Shawn Williams/Paris News: Has Top 10 Percent Law achieved its purpose?

Here’s an article that I wrote regarding Texas’ Top 10% rule which appears in Sunday Morning’s Paris News.

Is the diversity achieved by the top 10 percent rule in Texas Higher Education really that diverse? That’s one of many questions I’ve been asking myself as I ponder whether or not the state’s Top 10 Percent Law has achieved its original purpose.

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to participate in Orange and Maroon Legislative Day, an annual time for rivals from the University of Texas and Texas A&M University to lay aside their differences and advocate on behalf of higher education in front of state legislators. Even as the spirit of cooperation abounds, I’m sure the Aggies and Longhorns would squabble over which school gets top billing if the acronym for Maroon and Orange Legislative Day wasn’t MOLD.

This year, one of the hot topics in Austin was the Top 10 Percent Law, which guarantees Texas students who graduate in the top 10 percent of their high school class automatic admission to any state-funded university. The University of Texas is lamenting the fact that in the 2008-2009 academic year 81 percent of Texas high school graduates entering UT were admitted under the Top 10 Percent Law.

One of the hopes of the law when it was enacted in 1997 was that it would help increase the number of African-American and Latino students at Texas A&M and the University of Texas, as well as give students from rural geographies a better opportunity to attend one of the flagship schools.

It seems that the law has at least helped UT move towards that goal. In 2007, the number of African-American undergraduates in Austin was up 32.4 percent from the levels seen in 1998 prior to the 10 Percent Law. The number of Hispanic students at UT has also increased with 29.3 percent more students from that population since the law was passed.

These are statistics that legislators can be proud of, especially Rep. Helen Giddings, D-Dallas, who co-authored theTtop 10 Percent Law. Many African-American students residing in Texas’ urban centers have benefited immensely. But I often wonder if there isn’t a group of college aspirants who may get missed in the numerical fallout — like black and Latino students who excel in schools where they don’t make up the majority.

When I was a senior at Paris High School, I finished ranked just outside the top 10 percent of my graduating class. That year I was student body president, a captain on the football and basketball teams, and scored in the 80th percentile on the SAT. But if I were to apply at the University of Texas with those same credentials today, I’d be fighting an uphill battle with long odds to obtain one of the few slots allotted to those who don’t finish at the top of their class.

As I travel back to Texas A&M from year to year, I’ve felt there is a certain homogeny to the African-American students that are on campus these days. All of the black students that I meet seem to hail from Dallas or Houston, and many attended the same high schools in those cities. I don’t meet many black students from towns like Giddings, Dickinson or Jewett. As the universities focus African-American and Hispanic recruiting efforts on urban campuses, students in small towns such as these may be a necessary casualties.

Efforts by the University of Texas to put a cap on the law are starting to make headway. The Senate Higher Education Committee voted by a 4-1 margin that no more than half of a freshman class could be admitted to a state university under the Top 10 Percent Law. The lone dissenting vote on the measure came from Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas. The Ten Percent Law is obviously not the be-all end-all when it comes to achieving diversity. If it were, Texas A&M, which only gets about half of its freshman admits from the rule, would have the same problem as UT.

There are a number of factors that have helped make Texas more desirable to all students, including their overwhelming success in sports during the past decade. Believe it or not in the early 90s, one of the reasons I chose to attend Texas A&M was the school’s accomplishments on the football field. Recent gridiron failures make it hard to explain to current students how a winning atmosphere enhanced the campus experience.

While I continue to sort out my own thoughts around the fate of this law, I do know that I would not want to see an erosion of diversity gains that have been made in the past decade. The 10 Percent Law should not be used as a crutch or a shield, but as one of a number of factors that helps increase the number of African-American students.