Opinion ID: 11931
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Rejection of plaintiffs’ proposals

Text: isn’t really access. If you have an open door it quickly becomes a revolving door.” 32 The Court in Fordice declined to adopt a standard that would require the State to eliminate insofar as practicable all present discriminatory effects of the prior system: To the extent we understand private petitioners to urge us to focus on present discriminatory effects without addressing whether such consequences flow from policies rooted in the prior system, we reject this position. . . . Though they seem to disavow as radical a remedy as student reassignment in the university setting, their focus on “student enrollment, faculty and staff employment patterns, [and] black citizens’ collegegoing and degree-granting rates” would seemingly compel remedies akin to those upheld in Green v. School Bd. of New Kent County were we to adopt their legal standard. 505 U.S. at 730 n.4 (citations omitted) (second alteration in original); see also id. at 732 n.6. 28 The district court set forth in detail the respective admissions standards proposed by private plaintiffs and the United States. See Ayers II, 879 F. Supp. at 1479-80. Although the district court credited expert testimony indicating that differential or tiered admissions standards are both sound and routinely used, id. at 1482, it did not adopt private plaintiffs’ proposal in light of its finding that the open admissions component of this proposal was educationally unsound. Id. at 1481-82. The district court found that universities across the nation generally are moving toward higher admissions requirements, not lower ones. According to the testimony, students in working toward goals will usually do that which is expected of them. If they believe they need not prepare themselves for college by taking the core curriculum in high school, they will not do so. Such unpreparedness may bring them to college campuses unable to execute the rigors of college work and result in low retention rates, college debt accumulations and years expended with no degrees. . . . It has also been shown that institutions of higher learning which open their doors to unprepared students via open admissions not only do a disservice to many of the admittees, but can lower the quality and, concurrently, the prestige of the institutions generally. Id. at 1482-83. These findings are not clearly erroneous, and the district court did not abuse its discretion in rejecting private plaintiffs’ proposal. Even assuming that tiered admissions could be implemented without open admissions as a component thereof, it was not an abuse of discretion in this context for the district court to opt instead for a policy based on uniform standards. In the Mississippi system of higher education, differential admissions criteria were rooted in the de jure past and fostered both 29 segregation of the races and the public perception that the institutions with lower standards -- the HBIs -- were of inferior quality. Id. at 1477, 1486. A tiered system would continue to differentiate among institutions based on their respective missions. See id. at 1482. In light of the history of differential admissions in Mississippi higher education, and in light of its finding that policies and practices governing the missions of the universities are traceable to de jure segregation and continue to have segregative effects, the district court was within its discretion to unify standards across institutions. The standards proposed by the United States met this interest in uniformity, but were fixed at a level that the district court found to be educationally unsound. Under the United States’s proposal, students with a 2.5 GPA and a class rank in the top 50% would qualify for regular admission with an Enhanced ACT score of 13. While this formula adds high school grades and class rank into the eligibility determination, it nevertheless represents a lowering of the ACT score requirement from even post-1989 levels at the HBIs. In contrast, students with identical qualifications would need an Enhanced ACT score of 16 to qualify for regular admission under the Board’s proposal. The district court concluded that the requirements for regular admission under the Board’s proposal were “quite moderate,” and stated that it “does not find persuasive or educationally sound the adoption of open admissions or continually lowering admissions standards, as was done at the HBIs after the 1987 30 trial.” Id. We understand this finding to encompass the standards endorsed by the United States. Both plaintiffs and defendants cite ACT predictive data in support of their respective proposals. The United States points out that such data indicates that students with the minimum qualifications they propose would be expected to achieve at least a C average by the end of their freshman year at each of the HBIs. We note that such students are predicted to complete their freshman year with grades significantly below a C average, the minimum required for graduation, at any of the HWIs. See PP 39-R. Defendants highlight a different aspect of the same predictive data, which the district court apparently found persuasive: students with the minimum qualifications proposed by the Board would be expected to complete their freshman year with a C average or slightly below at each of the HWIs. The district court’s finding that the Board’s proposed standards are “quite moderate” is indeed supported by the evidence. On this record, the district court could fairly conclude that it would be educationally unsound to adopt an admissions policy under which students could do college level work at only three institutions in the system.33 We realize that no set of standards is without its flaws. Significantly, as we discuss below, the standards that the district court did adopt provide an alternative route to 33 Under the United States’s proposal, the three institutions at which students could do college level work are the HBIs. The standards proposed by the United States therefore could have the perverse, albeit unintended, effect of perpetuating the channeling effect described in Fordice. 31 admission that does not rely on ACT scores whatsoever. The district court’s decision to order implementation of this system, rather than dilute standards for regular admission, was a proper exercise of its discretion.