indiana bar exam

UCLA School of Law professor Richard Sander stirred up a hornet's nest in 2004 with a study suggesting affirmative action might be responsible for black students' high failure rates on bar exams around the country.

Three years later, an undaunted Sander is poking the beehive again. This time he's accusing the State Bar of California of caving in to liberal activists by refusing to work with him in possibly proving his unpopular premise once and for all. Sander said he had asked the State Bar to OK research using its historic data on past bar exam scores, including the race and academic credentials for each applicant, though not individual names.

"We know this is a controversial issue, and I was prepared that they might turn us down," Sander said last week. "But I was shocked at the way they did it. ... It suggests that backers of current affirmative action programs are afraid of the facts."

The State Bar's Committee of Bar Examiners rejected Sander's request in late June, saying bar applicants offer information like their race believing it will only be used for studies related to the exam.

Sander said he has thought about asking for reconsideration. He has also thought about approaching a state legislator for help and said last week that two major California law firms, which he declined to name, are weighing whether to file a pro bono lawsuit in an attempt to force the State Bar to comply.

Some of Sander's strongest support so far has come from the Washington, D.C.-based U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, a bipartisan organization that collects and studies information on discrimination.

"We believe that it is important to encourage research on this data in order to better understand the important questions raised by Dr. Sander's research," five of the eight commissioners wrote in a letter to State Bar President Sheldon Sloan before the rejection. "Detailed data in the public archives has an invaluable role to play in advancing knowledge and reform in this area."

The commission went a step further last month when it released a report recommending further research on racial disparities in law schools. In that report, the commission specifically called on Congress and the individual states to require bar officials to release the type of information Sander and his associates are seeking.

"What professor Sander has shown is extremely important," said Gail Heriot, a commission member and a professor at the University of San Diego School of Law. "We can't say for sure whether or not his conclusions are correct. That will take more study."

THE STUDY

In his 2004 study published in The Stanford Law Review, Sander used bar exam failure and passage rates obtained for a national study by the nonprofit Law School Admissions Council to assert that race-based preferences had opened the doors of elite law schools to minority students who were academically unprepared. As a result of that "mismatch," Sander postulated, there were about 8 percent fewer black attorneys in 2004 than there would have been if law schools had employed color-blind admissions practices.

Sander's study concluded that black students who attended less-elite law schools -- for which they were more academically fit -- were half as likely as their counterparts at prestigious law schools to fail the bar exam on their first attempt.

Sander concedes that his findings are even troubling to himself.

"I've been a civil rights activist most of my life," he said. "I have a son who is African-American. So I deeply believe in the idea of fostering integration and greater equality of outcomes in our society. But I've got grave doubts that affirmative action in higher education is the way to do that."

Many civil rights groups and some academics savaged Sander's findings, calling them statistically flawed and simplistic. For example, Bill Kidder, special assistant to the vice president for student affairs at the University of California's Office of the President, this year criticized Sander for limiting the research to bar exam candidates and excluding law students who don't even graduate.

Even Sander agreed his study wasn't conclusive, so he and three other professional associates asked the State Bar of California for help. Sander said they only wanted the State Bar to use its data to test his hypothesis, but State Bar documents -- and outside legal scholars -- have characterized it as a request for release of information to Sander and his colleagues.

In their request, first pitched about a year ago, Sander -- along with Stephen Klein, senior partner in the consulting firm GANSK & Associates; law professor William Henderson of Indiana University; and economics professor E. Douglass Williams of Sewanee University in Tennessee -- said failure and passage rates alone don't provide a complete picture. Vikram Amar, a professor at Hastings College of the Law who is also participating in the study, joined Sander, Henderson and Williams in protesting the State Bar's denial.

"Bar scores are a measure of what law graduates have actually learned," Sander and his associates told State Bar officials. "This allows one to study not only how the 'mismatch' might affect bar passage, but also how it might affect actual learning."

State Bar admissions personnel devoted several months to weighing the pros and cons of the request.

