Prepped for Life: Ample resources, great expectations for the university-bound
Part 3: David's story
By:
Kristi Garrett
David's Story
Choosing which college to attend can be a life-changing decision. A prestigious university can offer its graduates connections and status that practically guarantee a life among society’s elite. On the other hand, the upper echelon would say, a degree from a public state college is less valuable, and possibly even an embarrassment.
Yet, for the vast majority of Californians, graduation from any university remains an elusive and unachievable goal. It’s today’s American dream.
Once the envy of the United States, California’s K-16 public education system is at a critical juncture. Forty-five years ago, California had among the best schools in the country, and graduates of its public university systems stayed on in the state to work, buy homes, raise families and pay taxes.
The Golden State’s golden age didn’t last, however, and decades of disinvestment in education have left the state with a population that is less educated, less employed and less economically vibrant than at any time in the last half-century.
Today, according to University of California, Berkeley researchers, California’s dominance in earnings and residents with a bachelor’s degree has slipped considerably since 1960. Meanwhile, with more than 6 million students in California public schools, the college-age population is expected to hit 4.26 million in 10 years. Invest now and California stands to reap sizeable benefits in just a decade; continue to neglect the education infrastructure and we will all pay the cost of social services and incarceration for more poor Californians.
With so much at stake, what does it take to get into and graduate from a good college? And what prospects are there for a significant number of California graduates who have grown up in families without a college-going culture? Here, again, social class interacts with the academic achievement gap in ways that have far-reaching effects for the future of the state.
David’s story
David Foldvary is one of the lucky ones. He grew up with his parents and a younger sister in Beverly Hills, where the public school system is among the best in the country. David’s high school, predominantly white and Asian, scores well above the state’s goal of 800 on the Academic Performance Index. Three-fourths of the parents have a bachelor’s degree or higher, and just 2 percent of the 2,300 students qualify for a free or reduced-price lunch. Per capita income in the area around the school was $50,000 in 1999 — more than twice what it is in the rest of the state. The Beverly Hills Unified School District spent about $8,795 per student this year — about $2,000 more than the state average.
All that translates into certain advantages. The curriculum at Beverly Hills High is suffused with the arts and service projects. Academic and athletic honors abound. The school motto, “Today well lived,” is part of a Sanskrit proverb bursting with vision and hope. The nation’s most prestigious universities make the trek to visit with these top-flight students each fall. Ninety-six percent of recent graduates were headed to college.
Almost all Beverly Hills High teachers are fully credentialed. Each of the nine counselors oversees the needs of just 300 students, instead of almost 1,100 as in the average California high school. A career center and well-publicized scholarship information help ensure that each graduate leaves with a definite plan for college or career.
Growing up, Foldvary always knew where his career path would take him. “I think as soon as I grew out of the phase of saying that I wanted to be an astronaut or a fireman and had a thought-out answer and not just every little boy’s answer, I wanted to be a lawyer or a politician or both,” he recalls. “My parents always said to me when I was younger, ‘David, you really know how to put together a sentence. You can communicate well with people and you’re convincing. And you are often argumentative, and while that often gets frustrating at home, you’d make a great lawyer.’”
Personality tests and career exploration confirmed that something in law or politics would suit him best, so Foldvary sought out opportunities for public service. After attending a conference of the California Association of Student Councils in his sophomore year, he was hooked on student government and served in a variety of positions for CASC statewide. By the time he was a senior, he was a confident and outspoken student member of the Beverly Hills school board.
He says the experience really opened his eyes about the tough job of running a school district. “I really got a sense for the tremendous scutwork or busywork [of being a board member] and the difficulty in coordinating state standards and district-mandated testing and state testing. I would have had no idea it was so involved.”
Tough choices
Foldvary, like many students in affluent areas, had the advice of an educational consultant to help him narrow down his choices. These private counselors will meet with a student and his family to help identify schools that best match the student’s interests and preferences. They will also analyze the student’s transcript, suggest courses to take in high school, recommend tutors, remind him when to take necessary tests, brainstorm topics and edit admissions essays, suggest schools to visit and help the student narrow down a list of schools to apply to.
