Unease at Wayne State University - Are policies freezing out minorities?

[Zacha341]

^^^^ IMO it's mostly what is coming [[or not coming) from the home. If education is not valued there's lack of interest. Parents not parenting, too busy trying to be friends and cool with their kids and buy them stuff to cover short comings in parenting. This focus does nothing to encourage academic success.

[Danny]

Freezing WSU admissions to Blacks and Latinos. Sounds like affirmative action to me. Wayne State University Board of Governors are looking at the way Blacks and Latinos performed in uneducated schools from its grade point averages to academic achivement. That way it would prevent more exclusions and lower federal funding and private donations.

Folks grades is everything in order to go to college and possibly an excellent salary based carreer. Don't clown around or lose your study habits. As a matter of fact don't be lazy! In the meantime fight this rediculous admissions policy because getting into college is meant for anyone who can be ready and succeed for the structured society.

WORD FROM THE STREET PROPHET


For the 99 Percenters and Spirit of Guy Fawkes.

I miss you so, Neda.

[Zacha341]

Hah! I hear that! Don't forget door number #2: Black kids demanding [[often at the resistance of their parents) to live on campus, when it would be cheaper to live at home nearby. Then getting 'caught up' in the party scene deluxe, flunking out within the first year!

I'm not say the dorm/ living on campus scene is all bad, but some kids cannot handle it! And it can be a waste of precious financial resources....

http://ideas.time.com/2011/12/01/the...ors_picks=true

It's hard to rack up dorm dollars and out of state tuition bucks if your school is filled with black kids who would rather save a buck and stay at home or in non-campus housing.

[drjeff]

WSU needs a much better adult-undergrad student schedule program/accommodations.. it's frustrating to have to deal with work + midday classes, with few options for evenings and weekends...

WSU should be operating charter schools, DPS tutoring programs if they are concerned about DPS graduation rates/equivalency levels. Prioritizing research over undergraduate retention is a longtime gripe of mine with colleges in general..

recruiting national/international students while ignoring the local student pool is disingenuous, at best.. And this is a public university, I'm not trying to hear all this stuff about elitist entitlement protocols..

Michigan has 15 public universities. Only three of them UM, MSU and WSU, are research universities. Just because WSU happens to be in the city does not mean it should abandon its research mission and start catering primarily to undergrads. If you want a teaching intensive faculty that focuses on undergrad education- go to another university. If you want faculty who are on the cutting edge of their fields, go to a research university.

WSU also has the third lowest tuition of any public university in Michigan, despite its status as a tier one research university. Its tuition should really be closer to MSU.

Note: I am on the faculty at WSU med school.

[JBMcB]

I had several teachers that had started out in DPS schools when I was in high school. There was a lot of talk about improving DPS at the time, as it was around when Proposal A was being debated. My math teacher said that DPS graduates were a full two or three years behind our school. We were taking intro to calculus and calc 1, while DPS usually finished up with intro to algebra or trig. Half the kids in my class were taking AP/college level classes their senior year.

[English]

The root of the problem isn't DPS -- it is the parents. The worst performing schools in NYC turned around because they put a major focus on parental involvement. Parental involvement is the #1 factor in determining academic success, and everything else is far back

Agreed. That's why programs like the Harlem Children's Zone work... but our nation isn't really interested in HCZ-like solutions for urban schools. They're viewed as too cost prohibitive.

[justanotherboy]

I always thought Wayne State 'Community College' took anyone who could fill out an application which is why it was never thought of as on par with UM or other leading research universities. Even with Gilmore at the helm, it doesn't appear to have changed any.

[English]

No offense, but I don't see this as racial bias at all. A 3.2 DPS grade point average probably is equivalent to a 2.4 GPA from other places. There was an article naming Renaissance as the best high school in DPS with 10% of their graduates deemed prepared for college. Cass Tech was under 5%.

