Posted on 05/17/2009 4:29:08 PM PDT by reaganaut1
Emulating a controversial practice at many colleges, two high-achieving public school districts in California are giving preference to the children of alumni.
The Beverly Hills Unified School District and the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District have adopted legacy admissions policies for children of former students who live outside their enrollment boundaries. The policies appear to be the first in the nation at public schools, education experts said.
The programs vary slightly, but leaders of both districts say they hope to raise money by forging closer ties with alumni who may be priced out of their hometowns as well as with grandparents who still live there. In each district, nonresident legacy students will make up a tiny percentage of the student population, officials said.
"I'm taking a page out of the university or college playbook," said Steve Fenton, a Beverly Hills Unified trustee. "Alumni are the lifeline for any academic institution."
Critics argue that such policies are antithetical to American public education.
"It's antidemocratic," said Mark Rosenbaum, legal director of the ACLU of Southern California. Public schools, he said, were created as places where "merit was to be rewarded and birth and economic advantage was to have no place."
Many universities and colleges have long offered preferences to the children, grandchildren and siblings of alumni, accepting them at greater rates than applicants overall, sometimes with lower grades and SAT scores.
Universities' arguments for legacy admissions -- to nurture connections with alumni and their checkbooks -- have been upheld as constitutional. But the policies can cause campus controversy, leading some schools, including the University of California in 1998, to vote to abolish them.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
This will be challenged in the courts.Taxpayer $$$,don’t you know!
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