Cooke Foundation Helps Underserved Students Succeed

Recently, I had the opportunity to join more than 100 leaders from the nation’s selective admissions public high schools at a summit focusing on the academic disparity between lower-income and higher-income students. “Closing the Excellence Gap: Building the Pipeline” was a two-day summit hosted by the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation in Washington, D.C. The Cooke Foundation is a nonprofit organization that offers the largest scholarships in the country to high-performing students who have financial need.

The group learned about cutting-edge research, as well as sharing and identifying best practices for supporting high-achieving, low-income students. At the same event last year, principals and directors worked together to form a new organization called the Coalition of Leaders for Advanced Student Success (CLASS) with an agenda to support and advocate for these students. The decision to participate in the event and to champion the work of the CLASS Coalition was an easy choice. We are leaders in our communities who have a stake in nurturing talent wherever we find it and regardless of a student’s economic status. We need talent to remain competitive as a nation. The continued conversations, discussions and debates with peers from across the nation is a reminder that the work that schools like the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts does is critical in developing the talents of students from rural, underserved and other distinct communities where resources are not always readily available.

Read the full article at Arkansas Money and Politics.