I'm not saying that Lahser or Grosse Pointe South are at 95%...but when the best schools in your system have a 10% less score for college preparedness, then a 3.0 GPA probably doesn't mean the same thing there as it does at other districts.

http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/in..._finds_th.html

Hmm. That article goes on to say:

"Of course, it's not just a Detroit thing. Lest you believe the education crisis is limited to the city, it should be noted that at schools throughout Macomb, Oakland and Wayne, anywhere from 75 percent to 100 percent of the students were determined to be unprepared for college. This despite graduation rates that are comparable to, or even better than, those at Cass Tech and Renaissance."


That report was discussed when it first debuted in February, and there was much discussion about the methodology. Nevertheless, I agree that test scores are falling. When I taught at Cass Tech nearly a decade ago, the average ACT score for the school was 21, and for White CT students, it was 26. Today, it's only 19.

Renaissance's average score was either 22 or 23 eight years ago. Today, their score is 20, which tops the city.

I agree with all of you. We have to do better.

[swingline]

Agreed. That's why programs like the Harlem Children's Zone work... but our nation isn't really interested in HCZ-like solutions for urban schools. They're viewed as too cost prohibitive.

The HCZ organization spends almost $17,000 per student. Everything, including the cost of delivering education, is more expensive in Manhattan, but $17K is what, probably 2x what DPD gets from the state for its per pupil foundation grant.

While the state could never find that kind of extra money to assist broken urban school districts, especially from a Republican legislature, arguably the extra money is being spent anyway. It's just that it goes to Corrections rather than Education. And, ironically, all kinds of GED and post-secondary education programs were cut from the Corrections budget in the Engler era.

[maxx]

The Student Support Services program which is part of the federal TRIO programs including Upward Bound have been available to colleges and Univs since the sixties. One of those liberal programs, but I don't think the funds have been cut although the income requirements may have dropped. Maybe there are just too many Detroit students who need more help than SSS can provide.

http://www2.ed.gov/programs/triostud...file-97-99.pdf

[swingline]

Hmm. That article goes on to say:

"Of course, it's not just a Detroit thing. Lest you believe the education crisis is limited to the city, it should be noted that at schools throughout Macomb, Oakland and Wayne, anywhere from 75 percent to 100 percent of the students were determined to be unprepared for college. This despite graduation rates that are comparable to, or even better than, those at Cass Tech and Renaissance."


That report was discussed when it first debuted in February, and there was much discussion about the methodology. Nevertheless, I agree that test scores are falling. When I taught at Cass Tech nearly a decade ago, the average ACT score for the school was 21, and for White CT students, it was 26. Today, it's only 19.

Renaissance's average score was either 22 or 23 eight years ago. Today, their score is 20, which tops the city.

I agree with all of you. We have to do better.

The current Cass and Renaissance average ACT scores illuminate the incredibly difficult and intractable achievement problems that exist in poor urban [[and largely African American) school districts. Cass and Renaissance are filled with the most motivated and successful students in DPS, yet neither school can get its average ACT score into the upper 50th percentile. We have to find solutions that will improve education outcomes for these kids.

FWIW, I think that educators would learn a lot about DPS' mistakes and possible solutions by simply interviewing DPS grads from the past 5-15 years or so who have gone on to get post secondary degrees. These former students who have gone on to at least some education success outside of the dysfunctional DPS environment could easily identify ways in which the DPS experience could be improved.

[Ray1936]

I well remember the day when my boss said, "Ray, we're sending you to Wayne State University." I knew they were doing it because I was so smart.


It was awful lonely back then.

[corktownyuppie]

The HCZ organization spends almost $17,000 per student. Everything, including the cost of delivering education, is more expensive in Manhattan, but $17K is what, probably 2x what DPD gets from the state for its per pupil foundation grant.

While the state could never find that kind of extra money to assist broken urban school districts, especially from a Republican legislature, arguably the extra money is being spent anyway. It's just that it goes to Corrections rather than Education. And, ironically, all kinds of GED and post-secondary education programs were cut from the Corrections budget in the Engler era.

