The SAT and the Supreme Court – David Leonhardt – The New York Times

By David Leonhardt

Feb. 28, 2024

“After the Supreme Court banned race-based affirmative action last year, many people in higher education worried that it would be only the first in a series of decisions that reduced diversity at selective schools. In particular, university administrators and professors thought the court might soon ban admissions policies that gave applicants credit for overcoming poverty. Such class-based policies disproportionately help Black, Hispanic and Native students.

For now, though, these worries appear to be misplaced. And the future of admissions at selective colleges and high schools has suddenly become clearer.

In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain.

The Texas model

The situation has become clearer because the Supreme Court last week declined to hear a lawsuit against a public magnet school in Northern Virginia — Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, known as T.J.

Until recently, T.J. admitted students based on a mix of grades, test scores, student essays and teacher recommendations. This process led to a student body that looked very different from the area it served.

About 5 percent of T.J. students were Black or Hispanic, even though the surrounding area is about 37 percent Black or Hispanic. The school also enrolled few low-income students of every race, as Richard Kahlenberg of George Washington University has noted. Only 2 percent of Asian students at T.J. came from low-income families, compared with 20 percent of Asian students in the surrounding area.

In 2021, though, T.J. switched to a new admissions policy. It was modeled after a bipartisan plan that Texas created in 1997, under Gov. George W. Bush. In T.J.’s version, the school filled most of its freshman class by accepting the top 1.5 percent of students at every public middle school in the area.

The underlying idea is simple enough. Many communities in the U.S. are economically and racially homogenous. But a policy that accepts the top students from every community can create diverse classes. The policy is defensible on meritocratic grounds because it rewards teenagers who excel in every environment — and on political grounds because it gives all communities access to desirable schools.

Once T.J. changed its policy, the school became much more diverse. The share of students from low-income families rose to 25 percent from 2 percent. Racial diversity also increased:

“I love T.J.,” Kaiwan Bilal, one of the students accepted under the new policy, told The Washington Post. “It’s even better than I expected, better than my parents told me it would be.” Bilal also said that he was struck by the school’s diversity.

The SAT connection

Not everyone favors these changes, of course, and a group of parents and conservative legal activists sued to stop them. Their argument revolved around intent: They said that because T.J. had adopted the new policy with the goal of increasing racial diversity, it was illegal, even though it did not use racial preferences.

In higher education, many people viewed the lawsuit with alarm. If the Supreme Court ruled against T.J., almost all class-based programs would have been at risk. Racial diversity would most likely plummet, especially in the wake of the ban on race-based policies.

But the court didn’t rule against T.J. Instead, it effectively endorsed class-based programs by refusing even to hear the T.J. case. Only two justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, dissented.

The news has a connection to another story in higher education: the return of the standardized test requirement at some colleges. Last week, Yale announced that it would again require test scores from applicants, joining Dartmouth, M.I.T., Georgetown and Purdue, among others. At selective colleges like these, standardized test scores predict academic performance better than high school grades, research shows.

A crucial part of the test requirement, however, is that colleges give applicants credit for overcoming disadvantage. The colleges don’t expect top students from struggling high schools to do as well on the SAT as private school students. Lower-income students, after all, have been running with the wind in their faces.

“We know society is unequal,” Sian Beilock, Dartmouth’s president, told me. “We’re looking for the kids who are excelling in their environment.” Last week’s announcement by the Supreme Court means that schools (including those that don’t require test scores) can feel comfortable taking economic disadvantage into account.

Matching public opinion

There is also a broader significance. In these politically polarized times, I know that many liberals distrust the motivations of conservatives (and vice versa). After the Supreme Court — which is dominated by conservative justices — banned racial preferences, some liberals assumed that it might start a yearslong campaign against diversity.

For now, though, cynicism seems unjustified, at least on this issue. Most justices are neither universally in favor of nor universally opposed to diversity programs. Context matters. As it happens, the court has also chosen a position that matches public opinion: Most Americans support class-based admissions policies and (as my colleague German Lopez has explained) oppose race-based policies.

