Leaders of the University of California system appear strongly inclined to drop the requirement that applicants to UC campuses take the SAT or ACT test, heeding the argument that it hurts the chances of Latino and African-American students to be admitted.

A faculty task force is expected to deliver a report on whether the mandate should be retained in February. But UC Regent Eloy Ortiz Oakley, who is also the chancellor of the California Community College system, has already called for scrapping the standardized test requirement. So has UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ and Michael Brown, the provost and executive vice president for academic affairs for the UC system and its 10 campuses. No one who works for UC appears to be standing up, at least publicly, for the testing mandate.

The SAT/ACT test has for decades been criticized for alleged cultural bias against minorities. But that claim is strongly disputed by the College Board, which administers the test and says it has long since fine-tuned the language of questions in the test so that they don’t presume knowledge of white cultural norms. Some academic studies back up this claim of neutrality and find that SATs are a better indicator of college success than grades.

But one of the SAT critiques offered by Ortiz, the regent, is mostly undisputed. It’s that low-income Latino and African-American families are unable to pay for the vast variety of test-preparation classes used by middle-income and wealthy families to help their children. “Perhaps the tests were well-intended, but they are perpetuating a wealth advantage and undervaluing low-income students,” he wrote earlier this year.

The Princeton Review test-prep company, for example, “guarantees” that its 30-hour, $1,599 class will lead to at least a 1400 score on the basic SAT. A 1400 is at the 95th percentile of the approximately 2 million SATs taken each year.

Meanwhile, upper-income families have long been willing to spend whatever it takes to help their children on standardized tests, in particular by hiring specialized English and math tutors who charge up to $450 an hour.

But the College Board pushes back on this front as well, saying it provides free test prep online that helps tens of thousands of students each year.

Nonprofit behind SAT defends UC admission practices

The New Jersey-based nonprofit is so worried that a UC decision to drop the SAT would be copied by many other U.S. universities – as a recent USA Today analysis predicts – that it is offering increasingly thorough defenses of how UC makes its admission decisions.

According to an EdSource report, Jessica Howell, vice president of research at the College Board, appeared at a symposium on the SAT two weeks ago in Berkeley in which she suggested that critics of the test exaggerated its importance to UC admission officers, who consider 14 factors in evaluating prospective students.

“Any effective standardized measure that is one of those factors is going to reveal underlying inequities in our society,” she said. “As researchers, we shouldn’t stop using them, or measuring them because we don’t like what they say. … [Instead,] we should continue to have a discussion about solutions to close the gaps that we see.”

The comment reflects the College Board’s argument that if SAT critics think it’s unfair that students from wealthy families with more resources do better than students from poor families, it’s not the test that’s unfair. It’s American life – the rich can help their kids more than other families.

To address this issue, the College Board proposed also giving SAT test takers an “adversity score” in May so colleges could quickly determine if a student came from difficult circumstances. But the plan was dropped in August after if faced harsh criticism that it was a facile attempt to label students from wildly different backgrounds with a simple number.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies are accused of shooting a mentally ill teenager in the street in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court just two weeks after the county

The lawsuit also comes on the heels of an agreement by the department to release deputy-involved shooting records to the county’s Office of Inspector General.

The lawsuit claims Fernando Escobedo, 19, was shot and killed by deputies on Nov. 30, 2014.  Escobedo was known to the department through past brushes with the law. Shortly before his death, his mother had sought help from the Sheriff’s Department and explained his mental health problems, the complaint says.

A video of the shooting obtained by CalWatchdog appears to show Escobedo running from the home of his mother, Hilda Alvarez, away from two squad cars parked in front of the home and into the path of two other arriving squad cars.

An officer comes out of the last car and points his weapon at Escobedo, who turns and runs away before dropping to the ground. The video is embedded at the bottom of the page. 

From the complaint:

“Ms. Alvarez immediately heard three gunshots and yelled ‘don’t shoot.’ One of the officers then hollered ‘watch your crossfire.’ Immediately thereafter, four more shots were fired at Mr. Escobedo.”

Deputies told local media at the time of the incident that Escobedo charged an officer with a steak knife, which the family disputes. The video does not show the victim charging any of the officers.

The Sheriff’s office did not respond to emails and calls for comment.

The shooting is classified in the department’s database as a “hit shooting incident,” one of three in the month of November 2014. The shooter, unnamed in the lawsuit, was a 50-year-old Hispanic deputy who had been on the force for eight years according to Sheriff’s Department records. 

The records indicate that Escobedo’s alleged weapon was recovered. They also indicate Escobedo was under the influence and had a criminal history. Records show Escobedo was arrested in July 2014 and charged with possessing stolen property.

The “hit shooting incident” designation does not indicate a fatality. Since 2010, the department has recorded 175 hit shootings, and 91 of them resulted in a fatality, a review of records shows.

In about half of all shooting incidents involving L.A. County deputies since 2010, the suspect had a criminal history.

California counties have worked to open their records in the months since 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot in an altercation with a police officer outside St. Louis in 2014.

