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Closing an Opportunity Gap: How a Modest Program Made a Difference

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Education and Urban Society

Published online on

Abstract

Chicago Public Schools and school districts throughout the country are seeking new ways to foster racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic equity as desegregation consent decrees are being lifted. One of Chicago’s selective enrollment high schools drafted parents, educators, administrators, and community representatives to address its own diversity concerns and to examine the barriers to high-quality educational opportunities district-wide. As a result, this school began a pilot program that explored opportunities for bolstering the recruitment and nurturing the success of low income and minority students, and these efforts eventually contributed to policy changes in the overall district. The authors describe the program’s development and implementation and suggest it as one model for closing the "opportunity gap."