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Race and College Admissions in Texas


This post is part of an occasional series examining how California can learn from policies in other states.

Passed in 1996, California’s Proposition 209 prohibits colleges from considering race as a factor in admissions. Partly as a result, the University of California (UC) system does not fully reflect the diversity of the state’s high school graduates, a cause for concern among many observers. This disparity is even greater at the most elite campuses: UC Berkeley and UCLA. Other states facing bans on race-based affirmative action, including Texas, have developed alternative policies to address racial equity in college admissions.

Policy: Texas’s Top 10% Plan

In 1998, Texas instituted a two-part plan to promote diversity at its universities in response to the state’s ban on race-based affirmative action. The first part, the Texas Top 10% Plan, guarantees admission to any public Texas university to students in the top 10% of their high school’s graduating class. The plan relies on the fact that Texas high schools are highly segregated by race and income to produce a diverse set of students with guaranteed admission.

The second part of the plan fills any remaining spots at public universities with students from outside of the top 10%, and allows campuses to consider many factors, including race, during this process. This second part is being called into question in the Fisher v. University of Texas affirmative action case that was recently argued in front of the Supreme Court.

Policy Impact

Following the law’s implementation, the top school in the state, the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin), saw more applications and enrollees from traditionally underrepresented high schools—those with high concentrations of minority students, from rural areas or small and midsize cities, and from less affluent regions throughout Texas. The policy also likely encouraged Latino students to apply and gain access to top Texas universities. Today, a majority of UT Austin students are top 10% students. The policy, however, did not produce the same diversity levels as affirmative action.

Lessons for California

UC already has a program called Eligibility in the Local Context (ELC), which guarantees admission for eligible students who are in the top 9% of their high school. Unlike the Texas plan, ELC does not guarantee students admission to the school of their choice—they are only guaranteed a spot somewhere in the UC system. Students who are eligible but do not get into their campus of choice are offered a spot at a campus with space—most often UC Merced. In 2014, over 11,000 UC-eligible students were referred to UC Merced, but very few enrolled.

UC’s guaranteed-admission plan has not led to high levels of diversity at its elite campuses. But would a guaranteed-choice plan like Texas’s work in California? A recent report by the Civil Rights Project shows that California has among the most segregated K–12 schools in the nation, so guaranteeing top students a spot at their preferred UC campus may give students in underrepresented groups across California a path to the top universities that ELC does not currently provide.

More research is needed to determine how California’s most competitive and prestigious public universities would deal with even higher demand. Texas’s results show that guaranteed admission alone can’t produce the same results as affirmative action, but it might be a part of an effective plan to remedy underrepresentation in California’s top universities.

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Income and Inequality Vary Widely Across California

Income inequality has been growing for decades and—despite the recovery from the Great Recession—remains historically high. Today, the low end of the income spectrum (the 10th percentile) in California is 19% lower than what it was in 1980, and the upper end of the spectrum (90th percentile) is 40% higher, according to our new report. As a result of these trends, the ratio of high to low incomes—a key measure of income inequality—is nearly twice the size it was three decades ago.

In Los Angeles County, high-income families have 15 times more income than low-income families.

Both income and income inequality vary substantially across California. Looking at after-tax family incomes, we find that, in 2014, the Bay Area had the highest incomes. However, the gap between high and low incomes was biggest in Los Angeles County, the Central Valley, and northern parts of the state—places where low incomes tend to be particularly low. For example, in Los Angeles County, high-income families have 15 times more income than low-income families. At the other end, the Inland Empire and Orange County have the lowest income inequality.

Why does the gap between families across the income spectrum matter? In part because low-income families may have insufficient resources to meet their basic needs. If family incomes are widely spread (inequality is high) but even families at the low end of the economic spectrum are able to attain a sufficient level of well-being (poverty is low), income inequality may not be a big problem. But that is not the case: one in five Californians live in poverty.

