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<\/p>\nWASHINGTON \u2014 When Di\u2019Zhon Chase\u2019s teacher told her that she might be able to enroll in a Harvard University class, she was skeptical \u2014 and not just because the Ivy League school was more than 2,000 miles from her hometown, Gallup, N.M.<\/p>\n
\u201cHarvard isn\u2019t part of the conversation \u2014 you don\u2019t even hear that word in Gallup,\u201d Ms. Chase said. \u201cIt isn\u2019t something that adults expect out of us. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s because they don\u2019t believe in us; it\u2019s just so much is stacked against us.\u201d<\/p>\n
But in fall 2019, Ms. Chase joined a small group of students across the country in an experiment that sought to redefine what is possible for students who share her underprivileged background. Through an initiative started by a New York-based nonprofit, the National Education Equity Lab, hundreds of students are virtually rattling the gates of some of the nation\u2019s most elite colleges by excelling in their credit-bearing courses before they leave high school.<\/p>\n
The Equity Lab enrolled more than 300 11th and 12th graders from high-poverty high schools in 11 cities across the country in a Harvard course, \u201cPoetry in America: The City From Whitman to Hip-Hop,\u201d taught by a renowned professor, Elisa New. The high schoolers met the same rigorous standards of the course created for Harvard\u2019s admitted students \u2014 they listened to lectures, took quizzes and completed essays, and they were graded by the same standards.<\/p>\n
The goal of the pilot program was \u201creimagining and expanding the roles and responsibilities of universities,\u201d and encouraging them to pursue star students from underprivileged backgrounds \u201cwith the same enthusiasm and success with which they identify top athletes,\u201d said Leslie Cornfeld, the Equity Lab\u2019s founder and chief executive.<\/p>\n
For decades, programs such as QuestBridge have tried to connect promising underprivileged students to elite higher education, with some success, but the Equity Lab effort is less about matchmaking than challenging students academically, giving them confidence and preparing them for the rigors of competitive colleges.<\/p>\n
The early results, Ms. Cornfeld said, are clear: \u201cOur nation\u2019s talent is evenly distributed; opportunity is not.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a sense, the experiment is calling out the higher-education elite, who have long maintained that the underrepresentation of students from underserved communities at their institutions is a problem of preparation that is beyond their control.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of these schools talk this game, \u2018We want diversity, but we can\u2019t find these kids,\u2019 and this proves they can build a pipeline,\u201d said Robert Balfanz, a research professor at the Center for the Social Organization of Schools at Johns Hopkins University\u2019s School of Education.<\/p>\n
Of the students who completed the course in fall 2019 \u2014 92 percent of whom were students of color, 84 percent of whom qualified for free lunch \u2014 89 percent passed, earning four credits from Harvard Extension School that are widely accepted by other colleges. To date, 86 percent of such students have passed courses and earned credits offered by an ever-expanding consortium in the experiment, which now includes Yale, Cornell, Howard and Arizona State as well as the University of Connecticut.<\/p>\n
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The experiment has given the high-profile gatekeepers of opportunity a gut check.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t realize equity in higher education unless we expand opportunities upstream, at the K-12 level,\u201d Martha E. Pollack, the president of Cornell University, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Jeremiah Quinlan, the dean of undergraduate admissions at Yale University, said the partnership would add a new set of academic measurements \u2014 college course grades and the recommendations of teaching fellows \u2014 beyond grade point averages, application essays and standardized test scores.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have not traditionally taken students from certain communities and certain high schools,\u201d Mr. Quinlan said, \u201cand that\u2019s generations of work that we need to overcome.\u201d<\/p>\n
This semester, the Equity Lab has grown to serve about 1,500 students from 75 of the nation\u2019s poorest schools in 35 cities. Several school districts and universities are vying to join the consortium, which has a goal of expanding to serve 10,000 students by 2022.<\/p>\n
Ms. Chase, 19, was among the 63 percent of students in the pilot program who completed the Harvard course with an A or B. She had been planning to follow other graduates of her high school, which predominantly serves students from the Navajo Nation, to a state college.<\/p>\n
Instead, she is a freshman at Columbia University.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had the dreams, the aspirations, but there was no, \u2018I can really do that \u2014 go to these places where all these people do so many amazing things,\u2019\u201d Ms. Chase said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I can do this,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI see college as hope for my people, and for my community.\u201d<\/p>\n
Di'Zhon Chase, 19, Gallup, N.M.<\/p>\n
The Equity Lab program differs from college-credit-bearing study programs available to many high school students because the effort is not limited by geography or handpicked access. An analysis of the most recent federal civil rights data by the Community College Research Center, part of Columbia University\u2019s Teachers College, shows white students enroll in traditional dual-enrollment courses at twice the rate of Black students. And Black and Native American students had the lowest participation rates in Advanced Placement courses, the most widely used proxy for college readiness.<\/p>\n
While the classes are free for students, they cost educators $250 a head \u2014 though some courses, like Harvard\u2019s, could cost as much as $1,800 for the semester \u2014 and school districts are either footing the bill or using a combination of state, local and philanthropic funds.<\/p>\n
The model also includes a web of academic support, including college advisers, mentors and high school teachers who help teach the material.<\/p>\n
