Conroe Courier editorial staff

A San Antonio legislator has taken aim at the state's controversial "Top 10 Percent" admissions law guaranteeing automatic admission to state institutions of higher learning.

Happy Hunting. It's time this law was either scrapped or significantly reformed.

The legislator, Jeff Wentworth, says the Texas "Top 10 Percent" law is unfair and unnecessary. Increasingly, parents are inclined to agree.

It was first enacted under then-Gov. George W. Bush after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1996 made affirmative action in admissions illegal in Texas. In response, Bush and the Legislature crafted the new admissions law as another way of ensuring diversity in university enrollment.

But the law has helped distort university admissions, creating situations where some students from top-performing high schools don't even make the cut - even though their grades and SAT scores are high enough to gain them access to top universities out of state. Filling their places at our state institutions often are students who otherwise would not have been able to compete against their top-performing colleagues.

The Top 10 percent law has the attraction of opening access to a larger number of students than might otherwise have been possible. There is no denying the law's appeal.

As Caney Creek High School Principal Greg Poole recently told The Courier: "There is no doubt that the 10 percent rule, as it stands now, provides opportunities for my students that they otherwise did not have," he said. "It absolutely has been beneficial as it stands.

But it helps conceal an underlying problem: there are real differences in performance between Texas high schools, and now, instead of one consistent standard of academic merit, admissions are based on the accidents of geography.

A student who might not have made the top 10 percent at one campus may be a top scholar at another and could gain admissions to a top state school.

This cannot continue. The goal of our public, tax-supported universities should be to produce the best scholars in the nation. That goal is undercut by the current admissions law.

Wentworth is not the only legislator seeking to change the law. State Rep. Rob Eissler has made another proposal.

His bill would allow the governing board of a university system with more than one campus, such as The University of Texas or Texas A&M, to adopt a policy that would treat applications by top 10 percent graduates as "an application for admission to any general academic teaching institution in the system."

If Eissler's bill becomes law, a student wanting to attend The University of Texas at Austin, for example, could instead be given admission to the university's Arlington campus.

That at least would be an improvement.

If the Top 10 Percent rule was scrapped, it would place greater pressure on all Texas high schools to perform. In an era of increased accountability and tougher standards, that's the right direction to head. Then, the state needs to turn its attention to helping all schools compete on a level playing field - and ensuring that all students achieve their highest potential.

[Houston19514]

What does that have to do with Rod Paige?