1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 1 PUBLIC COUNSEL MARK ROSENBAUM (State Bar No. 59940
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
1 PUBLIC COUNSEL MARK ROSENBAUM (State Bar No. 59940) 2 [email protected] AMANDA SAVAGE (State Bar No. 325996) 3 [email protected] 610 S. Ardmore Avenue, 4 Los Angeles, CA 90005 Tel: (213) 385-2977 - Fax: (213) 385-9089 5 6 SCHEPER KIM & HARRIS LLP GREGORY A. ELLIS (State Bar No. 204478) 7 [email protected] KATHERINE B. FARKAS (State Bar No. 234924) 8 [email protected] MICHAEL L. LAVETTER (State Bar No. 224423) 9 [email protected] 800 West Sixth Street, 18th Floor 10 Los Angeles, California 90017-2701 Tel: (213) 613-4655 - Fax: (213) 613-4656 11 Additional Counsel listed on next page 12 Attorneys for Plaintiffs 13 SUPERIOR COURT OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA 14 COUNTY OF ALAMEDA, RENE C. DAVIDSON COURTHOUSE 15 KAWIKA SMITH, through his guardian ad CASE NO. RG19046222 litem LEILANI REED; GLORIA D., through (Consolidated with RG19046343) 16 her guardian ad litem DIANA I; STEPHEN C., through his guardian ad litem, MARGARET F.; Judge: Hon. Brad Seligman 17 ALEXANDRA VILLEGAS, an individual; GARY W., an individual; CHINESE FOR 18 AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, a nonprofit DECLARATION OF PATRICIA organization; COLLEGE ACCESS PLAN, a GÁNDARA, PH.D. IN SUPPORT OF 19 nonprofit organization; COLLEGE SEEKERS, a PLAINTIFFS’ MOTION FOR nonprofit organization; COMMUNITY PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION 20 COALITION, a nonprofit organization; DOLORES HUERTA FOUNDATION, a Date: August 20, 2020 21 nonprofit organization; and LITTLE MANILA Time: 3:00 p.m. RISING, a nonprofit organization, Dept.: 23 22 Reservation ID: R-2193299 Plaintiff, 23 v. Action Filed: December 10, 2019 24 Trial Date: None Set REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF 25 CALIFORNIA; JANET NAPOLITANO, in her official capacity as President of the University of 26 California; and DOES 1-100, 27 Defendant. 28 Case No. RG19046222 1 DECLARATION OF PATRICIA GÁNDARA, PH.D. IN SUPPORT OF PLAINTIFFS’ MOTION FOR PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION 1 AND RELATED CONSOLIDATED CASES 2 3 EQUAL JUSTICE SOCIETY EVA PATERSON (State Bar No. 67081) 4 [email protected] 5 MONA TAWATAO (State Bar No. 128779) [email protected] 6 LISA HOLDER, EJS Of Counsel (State Bar No. 212628) [email protected] 7 634 S Spring Street, Suite 716 8 Los Angeles, CA 90014Tel: (415) 288-8700 – Fax: (510) 338-3030 9 BROWN GOLDSTEIN LEVY, LLP EVE L. HILL (State Bar No. 202178) 10 [email protected] ABIGAIL A. GRABER (admitted pro hac vice) 11 [email protected] 120 East Baltimore Street, Suite 1700 12 Baltimore, Maryland 21202 Tel: (410) 962-1030 – Fax: (410) 385-0869 13 MILLER ADVOCACY GROUP 14 MARCI LERNER MILLER (State Bar No. 162790) [email protected] 15 1303 Avocado Ave, Suite 230 16 Newport Beach, CA 92660-7804 Tel: (949) 706-9734 – Fax: (949) 266-8069 17 OLIVAREZ MADRUGA LEMIEUX O’NEILL, LLP 18 THOMAS M. MADRUGA (State Bar No. 160421) [email protected] 19 500 South Grand Avenue, 12th Floor Los Angeles, California 90071-2701 20 Tel: (213) 744-0099 – Fax: (213) 744-0093 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 Case No. RG19046222 2 DECLARATION OF PATRICIA GÁNDARA, PH.D. IN SUPPORT OF PLAINTIFFS’ MOTION FOR PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION Declaration of Dr. Patricia Gándara (Ph.D.) I, Dr. Patricia Gándara, hereby declare as follows: I. Background 1. I am a Research Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, where I am the Co-Director of the Civil Rights Project. I am also an elected fellow of the American Educational Research Association and the National Academy of Education. I earned my Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from UCLA in 1979 and an M.S. in Counseling and School Psychology from California State University, Los Angeles, in 1972. 2. I have a broad array of experience in the field of educational equity and access. Beyond my work as a faculty member, I have served as a bilingual school psychologist, a Social Scientist at the RAND Corporation, the director of educational research for the California Legislature, and Commissioner for Post-Secondary Education for the State of California. Before becoming Co-Director of the UCLA Civil Rights Project, I was the Associate Director of the Linguistic Minority Research Institute for nine years. 3. I am considered a national expert on the education of English learners and immigrant students and have advised many bodies on issues of access to higher education. 4. In 2011, I was appointed to President Obama’s Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics, where I worked to ensure that all Hispanics in the United States have access to quality education from grade school to college. 5. I have published eight books and more than 150 academic papers with a focus on educational equity. 