BEYOND AFFIRMATIVE ACTION : UC SEEKS NEW WAYS TO KEEP STUDENT DIVERSITY.

Byline: James Richardson and Jan Ferris Scripps-McClatchy Western Service

Regardless of the outcome of Proposition 209 this fall, universities are searching for a new kind of affirmative action that will still provide them with a diverse pool of students from California's high schools.

That new world will be laden with jargon like ``academic potential/campus contribution index'' and the ``campus enhancement quotient.''

But beneath the new words there will be more controversy.

Proposition 209 would abolish racial preferences in state government and public education if approved by voters. But even before the initiative qualified for the ballot, higher education officials in California were well along the path to phasing out racial preferences, particularly in college admissions, and searching for a replacement.

The elite University of California, the most competitive public institution in the nation, is drafting new admissions standards that will discard an applicant's race as an admissions criterion. Instead, the new rules are supposed to give preference to students from a disadvantaged background. To find such students, some of the nine UC campuses are considering giving an edge to graduates of poorly performing high schools.

Ward Connerly, a UC regent and Sacramento businessman who chairs the Proposition 209 campaign, said targeting low performing schools is ``consistent with the spirit'' of the restrictions of his initiative and the regents' orders to ban racial preferences.

But Connerly and some other regents have expressed a wider concern that giving preference to a bad high school will reward mediocrity.

The UC campuses are under orders from the Board of Regents to dismantle the university's racially based affirmative action admissions system. Each of the UC campuses is scrambling to build a new admissions system based primarily on academic merit, with a preference given students who have overcome socioeconomic disadvantages.

The California State University system has stayed out of the fray. Because CSU has been chronically underenrolled, nearly all of its 22 campuses can accept all applicants who meet minimal academic standards.

How UC will decide what high school is ``poorly performing'' has raised concerns already among educators in the kindergarten through 12th-grade system.

UC Davis, for example, is considering giving an edge to students coming from high schools with historically low eligibility and enrollment rates at UC campuses.

``It's to give kids a ray of hope,'' said Evelyn Silvia, a UC Davis math professor who chairs a special committee drafting new admission rules at her campus. ``We're going to make sure we come up with students who have struggled.''

UC Davis Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef points out that students at high-performing high schools already have built-in advantages including high quality classes and a culture that promotes college attendance.

In designing a new admissions system, each of the UC campuses is searching for a formula indicating which applicants did not have such advantages so that they can be given a leg up in the admissions process. But there are no agreed upon methods for making that determination, and each campus is going its own way.

For example, UC San Diego is using state Department of Education data on poorly performing high schools, UC Davis is using California Postsecondary Education Commission data on low eligibility and enrollment rates, UCLA is using its own historical data on enrollment, and UC Berkeley is still not sure what to use.

UC Davis has not yet developed a list of such high schools. But data provided by the postsecondary commission give a good indication of what schools could be on such a list, UC Davis officials acknowledged.

That data shows that 14 public high schools in Sacramento County had UC enrollment rates of less than 5 percent of their 1995 graduating classes, far below the 12-1/2 percent goal envisioned by the state's Master Plan for Higher Education.

But the notion of being labeled as ``poor performing'' does not go over well with some educators from schools that send few students to UC campuses. They worry that the designation will stigmatize their students.

``I don't envision that that's what we are,'' said Stephen Wehr, principal of Center High School in Antelope, which is fourth from the bottom on the Sacramento County list.

Although Center High provides nearly a dozen advanced placement and honors courses for college-bound students, just four of Center's 244 graduates - less than 2 percent - enrolled at a UC campus last year. Only 22 graduates - 9 percent - enrolled at a CSU campus.

Wehr argued that focusing on how many graduates from his school go directly into the UC or CSU systems is a misguided way of gauging school performance.

Of those Center High graduates who expect to go to college, roughly half spend their first two years at a community college because of the high cost of four-year universities, Wehr said.

He and other administrators also believe it's unfair to rely too much on such statistics because they don't account for private or out-of-state college enrollment.

Roberta Mayor, assistant superintendent for instruction of the Grant Joint Union High School District, said the high cost of going to college prevents many of her students from attending four-year universities. For example, Highlands High School in her district sent a single student to UC in 1995. Two other Grant campuses fared only slightly better.

Mayor said UC's formulas should directly take into account family finances, not school performance.

``Poverty certainly has a strong impact on academic performance,'' she said. ``I don't think it should be schools that are poor performing. The (criteria) should be the socioeconomic index of the community and the schools that provide service to that community.''

UC officials responded that economic impediments are precisely what they are trying to overcome with the new admission standards.

While the ``low-achieving'' label may be unpalatable to many inside these schools, others say such a designation might be an incentive for improvement - especially for those schools producing few four-year university students.

``That might trigger something very good,'' said Francie Tidey, director of the Sacramento College Horizons Consortium, which provides tutoring and admission guidance to low-income high school students. ``They might begin to pay as much attention to that as they do to SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) scores being published in the newspaper.''

Tidey said it makes sense to give an edge to students from high schools that historically have sent few students to UC or CSU.

``There is a huge obstacle in those schools,'' said Tidey. ``A college-going culture that has not been developed, that has not taken root - if it's not there by nature, someone has to impose it from without.''

At Valley High School in south Sacramento, that culture is shored up by a program called Advancement Via Individual Determination, or ``AVID.''

The program at 360 California schools draws students not by ethnicity or gender but by income. On a recent weekday, more than 20 seniors pored over SAT and college applications or met one-on-one with teacher Hilary Bruger to review university entrance requirements.

Valley High sent 3 percent of its 1995 graduating class to UC campuses and 11 percent to CSU. Students there hold mixed views on whether they should be given any sort of break in college admissions.

``Our school will never get better unless we're given an opportunity to go to these (universities),'' said senior Sommer Rozier, who dreams of becoming an English teacher. But she said she is opposed to preferences based on anything other than academics.

Like Rozier, Valley High senior Ryan Ota favored judging students on their merit, not by their school's overall performance.

``When you go to college, the school's not going to go together as a group,'' he said. ``It's the individual that's going to go.''

The new UC guidelines require that half to three-fourths of an incoming class will be selected by academic achievement alone - essentially a combination of grades and test scores.

But picking the rest of the class will be more subjective - and controversial - with admission officials judging essays and looking for so-called ``supplemental criteria,'' including leadership skills, community service and what high school a student attended.

Richard Backer, admissions director at UC San Diego, said his campus wants to reward students ``where the opportunities are not the best . . . yet they have survived.''