Inequality itself may also raise concerns for a host of social, cultural, and political reasons. One economic consequence of inequality is that the greater spread of incomes may inhibit upward mobility. Recent research finds a correlation between income inequality in a region and the upward mobility of its children. Low-income children who grew up in areas with higher income inequality have, on average, lower incomes as adults than otherwise similar children who grew up in regions with less income inequality. In this and other ways, the consequences of growing income inequality may play out over generations, highlighting the need for policies that take this long-range view into account.

Source: Based on California Poverty Measure data, 2012–2013 (Bohn and Danielson 2016).
Notes: Dollar amounts are rounded to the nearest $1,000. Income shown includes cash from work and retirement sources net of federal and state income and payroll taxes; low-income tax credits are not included. Dollar amounts adjusted to represent a family of four. The inequality ratio shown is calculated as the ratio of the 90th percentile of income to the 10th percentile of income; higher numbers indicate greater income inequality. Regions defined as follows. Northern: Butte, Colusa, Del Norte, Glenn, Humboldt, Lake, Lassen, Mendocino, Modoc, Nevada, Plumas, Shasta, Sierra, Siskiyou, Tehama, and Trinity Counties; Sacramento area: El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo, and Yuba Counties; Bay Area: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Solano, and Sonoma Counties; Central Valley and Sierra: Alpine, Amador, Calaveras, Fresno, Inyo, Kern, Kings, Madera, Mariposa, Merced, Mono, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Tulare, and Tuolumne Counties; Central Coast: Monterey, San Benito, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and Ventura Counties; Inland Empire: Imperial, Riverside, and San Bernardino Counties. Los Angeles, Orange, and San Diego Counties are shown separately.

Learn more

Read the report Income Inequality and the Safety Net in California

Video: Survey Looks at Candidates & Issues

The most recent PPIC Statewide Survey found a tightening primary race between Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, and strong majority support for Donald Trump among Republican primary likely voters.

Dean Bonner, associate survey director, presented the findings at a Sacramento briefing last week. In addition to examining views of presidential candidates, the survey asked California likely voters for their choices in the election for US Senate—and it looked ahead at potential matchups for November in both races.

The survey offers a snapshot of Californians’ views on two key topics being widely debated nationally:

  • Immigration policy. A strong majority of likely voters oppose building a wall along the entire border with Mexico, as Trump has promised to do. There is a stark partisan divide: 86% of Democrats and 72% of independents oppose building a wall, while 59% of Republicans favor it. Asked whether or not undocumented immigrants living in the United States should be allowed to stay legally, 75% of likely voters favor allowing them to stay. Majorities across partisan lines say undocumented immigrants should be allowed to stay.
  • US Supreme Court. At a time when the court has issued rulings on a number of polarizing topics, California likely voters are divided in how they rate the court: 46% approve of the way the court is handling its job and 44% disapprove. Should the Senate should confirm Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, to the court? About half of likely voters (51%) say yes, and 33% say no.
Learn more

Read the May 2016 PPIC Statewide Survey: Californians and Their Government
Visit the PPIC Statewide Survey pages

Does Free Community College Grow Enrollment?

This post is the first in an occasional series examining how California can learn from policies in other states.

Tuition-free community college has garnered increasing political support over the past two years. In his recent budget requests, President Obama proposed legislation entitled America’s College Promise to make community college free nationwide. Three states—Oregon, Minnesota, and Tennessee—already have free community college programs, while nine more are considering legislation to create similar programs.

Supporters say that making community college more affordable will increase enrollment and graduation. But will free community college increase overall college enrollment, or will it merely shift enrollment from four-year colleges to two-year colleges?

