Universities recognized for strengthening pathways to higher education from underserved high schools
A novel digital pathways effort that involves Stanford and a dozen other leading universities was honored last month for its success in opening access to higher education for high school students from low-income communities.
Carnegie Corporation of New York and the National Education Equity Lab hosted the Nov. 20 event in Manhattan to spotlight the initiative’s achievement to date: More than 33,000 students from Title I high schools nationwide have enrolled in college-credit-bearing courses since 2019, thanks to this work.
The Ed Equity Lab, with funding from Carnegie and other philanthropies, has established a network spanning 32 states and 130 school districts. The Lab has helped universities bring their courses into high school classrooms via a hybrid model. This approach uses recorded lectures, live lessons via Zoom, in-person class work with teachers, and a range of digital materials and tools.
“This is one of the most impactful efforts to improve student opportunity we have seen in the last 25 years,” said one of the event’s keynote speakers, Robert Balfanz, Distinguished Professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education, co-director of the Center for Social Organization of Schools, and director of the Everyone Graduates Center.
Balfanz, who is engaged in an ongoing longitudinal study of the Ed Equity Lab program, cited several reasons that this national effort has impressed him. “The Ed Equity Lab is not only going into big city Title I schools who have limited participation in AP and dual enrollment, but they are also going to Title I schools in more isolated communities and towns that historically have not been connected with national universities and colleges,” he told the audience, noting that the Ed Equity Lab has “been able to scale really crazy” while improving outcomes. “Everybody who touches it likes it,” he added. “Students say this had a profound effect on me.”
The event showcased the role that universities are playing in providing courses for the Ed Equity Lab network and their commitment to expanding access to higher education on their own campuses and at large. Carnegie Corporation President Dame Louise Richardson moderated a panel with Barnard College President Laura Rosenbury, Brown University President Christina Paxson, Cornell University Interim President Michael Kotlikoff, Howard University President Ben Vinson, III, and Wesleyan University President Michael Roth.
Stanford Vice Provost for Digital Education Matthew Rascoff attended the event on behalf of Stanford President Jonathan Levin and Provost Jenny Martinez.
“These universities are advancing the public good beyond their gates,” Dame Richardson said, crediting their work with the Ed Equity Lab for “actively strengthening our democracy by helping to level the playing field in low-income high schools across the nation.”
Stanford Digital Education, a unit in the Office of the Provost, has offered digital pathways courses in partnership with Ed Equity Lab since fall 2021, including a computer science course, an ethics course, and a course on the philosophies of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. By the end of this academic year 2,200 high school students will have taken Stanford pathways courses for credit.
Among them was Jordy Almonte, now a senior at Urban Assembly Early College High School of Emergency Medicine in lower Manhattan, who was one of three students selected to speak at the event. Almonte has taken five courses that Ed Equity Lab brought to his school, including the Stanford ethics course, Searching Together for the Common Good.
In his remarks, he said that he “jumped on the Lab courses when I saw an email” about them a few years ago. “I would have never even thought of ‘Oh I’m able to take a course at Cornell or at ASU [Arizona State University]’ — that would have never crossed my mind.” He noted that the credentials have helped him to advance his education and be selected for a prestigious national award, never given before in his high school. “I was able to say I took a course at Stanford,” he said.
Top photograph names (from left to right): Barnard College President Laura Rosenbury; LaVerne Evans Srinivasan, vice president, Carnegie Corporation of New York; Cornell University Interim President Michael Kotlikoff; Judge Ann Claire Williams (Ret.), trustee, Carnegie Corporation of New York; Leslie Cornfeld, CEO and founder, National Education Equity Lab; Howard University President Ben Vinson, III; University of Pennsylvania Provost John L. Jackson, Robert Balfanz, Distinguished Professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education; Stanford Vice Provost for Digital Education Matthew Rascoff; and Brown University President Christina Paxson
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