Our President
Foreword to Access, Equity, and Achievement
Gaston Caperton's Foreword to Access, Equity, and Achievement: The State of Minority Youth and Higher Education in America
November 10, 2005
Access, Equity, and Achievement: The State of Minority Youth and Higher Education in America should be a document of enduring importance in the twenty-first century as the need for higher education escalates and this great nation increasingly consists of citizens of color. Indeed, Access, Equity, and Achievement touches upon nearly every milestone and setback in the long journey toward equity in higher education and puts forth recommendations that can help us to keep our eye on the prize and attain it.
Access to and success in college are at the core of the College Board's mission. They are essential to the survival of our democracy and continuing productivity in an increasingly interconnected, competitive world. The real race in the world today is not a race to arms; it is a race to education. In his book The World Is Flat, Thomas L. Friedman reminds us of the galloping educational and economic progress of China, India, Russia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Central Asia since the Berlin Wall came down. Friedman says that the next generation of innovators will come from all over the planet and the winners will be "those who learn the [new] habits, processes, and skills most quickly." Those things are going to be learned mainly within institutions of higher education.
In an era in which our country, the richest in the world, is still leaving millions of traditionally underserved students mired in an inferior education system, unprecedented, bold strides must be made to wake up elected officials, families, and educators to both the current challenges these students face, and the new challenges they will face. We must open opportunities for students of every economic background and race, not only to get a better basic education but to enter the pipeline of higher education that leads to the advanced kinds of training that are becoming indispensable. Each of us as individuals, and as members of organizations such as the NAACP and the College Board, must use our special expertise in the common effort to sacrifice no child to this new flattened world. Making sure of this is not just essential for the individual child but for the security and prosperity of our nation. Perhaps Marian Wright Edelman said it most clearly: "The future which we hold in trust for our own children will be shaped by our fairness to other people's children."
For the last seven years the College Board has accelerated its effort to help more traditionally underserved students enter the college pipeline. We have created programs that help middle schoolers understand that college is possible; established new, small schools, founded through the generosity of the Gates and Dell foundations, that serve low-income students; developed an integrated learning system for grades 6 through 12 that helps open the gates to college-level high school courses such as those offered in the Advanced Placement Program® (AP®) and other rigorous honors programs. The Advanced Placement Program has expanded the reach of AP to thousands more students. Between 1996 and 2005, there was a 185 percent increase in successful exam scores among African American students, an increase of 222 percent among Hispanic or Latino students, and an increase of 137 percent among Native American students.
However encouraging these successes are, they merely graze the foot of the mountain that must be climbed if we are to increase educational opportunity for all our children. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we are reminded more than ever of existing inequities. With this in mind, the College Board has recently established the Task Force on College Access for Low-Income Students. It is determined to identify students as early as seventh grade who are underrepresented in higher education and find ways to increase their college preparation, access, and success. We plan to contact the education and business communities with our well-researched findings and, together, formulate strategies to address this human deficit. At the same time, we are expanding our Access and Diversity Collaborative, which responds to the needs of our higher education institutions, to increase the educational benefits of diversity on their campuses, particularly in light of the June 2003 Supreme Court decisions in the University of Michigan cases affirming the educational benefits of diversity under federal law. The Collaborative is examining how federal law relates to three major topics: financial aid and scholarships; outreach, recruitment, retention, and student services; and admissions, primarily selection. The success of all our efforts to realize our mission depends on the values of high expectations, hard work and fairness, and making common cause with the NAACP and other great organizations that see "higher education as an important means of securing the future of all minorities" and our great nation.