Originally Posted by Bostonian's gov news release
... equal opportunity and equal access

Equal opportunity does not mean equal results. Here is an analogy to sports, because people are inclined top accept differences among individuals athletically: Each Olympian may have equal opportunity to win, they may have equal access to the ice, running track, or ski slope to demonstrate their strength, endurance, and skill. What differs is the individual, including their qualification times... or whether their best efforts did not qualify to make the team and they will begin applying their accumulated grit, resilience, and perseverance to other endeavors.

Originally Posted by Bostonian's gov news release
... addressing the underrepresentation of African American students in AP and higher level courses... Encourage students at all of the district's elementary, middle, and high schools to aspire to attend college, and to participate in AP and higher level courses.
Instilling the growth mindset and a sense of empowerment from taking personal responsibility for their educational successes and failures, and offering pre-AP courses to sample the rigor and determine areas of interest may be helpful. Developing a library of kid-friendly books about various careers may also help students develop the skill of thinking long-term about their future rather than focusing on today. Learning to develop and revise plans is a life skill which some learn by osmosis and others may benefit from direct teaching.

Encouraging students to look at the websites of various colleges to see what courses are typical for various degrees, create a sample schedule for freshman year, then read the course descriptions for each of these courses may be an eye-opening assignment to manage their expectations. Collecting this information into a report folder to present to the class may help each student see their middle school and high school courses clearly as mapped to their planned future course of study. Having this as a yearly assignment throughout middle school and high school may also demonstrate that refining scheduling is a reiterative process, and that different students have created different schedules or paths to their goals. This may be their antelope, sparking their desire to run at full speed (reference to Stephanie Tolan, Is It A Cheetah?)

Our inner city schools are an absolute treasure trove of untapped potential, in need of antelopes, being fed zoo chow.