T.J.’s new policy, as Kahlenberg wrote in the journal National Affairs, is “doing what America has been pining after for a quarter-century: pursuing racial and economic diversity without the use of racial preferences.” -30-

David Leonhardt – Biden’s Next Steps on Immigration – The New York Times

By David Leonhardt

Feb. 26, 2024, 6:38 a.m. ET

“President Biden has come to recognize that the surge of undocumented immigration during his presidency is a threat to his re-election. He knows that most voters are unhappy about the increase. So are mayors and governors who have been left to deal with an expensive and often chaotic situation — such as in Denver, the subject of a recent Times story.

Biden and his advisers have already settled on one strategy to reduce his political vulnerability. They plan to remind voters that congressional Republicans this month blocked a bipartisan bill that would have strengthened border security. Even though many Republicans favored the bill’s policies, they defeated it at Donald Trump’s behest, largely to avoid solving a problem that has hurt Biden politically.

Given the blatantly partisan nature of the Republicans’ decision, it’s reasonable for Biden to emphasize it during his campaign. But I would be surprised if he could eliminate his vulnerability on immigration merely by criticizing Republican intransigence.

Why? Biden is the president, after all, and a president has significant authority to shape immigration policy even without new legislation.

Biden himself has been aggressive about using this authority — albeit to loosen immigration policy rather than tighten it. During his first months in office, he expanded asylum and paused deportations. He also expanded a policy known as parole, which the law says should be used “only on a case-by-case basis.” Last year, Biden used parole to admit more than 300,000 people.

These policies, combined with Biden’s welcoming rhetoric during the 2020 campaign, contributed to the migration surge. (John Judis went into more detail in a recent Times Opinion essay, as did David Ignatius in a Washington Post column.) The changes signaled to migrants that their chances of being able to enter and remain in the U.S. had risen.

Many migrants, as my colleague Miriam Jordan has written, are “certain that once they make it to the United States they will be able to stay. Forever. And by and large, they are not wrong.” ” . . . .

A 2024 Vulnerability – David Leonhardt – The New York Times

By David Leonhardt

Jan. 17, 2024Updated 9:51 a.m. ET

“I keep a running list of issues on which either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party is out of step with public opinion.

For Republicans, abortion now tops my list, followed by Donald Trump’s attitudes toward democracy. For Democrats, I think immigration policy has moved to the top of the list.

In a newsletter last week, I described the shift in the Democratic Party’s immigration policy over the past decade. Before Trump ran for president, Democrats tended to combine passionate support for many forms of immigration with a belief in strong border security. But Trump’s harsh anti-immigration stance pushed the party toward the opposite end of the spectrum.

Today, many Democratic politicians are willing to accept high levels of undocumented immigration and oppose enforcement measures that the party once favored. Some Democrats, especially on the left, argue that the government doesn’t even have the power to reduce migration much.

This shift has created political vulnerabilities for Democrats — because most Americans are closer to the party’s old position than to its new one. Today, I’ll walk through public opinion on the issue.” . . . . .

The UAW Beats the Big Three Automakers – David Leonhardt – The New York Times

By David Leonhardt

Oct. 31, 2023, 6:32 a.m. ET

“If you want to understand why the United Auto Workers union has evidently won its strikes against Detroit’s Big Three, it helps to return to the work of a 20th-century economist named Richard Lester.

Lester, a longtime Princeton professor, coined a phrase to describe wage negotiations between an employer and a worker: the “range of indeterminacy.” It captures the fact that wages are not a reflection simply of market forces, like a worker’s productivity or a company’s profits. In the real world, similar workers often earn different wages. Their wages fall somewhere in Lester’s range of indeterminacy.

Why? Most workers don’t know exactly how valuable their contributions are and therefore what their true market wage should be.

