What was being accepted

A large public high school in one of the most under-resourced corridors of a well-funded district. More than half the student body was Black. Advanced coursework enrollment was more than 90% white. There were zero Black male students in 12th grade AP English. Nobody talked about it.

The enrollment system appeared neutral on paper — no test score cutoffs, no formal prerequisites, Just any one  teacher’s initials and everyone was clear that we shouldn’t deny requests. The assumption built into that design: families who wanted their kids in these classes would contact the school and students who wanted access would self-advocate.

What I saw instead

I’d read research in college about schools that used teacher discretion to limit advanced course access. When I got to my first school and saw distinctive race-based segregation across courses, I asked how course admission worked. That was literally all I did: question the assumption driving the outcome. And naturally, it didn’t hold up in spreadsheets that don’t see race, just reading percentiles.

The school was situated in a city shaped by generations of racialized segregation. In that context, the absence of active recruitment functioned as a structural barrier — invisible to anyone not looking for it, entirely legible to anyone who was. No one questioned why Black students weren’t self-advocating, because the segregation confirmed the bias. Everyone thought the system was maximized because they didn’t question what was driving the outcome.

What I designed

I went to the data specialist and got spreadsheets. Organized them by PSAT scores, NRT scores, GPA. Drew threshold lines — everyone above those lines had objectively demonstrated readiness for AP-level work. Then I made those qualifications visible by directly inviting those students to learn more about AP rather than waiting for them to navigate a system that had never signaled they belonged in it.

I recruited three colleague allies. I worked with students to commission a short video featuring local college instructors explaining what AP preparation actually prevents — specifically, students losing money on remedial coursework they wouldn’t have needed if they’d been pushed earlier. Then I organized a school-wide assembly for one purpose: put every above-threshold student in the same room and deliver a direct message from a position of authority — you can do this, and we want you here.

Why I designed it this way

Because the barrier wasn’t academic. The data proved that. It was social.

Students weren’t self-advocating not because they couldn’t do the work, but because nothing in their environment had ever reflected back to them that they belonged in those rooms. Fixing a social barrier required a social intervention. The shift was simple but fundamental: instead of putting the burden on students and families to navigate an invisible system in a context where historical oppression had taught them these spaces weren’t for them, we used data to proactively extend invitations from a position of authority. The spreadsheet identified who. The assembly delivered what the spreadsheet couldn’t.

Scope

The following fall, enrollment doubled from 2 sections to 4. Ten Black male students enrolled in 12th grade AP English — up from zero. More than that many Black female students. Three students with IEPs. More than half the incoming cohort had never taken an advanced course in their previous eleven years of school. They succeeded.

A district administrator encountered the recruitment video at a separate school event, requested a copy, and asked that the model be shared with AP teachers across all 16 district high schools. It was — immediately and without negotiation.

Two things made this unrevertable.

First, the intervention restructured the evidence base the organization used to make decisions. Once students who had never been invited into advanced coursework demonstrated they could succeed in it — and they did — the unquestioned assumption that had explained away the disparity no longer had data to stand on.

Second, the model was designed to be given away. Shared district-wide without condition, it changed the frame other practitioners were using to ask the same enrollment questions. One student told me weeks into the course that he’d been stressed about the workload until he noticed the kids around him weren’t — they were just used to it, and expected it — and he realized if he lasted long enough, he’d get used to it and expect it too. He’d spent twelve years in the system without ever having had access to make that observation. One of his friends from that cohort is applying to a PhD program now. The fix traveled because it was built to. The students it reached carried it further than the district ever could.