Policy: Tennessee’s College Promise
Tennessee’s College Promise program—the model for the federal America’s College Promise program—offered its first scholarships to students starting college in the 2015–16 academic year. This program is part of a larger effort to increase the state’s percentage of college graduates from 32% to 55% by 2025.The program provides “last-dollar” scholarships that cover the remaining cost of tuition after a student has used all other available federal, state, and local grant and scholarship aid. Funded by state lottery revenues, Tennessee’s College Promise program will cost an estimated $12 million and provide scholarships to nearly 15,000 students in its first year.

Policy Impact
Initial results suggest that free community college may shift enrollment, rather than growing enrollment. According to an article in the Tennessean, community college enrollment rose by nearly 14% following the program’s implementation, while enrollment at the state’s public four-year institutions decreased. At the University of Tennessee at Martin, enrollment declined by 13% in one year. The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga also saw declines in freshmen enrollment, while two nearby community colleges saw dramatic increases.These preliminary results run counter to national trends, which have shown a shift in enrollment away from community colleges to public four-year institutions since 2010.

Lessons for California
California’s community colleges play an essential role in our higher education pipeline. They often serve non-traditional and underserved minority students, and provide workforce training to help students ascend the economic ladder. If providing free community college increased enrollment and graduation, this could lead to higher earnings, more tax revenue, and reduced demand for social services in the state.

But there’s a chance the policy could limit degree production. According to our research, students who begin their postsecondary career at a four-year college are much more likely than those who enroll at a community college to earn a bachelor’s degree, even when controlling for student characteristics. For example, students from low-income families who begin at a four-year college are, on average, two to three times more likely to finish their bachelor’s degree, regardless of their high school GPA.

Other approaches to making college more affordable might have a bigger impact. In California, two-thirds of students already receive free tuition, and about 90% of the cost of attending community college comes from living expenses. Increasing state awards for non-tuition educational costs would be a logical step to improve student access and educational attainment. The Cal Grant B access award currently provides low-income students with up to $1,656 to help pay for items like books, housing, and food. If funding for this award, which started in 1969–70, had kept up with inflation, it would currently by worth over $6,000, nearly four times its current value.

Compared to other states, California ranks 47th in sending our high school graduates to four-year colleges. Improving access and affordability is vital, but California should make sure that policies also increase students’ likelihood of earning a bachelor’s degree, so that more individuals have the opportunity to realize the myriad benefits—economic and otherwise—that these degrees confer.

Figure source: Author’s calculations based on logit regression models using College Futures Foundation student data. Students followed for six years. Data and methods available in Technical Appendix A of the report Making College Possible for Low-Income Students.

Learn more

Visit the PPIC Higher Education Center

A Changing State of Water Conservation

The California State Water Board is charged with balancing all water needs across the state—an especially difficult task when there’s less water to go around. We talked to Fran Spivy-Weber, the board’s vice chair (and chair of the PPIC Water Policy Center’s advisory council), about water conservation and lessons from the drought.

PPIC: What expectations do you have for statewide water use in light of recent changes to the state’s approach to urban water conservation, which replaced the 25% mandate with locally set standards?

Fran Spivy-Weber: I think there will be a bit of an uptick in water use in the short term, but I’m not expecting water use to go up to where it was. My experience after previous droughts shows that after all the work to educate people and change plumbing fixtures and appliances, water use stays pretty flat. Meanwhile, the board is working with the Department of Water Resources to develop long-term water use targets—for indoor and outdoor urban uses—as well as targets for reductions in leakage from pipes. We plan to work on these targets into early fall, and will be getting public input during that time. By the end of the year these targets should be pretty final, and the governor can put them into legislation and agency practice next year. These targets will give everyone something to aim for.

PPIC: What is the most important lesson for California from the latest drought?

FSW: I think it’s to share data about water use with the press and public. We’ve seen strong leadership on water conservation by individuals around the state—most changes were done not because people were told to do so but because they could see there was a limited amount of water available and they wanted to do their part. We also learned that water rates do matter. Water agencies that have drought surcharges did OK, those that did not are suffering. It can be politically difficult to change rates, but when people buy less water during droughts, water agencies with flat rates suffer. People mostly care about having enough water when they turn on the tap; they care very little about how much water their appliances use. The energy sector in California has completely separated the costs of delivery from the service of providing their commodity. The water sector needs to do this too.