6. My CV is attached as Exhibit A. II. The Report of the University of California Academic Council’s Standardized Testing Task Force Was Rushed to Publication and Did Not Address Many Impacts of Standardized Testing on Minority Students. 7. I was a member of the University of California Academic Council’s Standardized Testing Task Force (Task Force), which was convened in 2019 and which delivered its Report in 2020. I was also a member of the six-person subgroup tasked with writing that report (Writing Group). The Task Force’s goal was to “examine the current use of standardized testing for UC admission; review the testing principles developed in 2002 and revised in 2010; and determine whether any changes in admission testing policies or practices are necessary to ensure that the University continues to use standardized tests in the appropriate way.”1 The Task Force was also asked whether “UC testing practices [should] be improved, changed or eliminated” and whether “standardized 1 Letter from Robert C. May, Chair, to Task Force Members (Jan. 30, 2019), https://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/_files/committees/sttf/standardized-testing-tf-charge.pdf. 1 testing assessments fairly promote diversity and opportunity for students applying to UC.”2 8. The Task Force’s Report to the Academic Council was delivered on January 27, 2020.3 Along with five co-authors of that report, I signed an additional statement urging the University of California to act on the Report’s findings more quickly than the Report itself suggests.4 I signed this letter because “the consideration of test scores has a disproportionate effect on applicants to UC who are members of groups that have been in the past and are today victims of discrimination.”5 9. I was alarmed with several aspects of the Task Force management and its directives from the Academic Council. 10. When it was originally constituted in 2019, the Task Force was told that the Report would not be due until June 2020. In late October or early November of 2019, we were told that the Report must be produced by early January 2020. Upon learning of the new deadline, the Task Force co-chairs immediately appointed the six-person Writing Group, which included myself. The Writing Group was required to produce a draft Report by the first week of January 2020 in order to give the full Working Group time to review and revise that draft before its delivery to the Academic Council. 11. Despite working diligently over that two-month span, including working during Thanksgiving and Christmas, the Writing Group did not have enough time to study the issues in sufficient detail nor to meet and review the evidence and come to a consensus about the message the Report should convey. The enormous strain this abbreviated timeline imposed on the six members of the Writing Group caused a very tense situation. 12. These tight deadlines meant that the Writing Group ran out of time to consult with the full 18-member Task Force on certain issues. 13. The six-member Writing Group consisted of three members with strong quantitative backgrounds – an economist, an engineer, and a neuroscientist – all of whom were white, as well as three members with diverse specialties and backgrounds – a Chinese assessment specialist, an African American lawyer, and myself. 14. In my experience, the three white Writing Group members who had quantitative backgrounds were more willing to believe in the usefulness of standardized testing for college admissions while discounting the burdens that standardized testing imposes on students of color. For example, one of these members had previously chaired the Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS). He had access to and long 2 Id. 3 Report of the UC Academic Council Standardized Testing Task Force (Jan. 20, 2020), https://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/_files/committees/sttf/sttf-report.pdf. 4 Additional Statement on the Report of the UC Academic Council Standardized Testing Task Force (Jan 20, 2020), https://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/_files/committees/sttf/additional-statement-sttf-report-feb20.pdf. 5 Id. 2 experience with the University of California’s admissions data, and he had previously supported keeping the SAT/ACT in spite of the impact on admissions of students of color. Another one of the members with quantitative backgrounds expressed support for the idea that any student who wished to attend a University of California campus could find a way to do so, no matter how weak their high school might be. 15. In writing our report, the Writing Group focused on two “desired properties of admissions tests” identified by a 2002 BOARS report.6 Those properties were (1) that an “admissions test should be a reliable measurement that provides uniform assessment and should be fair across demographic groups” and (2) that an “admissions test should be demonstrably useful in predicting student success at UC and provide information beyond that which is contained in other parts of the application.” 16. Unfortunately, in my experience, most of the Writing Group’s effort focused on the second property.