Company executives typically don’t know either, but the executives do have more information — about how much money different workers make and how productive each is. Employers also have more leverage. Companies employ many workers, and losing one of them is usually manageable. For most workers, by contrast, quitting over a pay dispute can create financial hardship.

For these reasons, workers’ pay often settles at the low end of the range of indeterminacy. In the relationship between an employer and an individual employee, the employer has more power. But there is an important adjective in that previous sentence: individual.

When employees band together, they can reduce the power imbalance. They can share information with one another and exert some leverage of their own on the bargaining process. A business that can afford to lose one worker over a pay dispute may not be able to lose dozens.

Of course, there is a term for a group of workers who come together to increase their bargaining power: a labor union.”

The Global Context of the Hamas-Israel War – The New York Times

By David Leonhardt

Oct. 9, 2023Updated 7:43 a.m. ET

“Russia has started the largest war in Europe since World War II.

China has become more bellicose toward Taiwan.

India has embraced a virulent nationalism.

Israel has formed the most extreme government in its history.

And on Saturday morning, Hamas brazenly attacked Israel, launching thousands of missiles and publicly kidnapping and killing civilians.

All these developments are signs that the world may have fallen into a new period of disarray. Countries — and political groups like Hamas — are willing to take big risks, rather than fearing that the consequences would be too dire.”

“. . . . .   In the case of Israel, Trump encouraged Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, to show little concern for Palestinian interests and instead seek a maximal Israeli victory. Netanyahu, of course, did not start this new war. Hamas did, potentially with support from Iran, the group’s longtime backer, and Hamas committed shocking human rights violations this past weekend, captured on video.

But Netanyahu’s extremism has contributed to the turmoil between Israel and Palestinian groups like Hamas. An editorial in Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, yesterday argued, “The prime minister, who has prided himself on his vast political experience and irreplaceable wisdom in security matters, completely failed to identify the dangers he was consciously leading Israel into when establishing a government of annexation and dispossession.” Netanyahu, Haaretz added, adopted “a foreign policy that openly ignored the existence and rights of Palestinians.”

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A Palestinian mother cries next to the body of her son.Credit…Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times

… but still powerful

Even with the rise of multipolarity, the U.S. remains the world’s most powerful country, with a unique ability to forge alliances and peace. In the Middle East, the Trump administration persuaded Israel and four other countries — the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco — to sign unprecedented diplomatic agreements, known as the Abraham Accords. In recent months, the Biden administration has made progress toward an even more ambitious deal, between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Hamas attacked Israel in part to undermine an Israeli-Saudi deal, many experts believe. Such a deal could isolate Iran, Hamas’s patron, and could lead to an infusion of Saudi money for the Palestinian Authority, a more moderate group than Hamas (as Thomas Friedman explains in this column). But if the recent Hamas attacks lead Israel to reduce the Gaza Strip to rubble in response, Saudi Arabia will have a hard time agreeing to any treaty.

“This will slow considerably if not kill the Saudi Abraham Accords deal,” Mara Rudman, a former U.S. diplomat, told The Times.” . . . .

Child Labor and the Broken Border – The New York Times

By David Leonhardt

Sept. 19, 2023Updated 12:02 p.m. ET

You’re reading The Morning newsletter.  Make sense of the day’s news and ideas. David Leonhardt and Times journalists guide you through what’s happening — and why it matters. Get it sent to your inbox.

It sounds like something out of an earlier century. Tens of thousands of children in the U.S., spanning all 50 states, work full time, often on overnight shifts and in dangerous jobs. The adults in their communities — including executives at major companies like Perdue Farms and Tyson Foods, whose slaughterhouses are cleaned by the young teenagers — look the other way. Government officials, in state capitals and in Washington, allow it to happen.

For the past year and a half, my colleague Hannah Dreier has been reporting on the explosion of child labor among young migrants who have recently arrived in this country. Her latest story, which tells the story of Marcos Cux, a 15-year-old who was maimed last year in a chicken plant in rural Virginia run by Perdue, has just published in The Times Magazine.