PPIC: What is the state doing to encourage innovations in water supply?

FSW: The board’s biggest action was to approve loans for recycled water, and it clearly helped. We’re now identifying how much recycled water is actually being served—we’ll know by the end of summer. The state’s goal is 1 million acre-feet by 2020, 2 million by 2030. On technological innovations in water, the governor’s office is taking the lead. A number of the state’s universities are also pursuing these kind of innovations. Over the next 10 years the way in which water is delivered will likely change dramatically. Water will be reused a lot more, and storm water will be captured in more places. Water agencies tend to be the most conservative agencies—their engineers have to know that when they undertake something new it will provide safe, clean water and meet customers’ needs—so they’re often not eager to take on new technologies. But with the drought and climate change, and an increasing cost of water, they’re starting to think about it more.

PPIC: How much more room do we have to improve urban water efficiency?

FSW: There is much more room for improvement. While a number of communities are achieving 55 gallons of indoor water use per capita per day or even less—particularly in new houses—most people in the state live in older housing, with old, water-wasting fixtures. This will change in the next few years. Outdoor landscaping is changing, and we haven’t seen the end of it—many people pulled out lawns to save water, but now many more are beginning to realize they don’t want lawns that take a lot of maintenance and water.

Learn more

Read “Water Management’s High-Tech Future” (PPIC Blog, September 3, 2015)
Visit the State Water Board’s drought information page
Visit the PPIC Water Policy Center’s water supply resource page

Video: 3 Cities Address Economic Challenges

When Uber officials announced the company was moving to Oakland, there was a wave of fear and anger that well-paid tech workers would push longtime residents out of the city. Fresno, with its high concentration of poverty, struggles to attract the kind of private investment that caused angst in Oakland. In South Gate, housing is relatively affordable, which should be good news. But there are few homes for residents to buy because most are rentals owned by outside investors.

These stories, told by leaders of these communities at a recent PPIC event, were different. But common across the agendas of all three leaders was an emphasis on education as a key part of the solutions they are working on to address income inequality and poverty.

Jorge Morales, councilmember and former mayor of South Gate, said business owners told him that city residents didn’t have the education needed to get jobs beyond the entry level. Now, thanks to a partnership with the Los Angeles Community College District, a new campus will open in South Gate. The focus will be on jobs that become careers, Morales said.

“One of the mistakes we made as policy makers is that when manufacturing jobs started to leave, we all got excited about the revenue—about the sales taxes size—and we started building shopping centers everywhere.””What did that do? That provided the jobs that didn’t provide a living for folks.”

Ashley Swearingen, mayor of Fresno, said that missing the dot com boom of the late 1990s was a wake-up call for her city.

“We were not as a city and a region prepared to ride that wave of expansion,” she said. “That tidal wave of prosperity hit the state, but not a drop hit the ground in the places I was living and working.” The city partnered with Fresno State University to “undo and redo everything about our community” from its public systems to its civic environment, and entrepreneurship education is woven through school curriculums beginning in elementary school.

Libby Schaaf, mayor of Oakland, said she is most passionate about a program she is raising money to start, the Oakland Promise. She said that among this year’s ninth-graders, only 10% will have a college degree by the time they are 23 years old. The Oakland Promise is a “cradle-to-career strategy to triple that number in 10 years.” Each baby born into poverty will get a $500 college savings account, and parents will get another $500 in direct support for home visits and literacy training. Every kindergartener will receive a $100 college savings account. Students will be connected with internships, mentors, peer support groups, and help with financing college.

“You have got to intervene at every moment, from birth until college completion,” she said.

Schaaf says she has raised $23 million for the program and needs $15 million more.

