BISMARCK, N.D. - Low-income students make up just three percent of the student body at the country's most selective colleges. That's according to new research published this week by the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation.

The report, titled True Merit, also shows the nation's wealthiest students make up almost three-quarters of the population at about 100 of the schools which reject most applicants.

Brenda Zastoupil is director of financial aid for the North Dakota University System. She says while they do face obstacles, low-income students in the state have several options to help.

"We go out to the high schools and assist students, especially trying to reach out to the low-income, first-generation students in filling out college applications," she says. "And that's a national effort, of course."

Specifically, Zastoupil points to efforts by the Bank of North Dakota, which has a program dedicated to helping under-served students.

Harold Levy is executive director of the Cooke Foundation. He says his group found that the problem for low-income students is twofold.

"They don't apply because they get poor college advising," says Levy. "And for the students who do apply the actual admissions process is rigged against them."

Levy suggests that college admissions boards should implement a "poverty preference" for high-performing, low-income students to help level the playing field.

Levy points to admissions tests as one example of how these students face far more barriers in the application process than their more affluent peers.

"Kids in poverty are given a fee waiver to take the SAT once," he says. "Kids of middle class and wealth take it repeatedly and submit their best grades. How fair is that?"

This report comes as the U.S. Supreme Court is considering arguments to roll back race-based affirmative action in college admissions.


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A new report shows Black girls are enduring disproportionate discipline, sexual harassment and public humiliation from school-based police and security guards in Miami-Dade public schools.

The report, "Keep Her Safe: Centering Black Girls in School Safety," compiles the experiences of Black girls and young women between the ages of 14 and 24, sharing their stories through surveys and focus groups about mistreatment by school safety personnel who make them feel unsafe.

Bayliss Fiddiman, director of educational equity at the National Women's Law Center, which produced the study along with the Southern Poverty Law Center, said the girls were being treated differently for their appearance, often unaware of the lines of sexual harassment.

"The girls express school security guards making inappropriate comments about their appearance that could range from. 'Oh, she looks ghetto,' or 'she's too big to wear that outfit. I would never let my daughter wear that,'" Fiddiman explained.

The report urged the school system to use proven behavioral interventions in such cases, rather than using policing, surveillance and harsh student punishment. Miami-Dade schools has not responded to a request for comment on the study.

Fiddiman pointed out in listening sessions, the girls also did not have a clear understanding of whom to tell if they felt violated. She argued it is an opportunity for school leaders to step in and explain school safety procedures by engaging students in the conversation.

"Schools can definitely implement policies around explaining what sexual harassment is, what boundaries are, what is safe and healthy," Fiddiman recommended. "That was missing."

The report underscored incidents of security using excessive force, such as a 16-year-old Black girl being slammed to the ground, rendering her unconscious and subsequently handcuffed to prevent a fight in 2021. In 2023, a Miami-Dade security guard faced allegations of attempting to seduce three teenage girls.

The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act in response to the 2018 Parkland shooting aimed to bolster school safety. However, it also led to heightened law enforcement presence in schools and increased surveillance measures.


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Advocates for the rights of people with disabilities have joined the Montana Quality Education Association in a suit to stop a school voucher bill in the state.

Montana is the latest to enact a plan allowing parents to pay private school tuition with public money. Senate Bill 393 is much more narrowly focused than Educational Savings Accounts in other states. In Montana, the money is limited to reimbursing services for special-education students and those with disabilities.

Rylee Sommers-Flanagan, executive director of Helena-based Upper 7 Law which is overseeing the suit, said Montana's version of Educational Savings Accounts requires special-ed students to renounce their right to a free, quality education under the state constitution and forgo federal assistance.

"In exchange for renouncing that, they can gain access to anywhere between $5,000 and $8,000 annually," Sommers-Flanagan explained. "Which, as we all know, is not enough money to educate a child for a year under any circumstances, let alone a student who may have special needs and may have particularity expensive special needs depending on the circumstances."

School voucher measures are growing across the nation, 29 states now having some form of them. The suit to block the Montana bill was filed in state court in Helena.

In addition to the critics' standard argument which holds funding Educational Savings Accounts with state education money comes at the expense of public K-12 classrooms, Sommers-Flanagan added the accounts will not make enough money available to adequately fund special-needs students anyway.

"It's a lose-lose situation," Sommers-Flanagan contended. "It's incredibly harmful. It appears just to be a gambit to try to privatize public money and to send it to vendors and to folks who have no accountability and no responsibility to genuinely meet the needs of kids who have disabilities in Montana."

Supporters have said they can do a better job educating their own kids than the state can because they understand the students' strengths and weaknesses.

New Mexico is taking a deep dive into its funding of public colleges and universities to determine if inequities need to be addressed. The Higher Education Sustainability Study will review and recommend changes to the formula used to fund higher ed.

Gerald Hoehne, director, Capital Outlay Division with the New Mexico Higher Education Department, said it will look at possible inequities among the full range of sectors - from colleges and universities to research institutions, independent community colleges and branch campuses.

"The differences between community colleges and research institutions - those differences have come into how they're funded. So, this study gives us an opportunity to look at that in more detail," he said.

Community colleges disproportionately serve low-income students and students of color, but New Mexico is among the majority of states where two-year institutions receive thousands of dollars less in education revenue per student enrolled than four-year institutions, according to a 2020 study by the Center for American Progress.

Hoehne expected study results to be available by mid-October ahead of the 2025 legislative session, so lawmakers have insight and can make changes they feel are needed. The Legislature earmarked $187 million for higher education in 2024 - more than double last year's investment and one of the largest investments in higher education in state history. Hoene said an initiative within the study will look at how New Mexico's funding compares to other states.

"To understand if there is different ways in which other states are addressing the different types of institutions and how we potentially may be able to incorporate any changes to our process to address those differences," he continued.

The National Center for Higher Education Management Systems is conducting the equity study on behalf of the state.