On the topic of access to elite institutions - and their attendant opportunities - for gifted students, here's an interesting NYT opinion piece on supply throttling of pedigreed post-secondary access.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/06/opinion/stanford-admissions-campus.htmlKey quotes
Here’s a revolutionary idea: A top private university like Princeton or Yale (or perhaps a renowned college like Amherst or Swarthmore) should open a new campus.
“We’d like to diversify, but we can’t find enough qualified applicants,” top-ranked universities lament. But that shopworn excuse has been demolished by the recently published results of a program that enrolled more than 300 juniors and seniors from high-poverty high schools in credit-bearing college courses.
Eighty-nine percent of students who completed the course passed a Harvard class that is identical — same paper assignments, same final exam — to the Harvard Yard version. Nearly two-thirds received an A or B. Although the students who earned those A’s and B’s would probably flourish at an Ivy League school, few of them will get the chance.
A quick summary of the Equity Lab pilot project's results:
https://edequitylab.org/wp-content/...Preliminary-Fall-Results-At-A-Glance.pdfA poignant quote on perspective and sense of opportunity from a lab participant from New Mexico:
“I learned how to push myself, and work and think, in ways I never had to before...and I learned that I can
do college-level work. Teachers had told me that, but now I see it and believe it and want more. In that way, this class probably changed my life.”
Personal comment: I'd like to see this pilot expanded across disciplines, particularly STEM and business. This was also a Harvard Extension School course, so I'd be curious to see coding to compare it to its on-campus analog. Could be a promising avenue of study...!
This reminds me of the "Measure for Measure" quote, "Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win, By fearing to attempt." If we can remove the scales from less-privileged students' eyes (and those of educators who would deny them access to these learning experiences) and expose them to the opportunity of one or more challenging courses, what grand attempts might be made?
#dailyinspiration #audaciousgoals