But earlier this summer, the Committee of Bar Examiners, which oversees the California exam, turned Sander down, saying test applicants' personal data isn't collected for use by third parties.

"Applicants are advised that gender and racial/ethnic data are collected for the purpose of studies conducted by the committee as it determines are necessary to ensure the validity and reliability of the examination process," Gayle Murphy, the State Bar's senior executive for admissions, told Sander and his cohorts in a July 31 letter. "Applicants are not advised that the personal information they provide may be shared with others for purposes unrelated to the bar examination."

(Three of the 12 committee members present for the meeting voted to release the information, but those three either declined to comment or didn't return a telephone call for this story.)

In a phone interview last week, Murphy insisted the committee hadn't knuckled under to political pressure from affirmative action advocates.

"We're not against people doing research," she said. "And nothing prohibits [Sander] from contacting the law schools directly or even the students themselves."

The State Bar has the backing of Michael Yaki, one of two members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights who dissented from last month's commission report. A partner in Jeffer, Mangels, Butler & Marmaro's San Francisco office, Yaki accused the commission of being dominated by Republicans eager to eliminate all race-based programs.

"To follow the reasoning of the majority," Yaki wrote in his dissent, "we might as well hang a sign saying 'blacks and other minorities need not apply' on the doorways of Yale, Harvard and other elite schools."

In a telephone interview last week, Yaki applauded the State Bar's decision not to cooperate with Sander.

"Aside from the fact [the information would] be misused through the usage of poor statistics, poor methodology and even more suspect analysis," he said, "it is the State Bar's prerogative to decide whether and to whom it should disclose data on people who pass the bar."

Equally opposed to Sander was the Long Island-based Society of American Law Teachers, which called his proposed study a "radical departure" from the bar exam's stated purpose of measuring minimum competence to practice law.

"If it turns out that individual bar exam scores are used to indicate that minority applicants have not 'learned the law' as well as their white counterparts at similar schools," co-Presidents Eileen Kaufman and Tayyab Mahmud wrote, "then the California State Bar may unwittingly contribute to the misperceptions already confronting minority bar applicants and attorneys."

Sander said last week that the State Bar's rejection has essentially killed any further study because California is the only state that has routinely compiled detailed student information for a quarter of a century.

Last month, Sander sent a letter to Murphy accusing the organization of not being forthright about its reasons for rejecting his request.

He pointed out that in 1994 and 1995, the State Bar released the names of students who passed or failed the bar exam for studies by the Law School Admissions Council and the American Bar Foundation.

"All of this," he wrote, "suggests the strong possibility that the actual reason for rejecting our request is that our proposed study is 'controversial.'"

In response, Murphy told The Recorder last week that law school students signed individual releases for those studies and that several state Supreme Courts supported that particular research. Those studies differed in that they didn't broach race or affirmative action, only bar passage rates.

The Committee of Bar Examiners' decision disappointed some legal scholars, who thought a study on black students' exam failure rate had merit. Earlier this year, 22 law professors from around the country sent a letter to the State Bar supporting Sander's request, saying his study could let law schools know whether current practices hurt black students' chances.

John Steele, a special counsel in Fish & Richardson's Redwood City, Calif., office who has taught law school courses on the legal profession, said Monday that he stands by a letter he sent the State Bar earlier this year in support of Sander's study.

"I can assure you from firsthand experience," he wrote in that letter, "that the problem in understanding and combating exclusion is the absence of careful statistical studies, not the existence of them.

"In the absence of well-constructed studies based on sound data," he added, "ignorance reigns." A law degree isn't necessarily a license to print money these days.

For graduates of elite law schools, prospects have never been better. Big law firms this year boosted their starting salaries to as high as $160,000. But the majority of law-school graduates are suffering from a supply-and-demand imbalance that's suppressing pay and job growth. The result: Graduates who don't score at the top of their class are struggling to find well-paying jobs to make payments on law-school debts that can exceed $100,000. Some are taking temporary contract work, reviewing documents for as little as $20 an hour, without benefits. And many are blaming their law schools for failing to warn them about the dark side of the job market.


