The Civil Rights Project / Proyecto Derechos Civiles

In this paper, the authors describe the research that prompted developmental education reform approaches nationally and in California, describe the efforts in California that led to the passing of AB705 by the California state legislature, and summarize research on its implementation and outcomes. We explore the implications of this research for improving postsecondary access and success for Black and Hispanic students and English learners.

This paper summarizes the history of college admissions testing in the United States; how the SAT and ACT are used today in admissions; admissions criteria and their use; the future of admissions tests and alternative approaches to admissions. It also provides thoughts on the definition of "merit" and the value of meritocracy in college admissions.

The bachelor’s degree remains a fundamental path to economic opportunity in the United States. Critical for policymakers, then, is ensuring equitable access to such benefits–a task often constrained by long-standing structural barriers. One of the most obvious structural impediments for bachelor’s degree-aspirants in California (CA) is the current version of the CA Master Plan for Higher Education. With a robust public higher education system that is continually forced to adapt to demographic shifts and evolving labor markets, California is an especially important region for exploring the future of postsecondary education and economic growth. This report describes what we currently know about the California Community College Baccalaureate (CCB) program that was launched in 2017 and expanded in 2021. The program shows promising outcomes and that state education leaders can leverage existing components of the state’s education ecosystem to meet the economic and social demands of 40 million diverse Californians and to close existing racial equity gaps.

The brief first presents new facts on the extraordinary segregation of Black and Latino students in the state’s public schools. Second, it shows that those groups are doubly segregated by race and poverty at the most educationally unsuccessful schools. These children are, on average, from families with far lower income and wealth and with parents with significantly less education. School is their chance to break the cycle of inequality but they are highly isolated in the state’s weakest schools, with very few having the opportunity to attend the competitive schools which are the most equipped to prepare students for access to a very competitive higher education system. The playing field is highly unequal — so many of the advantages that come to students from more privileged families do not reflect individual skill or merit in winning the race, but a much better starting point within the unequal public schools. Extreme segregation in unequal schools means that Black and Latino students and Native American students have very different opportunities to prepare for college.

Affirmative action policies, now legal in all but nine states and practiced by the great majority of the nation’s selective universities, allow admissions officials to consider a student’s racial background as one of a number of factors in making admissions decisions. 

This policy brief synthesizes research on enrollment, graduation and career success for traditionally underrepresented students, the benefits of diverse learning environments including campus racial climate, and the need to increase diversity in UC professional and graduate schools to better serve the health and wellbeing of all Californians.

This policy brief provides an overview of what is known about the impact of these bans nationally and complements research specific to California (see, for example, Kidder 2020). It includes: admission of highly qualified applicants, racial and ethnic diversity in higher education at highly selective and less selective institutions, ethnic and racial diversity in graduate fields of study, STEM degrees, faculty diversity, and the way that colleges and universities have attempted to compensate for the absence of affirmative action.