Learn more

Read the PPIC report Income Inequality and the Safety Net in California

Public School Parents See Education Differently

In our annual PPIC Statewide Survey on Californians and education, 40% of adults say that the quality of K–12 public education in the state is a big problem. Notably, the parents of public school children are more likely than others to have favorable opinions about public education in California: just 27% say quality is a big problem. Adults without children, those with children in private schools, and those with children too young to attend school are the ones who tend to hold a more negative view of the state’s public education system. This pattern is consistent with our findings in previous surveys.

Parents who don’t have children in public schools are twice as likely as those who do to say the quality of K–12 public education is a big problem. They are also twice as likely to give their neighborhood public schools a grade of D or F. (Adults without children age 18 or younger fall in between the two parent groups on these questions.)

In addition, when asked how their elected officials are handling K–12 education, public school parents are much more likely than others to approve of Governor Brown and the California Legislature in this area.

Regardless of whether they have children in public schools, many parents agree that school funding is inadequate. Two-thirds of both parent groups say that the level of funding for their local public schools is inadequate, while 58% of other adults say the same.

Most adults support K–12 funding proposals, and support among public school parents is particularly strong. At least two-thirds of adults say they would vote for either a local or state bond measure to pay for school construction projects, with over 80% of public school parents supporting these measures. Asked how they would vote on a local parcel tax for schools, 70% of public school parents would vote yes—exceeding the two-thirds majority needed to pass such a tax. Among other adults, about 60% would vote yes.

Certainly, it’s not surprising that parents who decided to send their children to private schools might have different opinions about educational quality compared to those with children in public schools. The differences that we find, though, extend beyond a difference between public school parents and private school parents. On several measures, parents with children in public schools stand apart from all other California adults in their assessment of the state’s K-12 public education system.

Learn more

Read the PPIC Survey: Californians and Education
Visit the PPIC Statewide Survey pages

California’s Big-Ticket Water Challenges

California’s hundreds of local public water agencies are responsible for about 90 percent of the water delivered across the state. We asked Tim Quinn, executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA) and vice-chair of the PPIC Water Policy Center’s advisory council, to weigh in on three big-ticket water management issues ACWA’s members are facing.

PPIC: Last week, the State Water Board voted to give control over water conservation standards to local agencies. Why is this change important?

Tim Quinn: Essentially, the board decentralized decisions about drought management so that local water agencies can tailor their plans to local conditions. ACWA strongly believes that this was a move in the right direction. The initial drought emergency conservation regulations did not account for local factors like climate and, more importantly, the extent to which local agencies have invested in drought-resilient local supplies. By allowing local public agencies to account for these factors, we will have more effective and lower-cost drought protection while maximizing incentives for further investments in drought resiliency. The new approach in no way means less conservation. In fact, ACWA strongly believes in raising the bar on water-use efficiency and conservation in our long-term water management plans. The board’s action appropriately recognizes that, at least for the time being, emergency conditions no longer exist. Now we need to pivot to the adoption of long-term conservation plans in which, as the California Water Action Plan puts it, “conservation is a way of life.”

PPIC: What do you think about the governor’s “twin tunnels” approach to addressing the issues facing the Delta?

TQ: I’ll be blunt: we have an outdated and ineffective system for conveying water through the Delta. The system’s intakes are in the wrong part of the Delta, which maximizes conflicts between species protection and water supply and does not work for either purpose. Unless we’re prepared to abandon this system, we need to fix it. I think abandoning it would not be good for California.

My organization believes that we need a comprehensive statewide program that includes a physical fix in the Delta to make our water supply less vulnerable. Fixing the system would help improve the Delta’s ability to cope with climate change and sea-level rise, minimize conflict between water supply and fisheries, improve water quality for 25 million Californians, and make the system better able to withstand earthquakes and floods.