Detroit Cristo Rey High School has a similar mission...

Detroit Cristo Rey High School provides excellent college-preparatory Catholic high school education, in the Cristo Rey Model, to students from economically disadvantaged families in Detroit.

And yes, it's expensive. They combine corporate work/study programs with the generosity of donors in order to sponsor at-risk kids for a 4-yr college preparatory environment. But their goal is 100% college placement, and most recent data puts them at 85%.

I don't think that these types of solutions will be put in at the state level anytime soon...the political climate on both sides is just too distrustful of government. However, it's nice to see that these programs are working, and I encourage people to support them and increase community awareness of them. They are a big hope for the future if we can expand this to a grander scale.

But back to the OP. My issue with headlines like "Are policies freezing out minorities?" is that the question presumes that those frozen out will be the victims of racial bias...that is to say that they are being excluded *because* of their race.

I have a problem with that. First -- even if it's an unintended consequence of the policy -- the implication is that the policy was designed to exclude people by race. Second -- again, even if it's an unintended consequence of the policy -- the message to those who are excluded is that the reason for their exclusion is because of something out of their control...and because of that, they are powerless to do anything about it. Or that the focus should be on changing the policy.

We're having a similar problem with the EM/EFM law. While a group is running around trying to gather up 200,000 signatures, they're focusing all that energy on changing what they perceive to be an unfair law, rather than use is to solve the REAL problem, which is our fiscal insolvency.

What if the headline instead read, "Wayne State University Raising Academic Standards for Admission: Policy change hurts impoverished the hardest, of whom 95% are minorities"

Again, I don't disagree with the original poster. There's obviously a problem with this policy in the sense that people are going to be blocked out of an avenue out of poverty, of whom most if not all are minorities. But the solution is to treat all education like competition for training in a highly competitive environment.

For all the talk about how all these wealthy, elitist families aren't going to be affected by these policy changes, a message gets lost. This kid isn't getting a career in bio-medical engineering because his parents had money. He's getting a career because he knows how to surgically re-attach your eye to your brain, which he learned how to do because he mastered the math and the science classes in high school, which is because he had a good grasp of geometry and intro algebra in middle school and because he knew not just how to multiply and divide, but he conceptually understood how those operations applied to real problems., etc . etc.,

Yes, I realize the at-risk and underprivileged minorities don't have access to the same training as the wealthy. But the point of college entry is far, far, too late in the process. At that point, remedial institutions and maybe even a Grade 13 need to come into play.

More importantly, getting our kids and families to treat K through 8 as if they were training for professional sports would be a plus, too.

[Patrick]

I remember at WSU in class we had a debate about the research-heavy aspect versus the "give everyone a shot" view of things. So, what is WSU supposed to do then?

[English]

The current Cass and Renaissance average ACT scores illuminate the incredibly difficult and intractable achievement problems that exist in poor urban [[and largely African American) school districts. Cass and Renaissance are filled with the most motivated and successful students in DPS, yet neither school can get its average ACT score into the upper 50th percentile. We have to find solutions that will improve education outcomes for these kids.

Hmm. I was under the impression that the 50th percentile for ACT was a 20. I'm an ACT consultant, and I'm heading to Iowa City later this winter to do some work. I'll check on it.

FWIW, I think that educators would learn a lot about DPS' mistakes and possible solutions by simply interviewing DPS grads from the past 5-15 years or so who have gone on to get post secondary degrees. These former students who have gone on to at least some education success outside of the dysfunctional DPS environment could easily identify ways in which the DPS experience could be improved.

So I graduated from Renaissance 16 years ago. I don't think such a qualitative study would be very revealing, swingline. Why? It's because the DPS I graduated from doesn't exist any longer. Heck, the DPS I taught in from 1999-2005 doesn't exist any longer. The exodus of large sections of the remaining Black middle class has affected the students and the system.

[English]

I remember at WSU in class we had a debate about the research-heavy aspect versus the "give everyone a shot" view of things. So, what is WSU supposed to do then?