“I definitely believe that college admissions is very strategic and it’s not all about aptitude any more,” says Foldvary. “If you have the means to afford tutoring and to afford these coaches and these various services that are provided, you know the game a little bit better and you might have better odds with lesser qualifications.”
In just a few consultations with an educational consultant, Foldvary learned about schools he may not have otherwise considered, such as Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. At the consultant’s suggestion, considering his interest in law and politics, Foldvary ended up applying to five University of California schools, as well as Columbia, Yale, Harvard, Stanford and Georgetown.
“My decision really came down to UCLA, Berkeley and Georgetown,” he says. “And I just decided that I wanted to take a step outside the L.A. atmosphere that was the only thing I had ever known. I wanted to go to a place where I could study political science with really prominent political minds in D.C. And I wanted to have that congressional internship I had always imagined having.”
Venturing from his familiar environment to Georgetown, a tony enclave on the outskirts of the nation’s capital, proved to be an enlightening experience. He rediscovered a love of singing — something he never had time for in high school — and became Chime No. 196 of the famed Georgetown a cappella choir The Chimes. As such, Foldvary was introduced to a select company of influential Georgetown alums — and a world of connections.
Even for the son of a Beverly Hills physician, the culture shift was considerable.
“In the Chimes I really met for the first time the kind of male that I knew I would meet at Georgetown. I didn’t know how well I would get along with them or befriend them. They are people who’ve come from very affluent, East Coast families, people whose dads went to Georgetown or people whose parents met at Georgetown, people whose older siblings had gone to Georgetown… but especially established, white, Catholic families with connections and money,” he observes. “There’s certainly money here in L.A., but a lot of it is in the entertainment industry, whereas a lot of the money with the families on the East Coast is from business or investing or from being a New York stockbroker — generations of that kind of thing. And that was new to me.”
Now that he’s graduated and back in California, Foldvary sees firsthand the advantages that come from being a Georgetown graduate.
“A lot of East Coast private school degrees are very well respected. The fact that you went back East to get your education and had a traditional liberal arts education is very much desired and seen differently than a UCLA or a USC degree, just because it’s something sort of foreign and seems more challenging because it’s more distant. The education may not be any better or any different, but the connotation still exists,” he says. “But I certainly appreciate it and think that I will benefit from having gotten that education. If seeing a private counselor or working with an SAT tutor or any number of those things helped me to sort of get my foot in the door there, then it was probably worthwhile.”
His undergraduate degree under his belt, Foldvary finds himself well positioned in the world for someone his age. Employed full time with a Los Angeles law firm and renting a guest house in Beverly Hills, he is quickly making the transition from depending on his parents for insurance and other expenses. He is on a smooth and swift path toward full adult autonomy.
Oddly enough, however, Foldvary’s experience as a Washington intern and his job in a law office ended up souring him on pursuing his original career goal. Unusually insightful for a young man of 22, Foldvary drew on his relationship with a special high school teacher to find his true calling.
While still at Georgetown, Foldvary learned that Richard Sprouse, his high school American history teacher, had passed away. Sprouse’s wife called Foldvary to ask him to speak at the funeral. “I did, and it really forced me to do a lot of reflection about the education I was getting at Georgetown in political science, what I wanted to go into, whether going into politics or going into law was going to make me happy. So I did a lot of thinking about that, and came to a lot of conclusions that brought me back to the same place: I wanted to teach.”
Now enrolled in a master’s program at Loyola Marymount University, Foldvary plans to eventually leave his job at a Los Angeles law firm to teach high school — preferably at Beverly Hills High.
Foldvary’s experience underlines a common theme in high school reform: relationships, along with rigor and relevance, are key to helping students be successful.
“I had some incredible teachers — teachers that influenced my life in so many ways,” he says. It was his senior year English teacher who encouraged Foldvary to try out for the Chimes, although he hadn’t sung publicly since the fifth grade. “She said, ‘push yourself outside of your comfort zone; it’s going to be one of the best things you do in college.’”