I spent a couple of decades of my career up to my eyeballs in the Delta, trying to figure out how to get the water we need with the intakes in the wrong place. It seems California simply has a very difficult time having an adult conversation about the Delta. Despite the obvious difficulties, if the Brown administration can move forward with its Delta strategy, we should all be ready to provide support for it as part of a common-sense statewide water action plan.

PPIC: What are the most urgent water needs the state should invest in?

TQ: There are six critical areas we need to fund: water conservation and local resource development, storage—both above and below ground, Delta conveyance, implementation of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, provision of safe drinking water to disadvantaged communities, and investment in habitat and watersheds. These are the essential bricks in the wall of a sustainable water system for California, and they’re all important. They also lend themselves to different funding strategies; some are adequately funded and some not. The biggest shortfalls in funding probably arise for the last two categories. Some have suggested a public goods charge on water to fund these activities, which the water industry would oppose. Others point to the general fund as the logical source of funding for public benefits. It seems to me that the important thing is to come to some agreement on funding so that a comprehensive water plan can move forward.

Learn more

Read California’s Water briefing kit for more information on key water management challenges
(April 2015)
Read “Stressful Times for a Drought-Stricken Delta” (PPIC blog, October 5, 2016)
Visit the PPIC Water Policy Center’s water supply resource page

Video: Improving Graduation Rates at California State University

California State University (CSU), the nation’s largest university system, has steadily improved graduation rates, but there is more work to be done, PPIC researcher Jacob Jackson told a Sacramento audience last week.

The system still struggles with graduation gaps. Historically underrepresented students are much less likely than their peers to get degrees. Even though the system has higher six-year graduation rates than similar universities, it lags behind in the share of students who graduate in four years. This comes at a high cost to both the state and CSU students.

As CSU launches a new initiative to improve graduation rates, Jackson and fellow PPIC researcher Kevin Cook coauthored a report analyzing the system’s progress to date. The authors also describe promising strategies that could help CSU reach its goal of increasing graduation rates and cutting graduation gaps in half by 2025.

Learn more

Read the report, Improving College Graduation Rates: A Closer Look at California State University
Visit the PPIC Higher Education Center

Public Preschools Support Education, Work

As policymakers discuss California’s system of early childhood care and education, it is useful to look more closely at the families who use it—or might like to. Public preschools—enrolling four-year-olds and some three-year-olds—hold promise for improving school readiness and later life outcomes, particularly for low-income students who may not otherwise have access to high-quality preschool experiences. At the same time, publicly provided early education also serves a second goal: supporting work among low-income parents.

Full- or part-time work is typical among California’s low-income families with preschool-aged children. For a family of three, low-income means living on $37,167 a year – which is 185% of the federal poverty line, a threshold used to designate economic disadvantage in the K-12 education context. Among all such families, just 11% report no adults working in the past year. Lack of work is much more common in single-parent families (34%) than in families with two or more adults (6%). Research shows that access to subsidized child care raises employment among single mothers, suggesting that the larger percentage of single-adult families reporting no work reflects in part a lack of viable childcare options.

Most low-income preschool age children live in families with two adults (64%). Far fewer of these families than single-parent families report no work (7%); the share with both adults working full-time, year round is only 8%. The remaining 85% of low-income families with preschool-aged children and two adults rely on a combination of full-time and part-time work. In about a quarter of two-parent families, no adult has full-time work. This complexity reflects multiple factors—including opportunities for employment and family choices about care for young children.

In the context of a policy discussion about preschool, why are these patterns important? Working parents will be more likely to enroll their children in programs that align well with their work schedules. Non-working parents are more likely to seek work if they have reliable child care. Given that employment is a central piece of the financial picture for most California families, whether low-income or not, it is critical that policymakers keep the dual purposes of early care and education in mind as they consider ways to improve the system of public preschool in California.

Learn more
Just the Facts: Public Preschools in California
Just the Facts: Californians and Early Childhood Education
Just the Facts: Child Poverty in California