The 15 percent of students who were not successful were as important to the model\u2019s development as the ones who succeeded, said Ms. Cornfeld, a former federal civil rights prosecutor and an adviser in the Obama administration. Of the 343 who started, 23 students dropped the pilot course and 43 students were counseled to withdraw. Those students indicated the experience taught them the rigors of time management with difficult course loads.<\/p>\n
Mr. Balfanz said the consortium was leveraging only what had been at colleges\u2019 fingertips all along: talent and technology.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey put a lot of powerful pieces together, projected them to the most remote four corners of America, and it works,\u201d he said. \u201cWe should be ashamed of ourselves that this is not available to everybody, that\u2019s it\u2019s some exotic idea.\u201d<\/p>\n
Robert Runcie, the superintendent of Broward County Public Schools in South Florida, had been lobbying for two years to join the Equity Lab and bring a Yale course, \u201cPsychology and the Good Life,\u201d to his students. The district, which is still reeling from the Parkland high school shooting in 2018, joined the consortium this year, enrolling 240 students in six of its low-income high schools who began taking the course this month.<\/p>\n
Laurie Santos<\/em>, a Yale professor of psychology who teaches the well-being class, said it was inspired by the depression and anxiety she saw on campus. She recognizes herself in the high schoolers in her class: She too had to adjust from a large, public high school to Harvard.<\/p>\n \u201cI know what it\u2019s like to be at a place where you feel like you don\u2019t belong,\u201d Dr. Santos said.<\/p>\n Donovan Blount, 17, of Far Rockaway, Queens, in New York, always had college aspirations. But his mother had dropped out of college, and his father had never graduated from high school.<\/p>\n \u201cI knew I was smart,\u201d he said, \u201cbut I was never told where it would take me.\u201d<\/p>\n He started high school at a technology-focused school in Brooklyn, but transportation was a challenge. Back at his local high school, he would finish his work for the only available computer science course so early that he would get extra credit helping other students. He took Advanced Placement courses through high school, including calculus.<\/p>\n \u201cI knew I was smart, but I was never told where it would take me.\u201d<\/p>\n Donovan Blount, 17, Queens, N.Y.<\/p>\n But the one measure available to test his college readiness \u2014 his A.P. tests \u2014 deflated him. \u201cWhen I got back my 2s,\u201d he recalled, \u201cI was like, \u2018OK, maybe I don\u2019t have the college ability I thought I had.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n He took the Arizona State University class \u201cIntroduction to Engineering\u201d through the Equity Lab \u2014 and ranked No. 1 out of the 50 in the course.<\/p>\n \u201cI just thought, \u2018I can do this,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Mr. Blount went on to the Harvard poetry course and is currently enrolled in his second Cornell course, \u201cBig Data for Big Policy Problems.\u201d He also added a few more colleges to his application list \u2014 Cornell, Duke, Columbia and Howard \u2014 which had previously been dominated by State University of New York schools.<\/p>\n \u201cI now see college as fighting against a set of circumstances that were created to keep me where I am,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Jose Estevez, 17, of Buffalo, finished the \u201cPoetry in America\u201d course last semester with an 85, after failing his final exam.<\/p>\n But the affirmation of its professor still sticks with him. In December, at a closing ceremony for the course, Dr. New told the group, \u201cCredit is such valuable currency, and you worked so hard to get it during the most challenging year any of us can remember having ever experienced.\u201d<\/p>\n She added, \u201cThe most important preparation for college, I think, may not be the A.P. courses, the books you read, but really the challenges that you met with resiliency.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I went through in life, I don\u2019t want my future family to go through.\u201d<\/p>\n Jose Estevez, 17, Buffalo<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s the Harvard professor,\u201d Mr. Estevez said after the ceremony, \u201ctalking to us and telling us congratulations. She\u2019s right there on the screen telling us that we did it. It\u2019s insane.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Estevez was admitted to the Equity Lab largely based on the challenges he had overcome \u2014 growing up in public housing with his mother and trying to fill the shoes of his father, a handyman, who died of diabetes while trying to obtain a G.E.D.<\/p>\n Bahiyyah Muhammad, an assistant professor at Howard, said Equity Lab high school students brought much-needed inspiration to her \u201cPrinciples of Criminal Justice\u201d course last semester \u2014 and some authentic understanding of the course\u2019s content.<\/p>\n \u201cThey really brought this idea that people on college campuses \u2014 they just aren\u2019t dreaming anymore,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople thought it was going to be more work for us, but I thought I was going to have to get on my game,\u201d Dr. Muhammad said. \u201cThey were going to challenge me, question me, and they\u2019re close to it, so I can\u2019t be coming in with all that theory.\u201d<\/p>\n This semester, Howard began offering a new course, \u201cEnvironmental Studies and Justice,\u201d for college credit.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve had teachers tell me that I wouldn\u2019t be anything, that I was just a stereotype.\u201d<\/p>\n Latisha Jones, 17, Flint, Mich.<\/p>\n Among the students enrolled is Latisha Jones, 17, of Flint, Mich., who knows the topic intimately: She lived through the city\u2019s lead water crisis.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fact that I can do this, a girl from Flint, the place with the dirty water, it really makes me feel empowered,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Ms. Jones, whose dream schools include Howard, was the only student in her school who opted to take the course this semester. She said that reflected the expectations of her and her peers.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve had teachers tell me that I wouldn\u2019t be anything, that I was just a stereotype,\u201d she said. \u201cI know everyone isn\u2019t as strong enough to believe that they\u2019re better than that. If I can do this, I can pave the way for my community.\u201d<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2021\/02\/16\/us\/politics\/00dc-ivy-highschool4\/merlin_183456963_776d0c9e-449f-49e0-818f-9622927c66dc-jumbo.jpg\")
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