Oh, Wayne State is going to change, and very soon. I don't know what Dr. Jeff's view of things is from the med school, but in my corner of the world, the College of Education, we are feeling the heat.

I will say that attempting to climb the rankings is always painful for everyone involved... students, faculty, staff, administrators, and the community.

[Warrenite84]

WSU needs a much better adult-undergrad student schedule program/accommodations.. it's frustrating to have to deal with work + midday classes, with few options for evenings and weekends...

WSU should be operating charter schools, DPS tutoring programs if they are concerned about DPS graduation rates/equivalency levels. Prioritizing research over undergraduate retention is a longtime gripe of mine with colleges in general..

recruiting national/international students while ignoring the local student pool is disingenuous, at best.. And this is a public university, I'm not trying to hear all this stuff about elitist entitlement protocols..

I absolutely agree about the undergrad student schedule. I am getting into my core classes now and I am seeing many of my upcoming classes are in the evening or between first and second shift. I work on second shift. Many are only available in one section per semester. So, I will be going to third shift at work for about a year and a half to finish. I feel for those who cannot so easily switch shifts.

[[Just a quick note- I've had some great professors at WSU, such as Dr. Marcus Dixon and Dr. Huff. I've also had several that teach poorly. Overall, not the quality I expected at the $300+ credit hour rate...)

[Hermod]

[[Just a quick note- I've had some great professors at WSU, such as Dr. Marcus Dixon and Dr. Huff. I've also had several that teach poorly. Overall, not the quality I expected at the $300+ credit hour rate...)

Wow, tuition was $50 a year in-state and $450 a year out-of-state [[unlimited credit hours) back in 1957 when I went off to college.

[aj3647]

recruiting national/international students while ignoring the local student pool is disingenuous, at best.. And this is a public university, I'm not trying to hear all this stuff about elitist entitlement protocols..

How are the local students being "ignored?" The responsibility of applying to the school and meetings its minimum standards falls to the individual. What, should WSU just send unsolicited acceptance letters to every high school senior in Detroit?

Letting in unprepared Detroit students out of sheer pity isn't doing them any favors. Less than one in ten black students who enrolls in WSU will graduate with a degree:

http://asumag.com/dailynews/wayne-st...ates-20100823/

You're not helping them by giving them an automatic acceptance, you are HURTING them. 92% of black students who go to WSU and won't graduate are still paying money to go there. I would bet many of these non-graduating black students are accruing some kind of debt to go there. So they're taking a financial hit and getting no degree in return. That's only going to hurt them. You're not doing these kids any favors by letting them into college out of pity when they don't have the skills to succeed there. All you are doing is siphoning money out of their pockets.

[drjeff]

Oh, Wayne State is going to change, and very soon. I don't know what Dr. Jeff's view of things is from the med school, but in my corner of the world, the College of Education, we are feeling the heat.

I will say that attempting to climb the rankings is always painful for everyone involved... students, faculty, staff, administrators, and the community.

My observations are that there are even faculty within WSU who are conflicted about its mission. It's less so at the med school, because it's hard to get admitted too ANY med school, so there are fewer students who really struggle. Some faculty are very devoted to teaching and others don't care and just want to be researchers. I'd say that we get a lot more pressure to bring in grant money than to be good teachers but here has been a real emphasis in the past couple of years on improving teaching.

[English]

My observations are that there are even faculty within WSU who are conflicted about its mission.

I agree. I've done a bit of speaking at a couple of elite universities over the past month. They were interested in my perspectives as a professor of education at an urban R1 [[RU/VH?) institution, and my research in Detroit schools. Granted, I'm only in my second year of the tenure track, but as a Wayne State master's degree grad and lifelong Detroiter, here are my observations.

