A recent letter to the editor published in the New York Times, under the headline “Affirmative Action: Looking at the Data,” cited AERA’s amicus brief in the Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin case to dispel the “mismatch theory.” In the letter, William Kidder, assistant provost at the University of California, Riverside, wrote that, in fact, “at the undergraduate level, a large body of evidence shows that attending a more selective university is associated with net gains in African-Americans’ and Latinos’ graduation rates.”

Two presidential sessions at the AERA Annual Meeting will address these issues in greater detail. One is structured in part as a teach-in for researchers; the second, titled “The Fisher Case, Diversity in Higher Education, and Social Science Confronting the Challenges to Affirmative Action” (April 29), will explore mismatch and other high-profile topics that are before the Supreme Court. See also the forthcoming April issue of the Educational Researcher with a special section on the Fisher case and scientific research.