The Global Immigration Backlash – David Leonhardt – The New York Times

By David Leonhardt

July 11, 2023, 6:48 a.m. ET

“The global migration wave of the 21st century has little precedent. In much of North America, Europe and Oceania, the share of population that is foreign-born is at or near its highest level on record.

In the U.S., that share is approaching the previous high of 15 percent, reached in 1890. In some other countries, the immigration increases have been even steeper in the past two decades:  . . . . “

Does America Vote Too Much? – The New York Times

By German Lopez

Nov. 7, 2022, 6:49 a.m. ET

“Americans casting their ballots in tomorrow’s midterm elections might be voting in their 30th or 40th contest in four years. In the same amount of time, a German citizen might vote in six to eight races.

Put simply, the U.S. has an unusually high number of elections. The federal government alone holds elections every two years, compared with around every four or five years in other advanced democracies.

Why does this matter? Some experts argue that the saturation of elections has significant downsides — exhausting voters and hurting the quality of governance by pushing lawmakers toward more campaigning, fund-raising and short-term thinking.”

David Leonhardt – A Functional Congress? Yes. – The New York Times

By David Leonhardt

Aug. 16, 2022Updated 10:27 a.m. ET

“Describing Congress as dysfunctional seems unobjectionable, even clichéd. I’ve done it myself this summer. Yet as the current session enters its final months, the description feels off. The 117th Congress has been strikingly functional.

On a bipartisan basis, it has passed bills to build roads and other infrastructure; tighten gun safety; expand health care for veterans; protect victims of sexual misconduct; overhaul the Postal Service; support Ukraine’s war effort; and respond to China’s growing aggressiveness.

Just as important, the majority party (the Democrats) didn’t give a complete veto to the minority party. On a few major issues, Democrats decided that taking action was too important. They passed the most significant response to climate change in the country’s history. They also increased access to medical care for middle- and lower-income Americans and enacted programs that softened the blow from the pandemic.

Congress still has plenty of problems. It remains polarized on many issues. It has not figured out how to respond to the growing threats to American democracy. The House suffers from gerrymandering, and the Senate has a growing bias against residents of large states, who are disproportionately Black, Latino, Asian and young. The Senate can also struggle at the basic function of approving presidential nominees.

The current Congress has also passed at least one law that seems clearly flawed in retrospect: It appears to have spent too much money on pandemic stimulus last year, exacerbating inflation.

As regular readers know, though, this newsletter tries to avoid bad-news bias and cover both accomplishments and failures. Today, I want to focus on how Congress — a reliably unpopular institution — has managed to be more productive than almost anybody expected.

I’ll focus on four groups: Democratic congressional leaders; Republican lawmakers; progressive Democrats; and President Biden and his aides.”

David Leonhardt – Morning Report – Perils of Invisible Government – The New York Times

By David Leonhardt

April 21, 2022Updated 8:13 a.m. ET

“More than a decade ago, the political scientist Suzanne Mettler coined the phrase “the submerged state” to describe a core feature of modern American government: Many people don’t realize when they are benefiting from a government program.

“Americans often fail to recognize government’s role in society, even if they have experienced it in their own lives,” Mettler wrote. “That is because so much of what government does today is largely invisible.”

Her main examples were tax breaks, including those that help people buy homes, pay for medical care and save for retirement. The concept also included programs so complex or removed from everyday life that many people did not understand them, like federal subsidies for local governments.

Mettler’s thesis is both a defense of government’s role and a criticism of the modern Democratic Party’s preference for technocratically elegant and often invisible policies. It wasn’t always this wa: y, she points out. Social Security, Medicare and the G.I. Bill — as well as New Deal parks, roads and bridges, many with signs marking them as federal projects — helped popularize government action because they were so obvious. If voters don’t know what the government is doing to improve their lives, how can they be expected to be in favor of it?”

David Lindsay:  The biggest problem facing the Democrats is easier to recognize, than the solution. They must do a better job of tooting their own horn.