Class matters
Clearly, few students enjoy the advantages Foldvary does. When most choose a university, much depends on the preparation they received in high school and their ability to pay the school’s fees.
The rigor of classes available to a student in high school makes a big difference in what universities they apply to. Here again, class differences show up in the curriculum. At affluent Beverly Hills High, where the student body is 70 percent white, about 18 percent Asian, with only a handful of other ethnic minority students, there are 42 advanced placement classes — one for every 52 students. Just 20 miles away at Garfield Senior High School in East Los Angeles, the 99 percent Latino student body is offered just 25 AP classes, or one for every 200 students. That translates to a distinct difference in the caliber of university, if any, to which students aspire. Top-tier colleges won’t even consider students who have no AP or honors classes on their transcript.
Regardless of a student’s talent, it is often the price of admission that determines where a student goes to college. Tuition and fees at top-flight schools like Georgetown, Harvard or Stanford approach $40,000 a year. California’s public universities cost much less, but fees can still be a deciding factor for many families. Currently, attending a University of California school costs about $22,150 for a student in university housing, and the California State University system costs an average of about $15,000 per year.
Yet that’s a bargain when weighed against the lifetime earnings a student with a university degree can make. According to the University of California, a person with only a high school diploma will make an average of $30,056 a year, but one with a bachelor’s degree will earn about $54,714. Over a lifetime, that adds up to a difference of almost $1 million.
Many families are under the impression that college is out of reach, despite the fact that they may be eligible for scholarships, grants or loans that need not be repaid until the student has graduated and is working.
A recent survey by the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute in Los Angeles found that three out of four Latino students said the reason they decided not to go to college was at least partly due to the lack of financial aid. Fewer than one in five knew what it actually costs to attend a UC or CSU, with most overestimating the cost. Less than half knew whether they were eligible for Pell and CAL grants and other financial aid available to them. Nevertheless, almost all of those surveyed said that a college education is important for success in today’s world.
“California provides more low-cost college options than most states and has recently increased its investment of need-based financial aid,” writes Patrick M. Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education in San Jose, in a recent opinion for the Los Angeles Times. “But for the poorest 40 percent of California families, the cost each year of sending a child to community college still amounts to more than a third of the average family income. The cost of sending a child to a public four-year college, even after figuring in financial aid, amounts to nearly half of such a family’s income.”
Unless California increases its investment in public colleges and universities so that more students from low socioeconomic backgrounds are able to graduate from college, the state will continue to lose out on essential tax revenue, and it will shoulder increased welfare and incarceration costs. “California is in prime position to invest now in higher education to secure the state’s economic future. If we fail to invest, the state is likely to face a host of social and economic difficulties associated with a population boom of young people ill-prepared for the demands of the 21st century economy,” concluded Berkeley researchers in “Return on Investment: Educational Choices and Demographic Changes in California’s Future.” The state stands to reap almost $3 billion from the additional taxes each class of students would pay over their lifetime, but only if they earn a college degree.
Finding something they love
Ultimately, whatever path students choose after high school, most educators and advisers recommend they pursue a career they find genuinely enjoyable. For Foldvary, that ended up being something that resonated with his longstanding service activities.
“I see teaching as something that will be fulfilling for me as a career, as a daily responsibility, because it’s something that will give me an income but allow me to influence other people, allow me to educate and serve and be involved in the lives of my students and get paid for it,” he says.
He’s still involved in CASC, training student board members about the role they play. He’s even giving serious thought to running for a seat on the Beverly Hills school board. In preparation, he’s currently serving on a citizens’ bond oversight committee.
“Running for the board would be the ultimate synthesis of all my interests and passions; I know I want to be a classroom teacher, but I still haven’t forgotten my interests in law and politics,” says Foldvary. “A school board position would be the perfect way to satisfy my desire to be an educator who contributes to California’s public education system both in the classroom and through policy-making and governance.”
Kristi Garrett (kgarrett@csba.org) is managing editor of California Schools.
Read the entire series: