The Volokh Conspiracy - Did the ETS Suppress Research for Fear it Would Undermine the University of Michigan's Legal Defense of Race-Conscious Admission?:

Here's a story from the Nov. 10 Chronicle of Higher Education that hasn't gotten nearly as much attention from the MSM as one might expect.

A prominent higher-education researcher says scholars at the Educational Testing Service may have discovered a substitute for race-conscious college-admissions policies back in 1999, but their research project was suppressed -- and eventually killed off -- before they could put their findings through peer review and make them public.

A spokesman for the testing service says the study was dropped because it was "bad research."

Anthony P. Carnevale, a former vice president for assessment, equity, and careers at ETS, says he and other ETS researchers concluded in the summer of 1999 that it was theoretically possible for selective colleges to maintain or increase their black and Hispanic enrollments without giving extra consideration to applicants based on their ethnicity or race.

The researchers had developed a formula for using students' background data to identify "strivers" -- those who had overcome adversity to an impressive extent -- and had fine-tuned the formula to a point where it showed the promise of producing larger black and Hispanic enrollments at selective colleges than were being obtained through race-conscious admissions, says Mr. Carnevale, now a senior fellow with the Education Sector, a think tank in Washington, D.C.

Mr. Carnevale alleges that College Board officials put pressure on ETS to squelch the entire "striver" line of research, mainly because it added a new layer to the interpretation of SAT scores and they feared it would give federal courts reason to question colleges' need for race-conscious admissions policies.

Because the research was squelched midway, the researchers never got a chance to determine conclusively -- and then demonstrate to ETS and the College Board -- that they had found what they were looking for: a way to achieve racial and ethnic diversity at selective colleges without using affirmative action.

"The work never saw the light of day," Mr. Carnevale says.

In an e-mail message last week, Thomas Ewing, a spokesman for ETS, denied Mr. Carnevale's account of what transpired, saying "there was no pressure from the College Board to discontinue" the striver study. He said the study had been discontinued because "it was widely viewed at ETS as simply bad research," and the president of ETS, Kurt M. Landgraf, and the ETS research staff thought it "attempted to alter an objective measure (the SAT) inappropriately."

But some education researchers who were not involved in the strivers study said last week that they viewed the research as sound, and would like to see it continued.

Thanks to Paul Caron of the TaxProf blog for alerting me to this story.

	[David Bernstein, December 6, 2006 at 8:22pm] Trackbacks Did the ETS Suppress Research for Fear it Would Undermine the University of Michigan's Legal Defense of Race-Conscious Admission?: Here's a story from the Nov. 10 Chronicle of Higher Education that hasn't gotten nearly as much attention from the MSM as one might expect. A prominent higher-education researcher says scholars at the Educational Testing Service may have discovered a substitute for race-conscious college-admissions policies back in 1999, but their research project was suppressed -- and eventually killed off -- before they could put their findings through peer review and make them public. A spokesman for the testing service says the study was dropped because it was "bad research." Anthony P. Carnevale, a former vice president for assessment, equity, and careers at ETS, says he and other ETS researchers concluded in the summer of 1999 that it was theoretically possible for selective colleges to maintain or increase their black and Hispanic enrollments without giving extra consideration to applicants based on their ethnicity or race. The researchers had developed a formula for using students' background data to identify "strivers" -- those who had overcome adversity to an impressive extent -- and had fine-tuned the formula to a point where it showed the promise of producing larger black and Hispanic enrollments at selective colleges than were being obtained through race-conscious admissions, says Mr. Carnevale, now a senior fellow with the Education Sector, a think tank in Washington, D.C. Mr. Carnevale alleges that College Board officials put pressure on ETS to squelch the entire "striver" line of research, mainly because it added a new layer to the interpretation of SAT scores and they feared it would give federal courts reason to question colleges' need for race-conscious admissions policies. Because the research was squelched midway, the researchers never got a chance to determine conclusively -- and then demonstrate to ETS and the College Board -- that they had found what they were looking for: a way to achieve racial and ethnic diversity at selective colleges without using affirmative action. "The work never saw the light of day," Mr. Carnevale says. In an e-mail message last week, Thomas Ewing, a spokesman for ETS, denied Mr. Carnevale's account of what transpired, saying "there was no pressure from the College Board to discontinue" the striver study. He said the study had been discontinued because "it was widely viewed at ETS as simply bad research," and the president of ETS, Kurt M. Landgraf, and the ETS research staff thought it "attempted to alter an objective measure (the SAT) inappropriately." But some education researchers who were not involved in the strivers study said last week that they viewed the research as sound, and would like to see it continued. Thanks to Paul Caron of the TaxProf blog for alerting me to this story.