The project unearthed a vast array of successful efforts throughout the United States to connect African American, Latino, and American Indian students with science and engineering. A subsequent project concentrated on successful efforts to do the same for girls and women. In general, my colleagues and I discovered, these efforts--or "interventions"--had been developed to ensure that at least a few people from underrepresented groups could survive the inhospitable educational system to become scientists, engineers, and health professionals.
For K-12 students, the interventions often took the form of measures created specifically to help them fit into and negotiate the existing educational system, no matter how flawed it might be. At no educational level, however, did these efforts challenge the institutions themselves to change.
Over the years, those of us interested in reform programs have become convinced that we can no longer afford to select only a few students to guide through ...
