As we continue to identify ways to break down barriers to opportunity and close the college access gap, we can look to an education model that took shape twenty years ago with 56 girls in East Harlem.
When the seventh-graders walked through the doors of the newly formed public Young Women’s Leadership School, their parents rejoiced knowing that their daughters would have the kind of high quality college prep education typically accessible only to middle-class and affluent families.
Yet, as with so many moments of progress, there was a backlash. Headlines were made when civil rights groups filed a complaint with the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights charging that the school’s single-sex public school status violated federal laws. Nineteen years later the complaint was dismissed…
Read more of Pedro’s article here:
How a single-sex school in East Harlem offered young women a path out of poverty