The law degree that Scott Bullock gained in 2005 from Seton Hall University -- where he says he ranked in the top third of his class -- is a "waste," he says. Some former high-school friends are earning considerably more as plumbers and electricians than the $50,000-a-year Mr. Bullock is making as a personal-injury attorney in Manhattan. To boot, he is paying off $118,000 in law-school debt.


"Unfortunately, some find the practice of law is not for them," Seton Hall's associate dean, Kathleen Boozang, said through a spokeswoman. "However, it is our experience that a legal education is a tremendous asset for a variety of professional paths."

A slack in demand appears to be part of the problem. The legal sector, after more than tripling in inflation-adjusted growth between 1970 and 1987, has grown at an average annual inflation-adjusted rate of 1.2% since 1988, or less than half as fast as the broader economy, according to Commerce Department data.

LAW BLOG


Join a discussion on the state of the legal market.Some practice areas have declined in recent years: Personal-injury and medical-malpractice cases have been undercut by state laws limiting class-action suits, out-of-state plaintiffs and payouts on damages. Securities class-action litigation has declined in part because of a buoyant stock market.

On the supply end, more lawyers are entering the work force, thanks in part to the accreditation of new law schools and an influx of applicants after the dot-com implosion earlier this decade. In the 2005-06 academic year, 43,883 Juris Doctor degrees were awarded, up from 37,909 for 2001-02, according to the American Bar Association. Universities are starting up more law schools in part for prestige but also because they are money makers. Costs are low compared with other graduate schools and classrooms can be large. Since 1995, the number of ABA-accredited schools increased by 11%, to 196.

Evidence of a squeezed market among the majority of private lawyers in the U.S., who work as sole practitioners or at small firms, is growing. A survey of about 650 Chicago lawyers published in the 2005 book "Urban Lawyers" found that between 1975 and 1995 the inflation-adjusted average income of the top 25% of earners, generally big-firm lawyers, grew by 22% -- while income for the other 75% actually dropped.

According to the Internal Revenue Service, the inflation-adjusted average income of sole practitioners has been flat since the mid-1980s. A recent survey showed that out of nearly 600 lawyers at firms of 10 lawyers or fewer in Indiana, wages for the majority only kept pace with inflation or dropped in real terms over the past five years.


The news isn't any better for the 14% of new lawyers who go into government or join public-interest firms. Inflation-adjusted starting salaries for graduates who go to work for public-interest firms or the government rose 4% and 8.6%, respectively, between 1994 and 2006, according to the National Association for Law Placement, which aggregates graduate surveys from law schools. That compares with at least an 11% jump in the median family income during the same period, according to the Census Bureau. Graduates who become in-house company lawyers, about 9%, have fared better: Their salaries rose by nearly 14% during the same period.

Many students "simply cannot earn enough income after graduation to support the debt they incur," wrote Richard Matasar, dean of New York Law School, in 2005, concluding that, "We may be reaching the end of a golden era for law schools."

Meanwhile, the prospects for big-firm lawyers are growing richer. While offering robust minimum salaries, those firms are paying astronomical amounts to their stars.

Now, debate is intensifying among law-school academics over the integrity of law schools' marketing campaigns. Defenders argue that the legal profession always has been openly and proudly a meritocracy: Top entrance-exam scores help win admittance to top schools where top students win jobs at top firms. Even the system that is used to issue law-school grades -- a curve that pits student against student -- reflects the law profession's competitiveness.

David Burcham, dean of Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, considered second-tier, says the school makes no guarantees to students that they will obtain jobs. He says it is problematic that big firms only interview the top of the class, "but that's the nature of the employment market; it's never been different."

For the majority of students and alumni, he says, Loyola "turned out to be a good investment."

Yet economic data suggest that prospects have grown bleaker for all but the top students, and now a number of law-school professors are calling for the distribution of more-accurate employment information. Incoming students are "mesmerized by what's happening in big firms, but clueless about what's going on in the bottom half of the profession," says Richard Sander, a law professor at the University of California-Los Angeles who has studied the legal job market.