Wayne State is being pressured to do for Detroit what UChicago has done for Hyde Park, or UPenn has done for University City in Philadelphia. As one of the city's largest remaining employers [[along with the hospitals), there are some stakeholders in the city of Detroit [[and the state of Michigan) who look to what "eds and meds" have done to revitalize other cities in the postindustrial age, and are looking to WSU and the hospitals to function in a similar socioeconomic fashion.

The problem is that Wayne State was never an elite private school like UChicago, UPenn, NYU/Columbia, etc. Things would have been altogether different had U-M remained in Detroit. You'd have part of the city that was more Ann Arbor-like, and another part that is devastated, much like Philadelphia or Chicago. However, Michigan's move occurred so long ago that it doesn't even figure into the modern history of Detroit.

One of my students pointed out this week that Wayne State has long prided itself on being a blue collar institution. The defunct College of Lifelong Learning, which supported adult education and nontraditional students, is a case in point. Wayne State is more analogous to Temple in Philadelphia than UPenn, or UIC in Chicago [[although UIC is more like a full service U-M Dearborn) than UChicago. Our elite university that draws in gentrifying demographics is in the next county over. Ann Arbor is prospering accordingly.

My conclusion is that we can't replicate the eds-and-meds gentrification of other metropoli easily. Our path to solvency and renewal will necessarily look different than it has anywhere else in the country. As for Wayne State, while standards can [[and will!) be improved throughout the university, I don't think it will ever be an elite institution. There is only so much room at the top, and there is pressure all over higher education to climb the rankings.

In my field, we're ranked #154. I know what the top 20 or 30 colleges/schools of education are like. I just earned a doctorate from #9 a little over a year ago, and just visited a university in the #10-20 range. At these schools, there are MAT and Ed.D. students with undergraduate degrees from Berkeley, or Dartmouth, or Columbia. Some have had stints in the Peace Corps, others speak three or more languages, and still others have national and international teaching and administrative experience. In a discipline that famously draws those with lower test scores, at the top 20 ed schools, you have a small pool of people whose academic ability, life and work experience, and sheer discipline and drive means they could have done anything.

That isn't the kind of student I teach at Wayne State... and it shouldn't be that kind of student, quite honestly. How many Ivy League and elite public institutions do we need? Why can't Wayne State be comfortable with what it is? Certainly, we shouldn't have graduated students like the infamous DPS board member, but in recent years, we have closed entities and programs that did graduate those who did subpar work. We should strive to be a better us, providing a solid education for those who might be their family's first generation to attend college. We should not strive to be a poor man's Michigan or Michigan State.

[downtownguy]

Thanks for that great inside-baseball perspective, English!

[swingline]

Wayne State is being pressured to do for Detroit what UChicago has done for Hyde Park, or UPenn has done for University City in Philadelphia. As one of the city's largest remaining employers [[along with the hospitals), there are some stakeholders in the city of Detroit [[and the state of Michigan) who look to what "eds and meds" have done to revitalize other cities in the postindustrial age, and are looking to WSU and the hospitals to function in a similar socioeconomic fashion.

The problem is that Wayne State was never an elite private school like UChicago, UPenn, NYU/Columbia, etc. Things would have been altogether different had U-M remained in Detroit. You'd have part of the city that was more Ann Arbor-like, and another part that is devastated, much like Philadelphia or Chicago. However, Michigan's move occurred so long ago that it doesn't even figure into the modern history of Detroit.

One of my students pointed out this week that Wayne State has long prided itself on being a blue collar institution. The defunct College of Lifelong Learning, which supported adult education and nontraditional students, is a case in point. Wayne State is more analogous to Temple in Philadelphia than UPenn, or UIC in Chicago [[although UIC is more like a full service U-M Dearborn) than UChicago. Our elite university that draws in gentrifying demographics is in the next county over. Ann Arbor is prospering accordingly.