The San Diego County District Attorney’s office now lists the shootings it reviews. In Kern County, law enforcement and the district attorney’s office hammered out an agreement in July for enhanced review of officer-involved shootings. L.A. County has a database with all deputy-involved shootings. 

In the city of Richmond, a new police chief initiated policies to reduce police shootings, including reviews of all uses of force and providing officers with Tasers and pepper spray to be used as an alternative to a firearm.

California’s law enforcement community has been embroiled in controversies over excessive force, including shootings, for decades.

The violence reached a flash point in the late 90s. A gang unit in the Rampart division of the Los Angeles Police Department was plagued by beatings of suspects and officer-involved shootings.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, in particular, has in the past five years battled with rogue officers.

Three deputies were found guilty in June, 2011 of the beating of a jailhouse visitor. In November, the department paid $8.85 million to the family of Alfredo Montalvo, who was shot by deputies after a brief car chase in 2009.

In October, 2015, a man suspected of driving under the influence was shot. Deputies claimed he began to drive toward them after being pursued and cornered by squad cars. The deceased had no criminal history, according to records.

Since 2009, Los Angeles County has paid out $22 million in 43 wrongful death lawsuits as of July.

The Escobedo complaint alleges that the shooters were not properly trained in dealing with the mentally ill.

“The department fails, refuses and neglects to keep a centralized database of those reported to it as suspected of being mentally ill,” the lawsuit claims. “Neither [past sheriff John] Scott nor [current sheriff Jim] McDonnell provided training necessary for officers faced with the challenge of bringing such people safely under the custody and control of patrol officers, thus placing the mentally ill … at greater risk of death at the time of arrest or when officers seek to question them.”

Norm Pattis, the Connecticut-based lawyer handling the lawsuit for Escobedo’s mother, did not return calls or emails.

Legislation passed in September requires law enforcement officers in California to get more training in handling mental health cases.

The bill requires the state provide at least 15 hours of basic training in dealing with the mentally ill, up from six hours.

Video of Nov. 30, 2014 shooting of Fernando Escobedo:

This is no surprise. California was home to the largest protest over police brutality in U.S. history: the 1992 riots after a Simi Valley jury mostly cleared four LAPD officers for their videotaped beating of Rodney King.

But do the Democrats these Californians elect to office ever do anything about it? Do they pass laws cracking down on police misconduct or encouraging outside investigations when there are credible examples of a police department treating minority communities with hostility?

I know of no substantive policies of this kind enacted by the Democrat-dominated Legislature in the past 20 years. After a 2006 court decision (Copley Press v. Superior Court) further insulated law enforcement officers from accountability, activists attempted to get the Legislature to rewrite state law. They got nowhere. The result:

An investigation by ColorLines and the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute has found that the decision, combined with state laws that protect police privacy, has blocked the public from knowing whether local police officers have engaged in misconduct, or a pattern of misconduct, even when such misconduct involves officers inappropriately shooting civilians. …

“Now, you don’t have to worry that your dirty laundry or allegations about your dirty laundry will be on the front page of the newspaper,” the attorney representing the local Deputy Sheriff’s Association, Everett Bobbitt, said at the time. In her dissent, Justice Kathryn Werdegar argued in a dissenting opinion that the ruling “overvalues” police officers’ privacy concerns, and “undervalues the public’s interest in disclosure.”

Combined, Copley and the Bill of Rights mean California has the tightest restrictions on public access to police disciplinary information in the country. “Copley differs greatly from laws in the rest of the country,” said Philip Eure, the head of the District of Columbia’s Office of Police Complaints and a former president of the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement. Copley, Eure said, is “rather extreme” in its public records restrictions and has “caused alarm in the oversight community.”

Issue a focus of elected Dems in New York

Now of course not just Democrats but Republicans and independents should be worried about police misconduct or mistreatment of minority groups. But in California, it is Democrats who have the political power and Democrats who have a strong hold on the support of African-Americans and Latinos — the groups most likely to cite systemic police mistreatment.

So why don’t elected Golden State Dems do anything about this issue?

One reason is plain: The huge political power of police unions, which are courted by both parties.

One reason should be plain but isn’t: The assumption of California’s elected Democrats that African-Americans and Latinos will always vote for them, so they don’t have to tend to their concerns about cops.

Bill de Blasio was elected mayor of New York after a campaign in which he directly addressed the concerns of black voters about police behavior. He may not be following through on his rhetoric, but he at least he brought up the issue. It remains a big issue with the progressive bloc on the New York City Council.

Will an elected California Democrat take the issue and run with it? We shall see.

Gov. Jerry Brown’s Tuesday appointment of Goodwin Liu to the California Supreme Court will continue the state’s lurch to the Left. Liu clearly believes in a highly activist judiciary for which the U.S. Constitution and the California Constitution are as malleable as Silly Putty. He think our traditional rights, especially property rights and the right to be left alone, are expendable on the road to  Utopia.