"Prospective students need solid comparative data on employment outcomes, [but] very few law schools provide such data," adds Andrew Morriss, a law professor at the University of Illinois who has studied the market for new lawyers.

Students entering law school have little way of knowing how tight a job market they might face. The only employment data that many prospective students see comes from school-promoted surveys that provide a far-from-complete portrait of graduate experiences. Tulane University, for example, reports to U.S. News & World Report magazine, which publishes widely watched annual law-school rankings, that its law-school graduates entering the job market in 2005 had a median salary of $135,000. But that is based on a survey that only 24% of that year's graduates completed, and those who did so likely represent the cream of the class, a Tulane official concedes.

On its Web site, the school currently reports an average starting salary of $96,356 for graduates in private practice but doesn't include what percentage of graduates reported salaries for the survey.


"It's within most individuals' nature to keep that information private, unless it's a high amount," says Carlos Dávila-Caballero, assistant dean for career development at Tulane, who adds that his office tells prospective students to use the median figure as a guide because starting salaries vary widely.

Academics who have studied new-lawyer salaries say that the graduate surveys of many law schools are skewed by higher response rates from the most successful students. The National Association for Law Placement, which aggregates and publishes national data based on those surveys, concedes that it can't vouch for their accuracy. "We can't validate the figures; we have to rely on schools to report to us accurately," says Judy Collins, NALP's director of research.

A prospective student studying NALP data might conclude that the study of law is a sure path to financial security. For 2006 graduates who entered private practice, or nearly 60%, NALP shows a national median salary of $95,000, a rise of 40%, adjusted for inflation, from 1994 graduates.

The NALP data also show that the percentage of graduates employed in private practice has been steady, fluctuating between 55% and 58% for more than a decade. But in law schools' self-published employment data, "private practice" doesn't necessarily mean jobs that improve long-term career prospects, for that category can include lawyers working under contract without benefits, such as Israel Meth. A 2005 graduate of Brooklyn Law School, he earns about $30 an hour as a contract attorney reviewing legal documents for big firms. He says he uses 60% of his paycheck to pay off student loans -- $100,000 for law school on top of $100,000 for the bachelor's degree he received from Columbia University.

A glossy admissions brochure for Brooklyn Law School, considered second-tier, reports a median salary for recent graduates at law firms of well above $100,000. But that figure doesn't reflect all incomes of graduates at firms; fewer than half of graduates at firms responded to the survey, the school reported to U.S. News. On its Web site, the school reports that 41% of last year's graduates work for firms of more than 100 lawyers, but it fails to mention that that percentage includes temporary attorneys, often working for hourly wages without benefits, Joan King, director of the school's career center, concedes.

Ms. King says she believes the figures for her school accurately represent the broader graduating class. She says the number of contract attorneys is "minimal" but declined to give a number.

The University of Richmond School of Law in the last couple of years started to be more open about its employment statistics; it now breaks out how many of its grads work as contract attorneys. Of 57 2006 graduates working in private practice, for example, seven were contract employees nine months after graduation. Schools "should be sharing more information than they are now," says Joshua Burstein, associate dean for career services who put the changes in place. "Most people graduating from law school," he says, "are not going to be earning big salaries."

Adding to the burden for young lawyers: Tuition growth at law schools has almost tripled the rate of inflation over the past 20 years, leading to higher debt for students and making starting salaries for most graduates less manageable, especially in expensive cities. Graduates in 2006 of public and private law schools had borrowed an average of $54,509 and $83,181, up 17% and 18.6%, respectively, from the amount borrowed by 2002 graduates, according to the American Bar Association.

Students taking on such debt may feel reassured by incessant press reports of big firms scrambling to hire and keep associates. Making headlines this year was a bump up in big-firm starting salaries to $160,000 from $145,000 in many cities.

And indeed, some law graduates of lower-tier schools do find high-paying private-practice law jobs. In recent years big firms have boomed thanks in part to the globalization of business and Wall Street deal making; firms have been casting a wider net for new lawyers, though they still generally restrict their recruiting at lower-tier schools to students at the very top of the class or on the law review. Some students have leads on a job at a family member's or friend's practice.