English, you're spot on with these observations. Yes, WSU is getting "pressure" but not in any undue or unreasonable way. The stakeholders in the city and the immediate Midtown neighborhood don't expect the area to become a Cambridge, University City or Morningside Heights anytime soon. But the school is still capable of leading a very significant transformation [[in collaboration with the DMC and UCCA). In the immediate future, it has a huge opportunity [[and responsibility) for unprecedented progress with its ultimate development decisions for the spaces at Warren/Woodward and Cass/Forest. It doesn't require an elite student body or a billion dollar endowment to make good urban placemaking decisions. It will help though, if the school aggressively determines to shed for once and for all its old image of existing as a four year/attend at your leisure/community college level-rigor institution. There are plenty of ways to effectively assist disadvantaged students while leaving open admissions and no expectations of excellence behind.

By the way, regarding that ACT issue, the latest 3 year percentiles are found here: http://www.actstudent.org/scores/norms1.html. A score of 20 is at the 48th percentile. A 19 is at the 41st percentile. IIRC, an old thread indicated that the top Michigan public high schools like Andover, Seaholm, Grosse Pointe South, Troy, Forest HIlls Northern have ACT averages right around 24 which is at the 74th percentile.

[corktownyuppie]

My conclusion is that we can't replicate the eds-and-meds gentrification of other metropoli easily. Our path to solvency and renewal will necessarily look different than it has anywhere else in the country. As for Wayne State, while standards can [[and will!) be improved throughout the university, I don't think it will ever be an elite institution. There is only so much room at the top, and there is pressure all over higher education to climb the rankings.

In my field, we're ranked #154. I know what the top 20 or 30 colleges/schools of education are like. I just earned a doctorate from #9 a little over a year ago, and just visited a university in the #10-20 range. At these schools, there are MAT and Ed.D. students with undergraduate degrees from Berkeley, or Dartmouth, or Columbia. Some have had stints in the Peace Corps, others speak three or more languages, and still others have national and international teaching and administrative experience. In a discipline that famously draws those with lower test scores, at the top 20 ed schools, you have a small pool of people whose academic ability, life and work experience, and sheer discipline and drive means they could have done anything.

That isn't the kind of student I teach at Wayne State... and it shouldn't be that kind of student, quite honestly. How many Ivy League and elite public institutions do we need? Why can't Wayne State be comfortable with what it is? Certainly, we shouldn't have graduated students like the infamous DPS board member, but in recent years, we have closed entities and programs that did graduate those who did subpar work. We should strive to be a better us, providing a solid education for those who might be their family's first generation to attend college. We should not strive to be a poor man's Michigan or Michigan State.

English, I always enjoy your posts because you have the experience of both being from the city but also living in the world of the academically highly elite.

I don't think that Wayne State needs to become another UMich. I know what you're talking about with the Duke graduates who spent 2 years in China before getting a Public Policy degree at Michigan before...etc., etc.

But I also think that Wayne needs to strive to be Top 50-75 if Detroit is ever to come back. Our environment is a product of the people in it, right? Is it a surprise that Detroit is where it is when the people most loyal to it are considered the elite among their peers by attending a university ranked below the top 150? Oh sure, we have plenty of Michiganders that go off to study at Top 50 or even Top 10 schools...but what happens? They leave!

There needs to be some gentrification in Detroit. Yes, Wayne should strive to be a better Wayne. And yes, they should provide a solid education for those who might be their family's first generation to attend college. But those people shouldn't be the top tier of their class, if Detroit ever wants to be taken seriously as a world class city.

I'm not saying that we need to be Harvard, or even U Chicago. But how about an urban version of Western Michigan University with a research edge? Isn't there a medium way?

[English]

By the way, regarding that ACT issue, the latest 3 year percentiles are found here: http://www.actstudent.org/scores/norms1.html. A score of 20 is at the 48th percentile. A 19 is at the 41st percentile. IIRC, an old thread indicated that the top Michigan public high schools like Andover, Seaholm, Grosse Pointe South, Troy, Forest HIlls Northern have ACT averages right around 24 which is at the 74th percentile.

Thanks, swingline. The score drop at Cass Tech and Renaissance really bothers me. I wonder how the current administrators are handling it.