Yesterday, my colleague Steven Greenhut quoted a passage from Liu’s free online book, “Keeping Faith With the Constitution.” It’s worth analyzing the passage at length to see precisely why Liu, and his judicial philosophy, will so damage Californians’ life, liberty and property. Here’s the passage:

“Today, Americans do not think twice about the authority of government to respond to economic needs. Social Security, Medicare, collective bargaining and minimum wage laws, disaster assistance, regulation of the financial markets, and robust initiatives to stabilize the economy comprise large parts of the work we expect our federal and state governments to do. Reasonable people may disagree about the specific policies needed to deal with various economic conditions, with regulation of the marketplace, and with the economy as a whole. But there is no question that developing, enacting, and implementing such policies are an important and legitimate part of what government does.”

Parsing Liu

Let’s look at the clauses:

* “Today, Americans do not think twice about the authority of government to respond to economic needs.” Yes they do. That’s why the Tea Party racked up such large victories last November, expelling Liu’s fellow Left-Democrats from scores of seats in Congress and state legislatures, and likely will continue to do so next year.

Certainly, the Republicans caused much of the economic damage when they ran the show in the early 2000s under President Bush and the Republican-run Congress, as well as under Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in California. But Democrats, under President Obama and when they controlled both houses of Congress, made matters even worse. And Democrats in California are continuing Schwarzenegger’s policies of destruction.

* “Social Security.” It’s going broke. Starting in 2010, reported the New York Times, the system began paying out more than it takes in. Due to the ongoing Greatest Recession, that happened seven years before previously expected. Things will get worse as 70 million Baby Boomers continue retiring. Sharp cuts in benefits are inevitable.

* “Medicare.” It’ll be broke in 2024, just 13 years from now, its Trustees reported in May. That’s also five years earlier than expected due to the sinking economy.

* “collective bargaining.” Private-sector union membership has declined sharply from around 35 percent in World War II, 66 years ago, to just 6.9 percent today. According to economist Robert Samuelson, “By and large, union concessions were too little, too late. Corporate managers, their business models besieged, were also slow. Both executives and union leaders underestimated the vulnerability of once impregnable market positions. The downfall of the ‘Big Three’ automakers epitomized this disastrous cycle. Nonunion firms gained market share; union membership fell. Unions also had a harder time organizing other companies, because both managers and workers feared job loss.”

The decline of private-sector unions has been accompanied by the rise of pubilic-sector unions. But these unions are different. As one union boss said during last November’s election, “This is our opportunity to elect our own bosses.” For government unions, Liu’s beloved “collective bargaining” means electing compliant politicians, so the unions sit on both sides of the bargaining table. Citizens also have a role: paying the massive taxes that are needed to fund lavish government-worker pay, perks and pensions.

But even that is falling apart. As Ed Ring just wrote in City Journal California (party quoting Greenhut), even now, “Public-employee unions underestimate the magnitude of California’s unfunded retirement liability.” You can only squeeze so much juice from an orange — or money from a taxpayer.

* “minimum wage laws.” In the 1970s, economist Walter Williams’ path-breaking research documented how minimum wage laws were enacted mainly to keep lower-cost black workers from taking jobs from whites.

Here’s a two-minute YouTube by Williams explaining how the minimum wage is a “racist tool”:

* “disaster assistance.” Remember President Bush’s comment to FEMA boss Michael Brown during the Hurricane Katrina disaster? “Heck of a job, Brownie,” Bush said — even as the federal government was interfering with private and local efforts to help people and recovery from the disaster. The bigger disaster was the Federal Emergency Management Agency itself. Even President Obama mocked President Bush’s incompetence during Katrina.

The Feds also interfered with last year’s Gulf Oil spill cleanup, making matters worse.

* “regulation of the financial markets.” The ongoing Greatest Recession is proof that government itself is the major cause of our financial problems. The Feds not only were too incompetent to catch Ponzi-meister Bernie Madoff. The federal government was the major cause of the financial instability, as I noted in an article on Tuesday on how the Greatest Recession began, not just four years ago, but 10 years ago. That’s when President Bush and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan panicked after the 9/11 attacks. They debased the dollar, kept interest rates artificially low and went on wild spending binges — policies continued by their successors, Obama and Ben Bernanke.

* “and robust initiatives to stabilize the economy.” Beginning with the two Bush bailouts of 2008, especially the TARP, and continuing with Obama’s bailouts and Bernake’s inflationary Quantitative Easing schemes, the government’s actions have further destabilized the economy. Now, the economy is declining again. And the only real solution is to do the opposite of what Liu wants. That is, government must be cut back sharply, at all levels, including the “robust” — and gargantuan, grotesque, Brobdignagian — government of California that Liu now will judge from the bench.

Recall Brown and Liu?

Things are so bad in America now, and especially in California, that people finally are realizing that the Brown-Liu philosophy of über-big government is the cause of our problems. That the Brown-Liu philosophy means rule by a tiny elite of the wealthy and powerful, headed Brown and Lui, with everyone else their groveling peons, and the middle-class virtually eliminated.

It wouldn’t surprise me if recall efforts began against both Brown and Liu.