But just as common -- and much less publicized -- are experiences such as that of Sue Clark, who this year received her degree from second-tier Chicago-Kent College of Law, one of six law schools in the Chicago area. Despite graduating near the top half of her class, she has been unable to find a job and is doing temp work "essentially as a paralegal," she says. "A lot of people, including myself, feel frustrated about the lack of jobs," she says.

Harold Krent, Chicago-Kent's dean, said it's not uncommon for new lawyers to wait a few months to more than a year to find a job that's a good fit. He added that there is a "small spike" in employment after his school's grads receive their bar-exam results, several months after graduation, because some firms wait until then before hiring.

The market is particularly tough in big cities that boast numerous law schools. Mike Altmann, 29, a graduate of New York University who went to Brooklyn Law School, says he accumulated $130,000 in student-loan debt and graduated in 2002 with no meaningful employment opportunities -- one offer was a $33,000 job with no benefits. So Mr. Altmann became a contract attorney, reviewing electronic documents for big firms for around $20 to $30 an hour, and hasn't been able to find higher-paying work since.

Some un- or underemployed grads are seeking consolation online, where blogs and discussion boards have created venues for shared commiseration that didn't exist before. An anonymous writer called Loyola 2L, purportedly a student at Loyola Law School, who claims the school wasn't straight about employment prospects, has been beating a drum of discontent around the Web in the past year that's sparked thousands of responses, and a fan base. ("2L" stands for second-year law student.) Some thank "L2L" for articulating their plight; others claim L2L should complain less and work more. Loyola's Dean Burcham says he wishes he knew who the student was so he could help the person. "It's expensive to go to law school, and there are times when you second-guess yourself as a student," he says.

Some new lawyers try to hang their own shingle. Matthew Fox Curl graduated in 2004 from second-tier University of Houston in the bottom quarter of his class. After months of job hunting, he took his first job working for a sole practitioner focused on personal injury in the Houston area and made $32,000 in his first year. He quickly found that tort-reform legislation has been "brutal" to Texas plaintiffs' lawyers and last year left the firm to open up his own criminal-defense private practice.

He's making less money than at his last job and has thought about moving back to his parents' house. "I didn't think three years out I'd be uninsured, thinking it's a great day when a crackhead brings me $500."

As I focus on more and more in my rearview mirror, I try to tattoo it with a positive slant: It really is a chance to add to my lifetime's collection of things that are absolutely amazing.

Always leading my list of stunners are (1) People who follow a leader (like Hitler) that obviously is leading them down a path to destruction...how can millions be collectively so blindly dumb? (2) People who have endless money and fame (like Elvis) who throw it away on alcohol or substance abuse...how can they individually be so blindly dumb? (3) Smart people who have it made--or will have it made-- but willingly jeopardize it by illegality...how can they strangely transform and join the dumb ranks?

Group No. 3--we have to call them the cheaters--impales me the most deeply.

In case one, a Hitler-like granted unbridled power can keep the truth from the populace. In case two, the Elvis-type ultimately surrounds him or herself with hangers-on who to maintain their status find it impossible to utter "no."

But contingent three--most visibly the higher-up executives of massive corporations who embezzle, manipulate the books, misrepresent their company's well being and are in the news virtually every week, it seems, rocks my socks off.

A sidebar would be the cheating scandals that have belted some of our military academies at one time or another. In the past school year and closer to home, dental students at Indiana University illegally obtained a computer password that accessed test materials before an exam; 46 of them--nearly half the second year class--were disciplined, suspended or expelled.

Walking away with a military academy diploma or a degree from the IU School of Dentistry is equivalent to having a professional and financial roadway of sugar and spice ahead. A dentist in this country can expect annual earnings in the $130,00 range, according to one listing.

So why did these bright--and bright futured--students, and the executives with eye-popping salaries and perks already in hand--all of them certainly intelligent people--find it necessary to cheat?

