Editorial: Learning from California -- Ban college legacy admissions and cell phones in public schools

It’s baseball playoff season and since California stole the Dodgers and the Giants from New York, we have no issue copying two excellent ideas for education just enacted into law by the Golden State. Gov. Kathy Hochul and Albany legislators, please pay attention.

On Monday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill to bar private colleges and universities from using legacy admissions, which is favoring the children of alumni. It doesn’t mean that every offspring of a graduate gets an acceptance letter, but it is an unfair leg up for some applicants for just being born, regardless of the kids’ smarts or other talents. In other words, it is the opposite of merit.

A primary reason why schools use legacy admissions isn’t to cull more contributions from alumni (although that certainly is a factor) but to give admission officers a better sense of which accepted high school seniors will say "yes" and show up on campus in the fall.

Using fake numbers and a fake school, consider that if Old Ivy College accepts three different applicants who are otherwise identical with the same grades and extracurriculars. One student had both parents who are Old Ivy grads. A second student has one parent who earned an Old Ivy degree. And the third student had neither parents as alums.

The chance that the double legacy will attend is 90%. The chance that the single legacy will accept is 75%. And the chance that the kid without any parental ties will say yes is 50%. The Old Ivy admissions office much prefers offering a spot to someone with a greater chance of enrolling.

Two colleges that voluntarily ended legacy admissions, Johns Hopkins University and Amherst College, have gotten good results while expanding opportunity.

At Amherst, when they dropped the practice, the share of legacies in the admitted class was cut in half, to 6%, down from 11%. At Hopkins, it’s fallen to just 1.7%, way off from 8.5%. And Hopkins reports that the share of first-generation or low income students jumped to 31%, up from 17%.

Here in New York, Columbia and Cornell, to think of two, should follow the course. Or Albany should make them, as Sacramento did.

The other West Coast innovation came last week, when Newsom signed a bill requiring school districts to ban or limit cell phones by pupils. Here again, New York should pursue the California policy. Mayor Adams and School Chancellor David Banks have discussed a ban. Hochul has been talking the same on the statewide level. But there’s no action and there won’t be any likely until the Legislature returns in January.

Of course, kids can have phones when they travel back and forth to school, but during the school day, when class is in session, the damn things are a distraction to learning. And then there are the other problems from social media impacts on young minds, that U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy has documented. A few hours a day free from the endless streams can only help the mental health of these youngsters.

There will be complications, such as how to keep the machines off during class time that might be best left to individual districts or schools, but the first step is an adult's will to impose a children’s timeout.

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