Despite more than a decade of heightened recruitment efforts, the Aurora-based Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy has failed to recruit enough minority students to match the demographics of the state, according to a report by the Illinois auditor general.
In particular, blacks and Latinos are significantly underrepresented at the school, according to the report released Tuesday. At the same time, a disproportionately high number of Asian students are enrolled at the academy, which is mandated by state to reflect the geographic and racial demographics of the state in its admissions.
Part of the problem is that blacks and Latinos aren’t applying to the state’s prestigious math and science academy in large numbers–in part because of a reluctance to attend a boarding school in a largely white suburb–pointing out the need for additional recruitment efforts, the report found.
A cadre of Chicago’s black legislators are angered by the finding that Asians often are admitted to the school in larger numbers than blacks or Latinos, even though their percentage of the state’s population is significantly lower than that of the other minority groups.
“I think it’s horrendous,” State Sen. Emil Jones Jr., (D-Chicago) said Tuesday after reviewing the report.
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The publicly funded three-year residential high school founded in 1985 attracts and funds a high school education for some of the brightest students in Illinois.
During its 1998-1999 school year, the latest year for which such statistics were available, about 52 percent of the school’s 662 students were white. Twenty-seven percent were Asian, 9 percent African-American, 6 percent Hispanic, and 1 percent Native American.
The admissions gap was particularly apparent in 1998, the study found, when the academy accepted 12 Latinos, 30 blacks, 65 Asians and 119 whites. During the last three years, Asians have been accepted at higher rates than blacks or Latinos, according to the report.
In the state as a whole, whites make up 72 percent of the population, blacks 15.3 percent, Latinos 9 percent, Asian-Americans 3.2 percent and Native Americans 0.2 percent.
Among the 1.9 million students in Illinois public schools, 63 percent are white, 21 percent are black, 13 percent are Hispanic and 3 percent are Asian-American. A fraction of 1 percent is Native American.
Sen. Vince Demuzio, a Downstate Carlinville Democrat and a senior member of the Legislative Audit Commission, said he asked for the audit because he suspected problems with regional and racial representation in the academy.
Demuzio characterized the ethnic breakdowns as “lopsided.”
LuAnn Smith, the academy’s director of enrollment, said the school has spent more than $250,000 in recent years to bolster minority recruitment. The academy isn’t going to give up on efforts to increase minority representation, she said.
“We can’t admit students who are not applying,” she said. “It has been hard for us to raise the numbers of African-Americans and Latinos because they often don’t want to go away from home for long periods of time.”
When the school was founded, it was required by the state to have an admission policy that ensured an “adequate geographic, sexual and ethnic representation.”
Though some 75 percent of the applicants who apply carry straight-A averages, Smith said they reject many prospective students because they are deemed unlikely to succeed at the school. The school’s attrition rate is about 12 percent.
In selecting a new class of students, the school accepts the first 50 percent who received the highest composite rating–a score consisting of grade-point average, standardized tests and evaluation of its Review Committee. The remainder are evaluated using additional criteria, which includes a prospective student’s ethnic background, gender and geographic location.
Demuzio said he hopes the report will spur the school to redouble efforts to increase minority enrollment.