In every case, they must go forward not expecting to be caught. Some crime shrinks report that people who deal drugs, rob banks and participate in other dastardly deeds are of the same ilk; but we dismiss that as their having one helluva lot less braincase components than fancy-degreed management, military academy plebes and dentist wannabes.

The "why do they cheat?" debate can twirl around forever, but I think I stumbled onto the answer some months ago among a group dubbed "The Tiny Tigers"--all of them less than five years old.

It was at a tae-kwon-do academy at which my grandson has participated, with glee, for two, sometimes three, times a week ever since he's barely been age three. It was "test day," when the instructor would judge the accuracy and swiftness of an individual's kicking execution, the power and proper placement of hand strikes and other elements of the attacking/self defense martial art.

This is not the assessment of a prideful grandparent, but in every respect, my grandson's performance was considerably more advanced than any of the others. His kicks were on-target stunners, spins like a ballet dancer's, and hand blocks and thrusts of near perfection and a bit frightful. The other students' showings were not remotely comparable.

But at the end, Peyton got the same stripe to be pasted onto his belt as the rest, who were simply lesser skilled, or could not, or chose not, to attend training and prepatory classes as often as he.

Even though, they were granted a "do pass" for a second-tier level of accomplishment.

The academy, first of all, is like most everything now--a business, its lifeblood dependent on healthy numbers of students continuing on board and their parents paying dues of $100-plus each month. Giving students a stripe, a patch, a gold star sticker as reward for some kind of achievement, was encouragement...and also kept them on the roster of money-yielding returnees.

When I read of the IU dentists-in-the-making, I thought back to that Tiny Tiger testing episode.

It underscored that this country has become a culture too manifested with rewarding the ordinary. We have very nearly implanted the notion that just by showing up, we still get a prize, we still get a pat on the head.

The payoff for diligent output has taken on a lesser value, because we have lowered the bar; value too often has become valueless because we reward the "okay."

Eventually, this process creates an environment where fewer and fewer go eyeball to eyeball with the possibility of failure. And when they do, one of the options they choose to avoid it is to cheat.

Consider these:

Large track and field meets at the high school level used to have five places awarded for each event; now, there are eight. In the newspaper I've seen End of Year awards at a small high school; my calculations were that more than 80 percent of the entire student populace got an award, certificate or ribbon for something.

We used to vie to make the school Honor Roll for an excellent grade card; now its Distinction, High Honor, Honor. There are no longer just a valedictorian and salutatorian, but a "top ten" which has grown to a "top 12" in some places.

An observer once commented that when you reward everyone the same, you really reward no one; the person who busted buns all year gets the same paycheck hike as the guy in the next cubicle who slacked off. I'll leave you to kick the tires on what is the ultimate productivity outcome of that scenario.

We think recognizing the substandard is important because someone has postulated that our children will be disappointed and scarred for life if they are inadequately praised.

At the same time, there is almost total non-realization of the long-range consequences when we hand over too much to our youth so they develop no fear of failing themselves. Every outrageously succcessful person I've read about has experienced failure--often multiple times. There is no better teacher.

That's why cheaters seem to be more and more prevalent; they've been stamped with a smiley face for "successes" that are unmeaningful. So when very, very high hurdles are on their path ahead, past history encourages taking a course around them...by cheating.

And worse, when they do tumble, instead of administering a few unforgettable, eye-opening taps with a pipe wrench between the eyes for "learn from this" purposes, it's mom and dad scrambling to get them off the hook. Tens of thousands of dollars on combined attorney fees were shelled out for the IU dental students, who were caught cheating as red-handed as you can be.

Troubling is that some of those parents are members of the dental profession themselves.

Someone else cast another perspective on the subject. He had been a "B" student in college, yet had landed a solid job with a highly-regarded company.

Sometime after escalation through the ranks to responsibility and growing financial rewards, he felt comfortable enough to ask his vice-president boss, "Why did you hire me?"

It was a legitimate inquiry, because graduating alongside him were many available "A" students who never even were interviewed by the company.

The response was enlightening. "We never hire an A student," he confided. "We have found over many years that a B student, when encountering a challenge or difficult situation, will work, will stick with it, until he finds the answer because he has had to do that to earn that B.

"An A student doesn't know how to do that, because for the most part, they simply have never had to do it, and sometimes their frustrations can translate into less than 'A' results."

I've written before that opposition fosters growth, that it can carry over to instilling into our beings core words like integrity, ethics and honesty.

With that in hand, I've astounded myself a lick here by writing a few hundred words about cheating without invoking the name of Barry Bonds.

More on that next week.

Five years ago, I wrote about Maria, a fresh high-school graduate who punctuated her talk about future plans with an occasional teenage giggle.

Though she had a University of Washington acceptance letter, Maria's future was not so bright. Maria ― not her real name ― had been living in the United States illegally since her parents brought her here at age 5. Thanks to the state Legislature's 2006 decision, students in Maria's predicament could pay lower in-state tuition ― she could afford her degree. She graduated with a GPA north of 3.5 and honors in her department.

Now the girl is a shrewd and gutsy woman at the start of her second year at a Puget Sound area law school. Last week when we talked, she requested to do a pre-publication review of my column.

Uh, no! I told the budding lawyer. But I had to smile.

My young friend has matured immensely but still labors under her secret and the nation's stunted immigration system that threatens to dim her future. By all rights, save one, she should have the world by the tail. She is dogged by questions: When she graduates, will she be able to take the bar exam? Will she be able to keep helping low-income people as she's done during her internship this summer for a nonprofit legal-aid organization?

"The DREAM Act is my only hope," said Maria, echoing words she spoke when I checked in with her two years ago. "I hope and pray for it."

The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act of 2007 would give certain young people like Maria a chance to earn legal residency if they enlist in the military or attend college for at least two years. They must have been brought to the United States before age 15, lived here for more than five years, graduated from high school and have good moral character.

America needs comprehensive immigration reform. But after hopelessly stalled attempts this year, it likely won't happen until after the 2008 presidential election. Nevertheless, the DREAM Act ― a less-controversial part of the debate ― should be peeled off.

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., is expected to try that this week. The Senate majority whip expects to offer the measure as an amendment to the defense-authorization bill, his spokeswoman said. The connection is that young people can earn legal status through military service.

Support is bipartisan. Among 26 co-sponsors are prominent Democrats, including presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and both of Washington's senators. Leading Republicans John McCain of Arizona, Richard Lugar of Indiana and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska are on board too.

But the 60 votes needed for anything to pass the Senate these days is a high hurdle, especially with the horse-trading bound to go on over defense spending.

I hope these young people are not lost in the politics. They have beaten the odds, many of them succeeding despite low family incomes and parents without much, if any, formal education themselves. Despite the dimmest of prospects, these kids have not only survived but achieved. In her high school, Maria was an elected student-body officer for three years.

Yet, in the most important ways, they must live in shadows, suffering not from their own actions but their parents' decisions to bring them into the country illegally.

These are kids on your daughter's soccer team and at your son's birthday party. A 2005 Pew Hispanic Center report estimated 1.7 million children under age 18 are living in the United States illegally.

Lucy Bottomley is another who has been caught in her parents' mistakes. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement intended to deport her two days ago ― even though she was just five credits short of her Washington State University bachelor's degree. Brought to the United States at 10 from her native England, the aspiring teacher was stunned to learn at age 20 that her American stepfather never applied for her permanent legal status.

Fortunately, immigration officials relented and deferred her deportation until the New Year. She'll still be sent to a country she barely remembers.

Are Maria and Lucy the kind of young people our society should throw away ― especially after investing in their public education?

I don't think so.

Only the DREAM Act will help Bottomley stay in the country she calls home, where she can teach young people to speak up for themselves as she has; only the DREAM Act will ensure the bright young lawyer, Maria, will be able to speak for low-income people without the means or wherewithal to advocate for themselves.

It's time for their dreams and the dreams of so many others to become a reality.

Correction: In my Sept. 3 column, I misspelled the name of Amanda Zwainz, a Washington State University student majoring in organic farming.