Disrupting opportunity gaps will hinge on networks

Some include platforms, like CommunityShare or ImBlaze. These tools are aimed at allowing schools to better tap into local community-based opportunities and experts by cutting through the logistical hurdle of coordinating across the school-community interface. Using CommunityShare, teachers can log onto the site to find a community member who can speak to particular topics in their classes or offer a lesson. Schools can use ImBlaze—an effort spawned from Big Picture Learning’s longtime model connecting students to internships with local businesses—to recruit and organize internship opportunities for their students throughout their local community. In other words, these tools can help schools address exposure gaps by deliberately connecting students to more local, real-world professionals whom they otherwise might not know.

But much of Chetty’s research suggests that geography can shape the sorts of opportunities on students’ radar. (This map shows just how unevenly the ratio of patents to children is distributed across the country). What about those geographies where a diverse array of industry experts and mentors are harder to come by? In these cases the most promising innovations may be those that allow students to diversify their connections to experts online. For example, tools like Nepris or Educurious allow educators to port online mentors or experts into classrooms over video. Using these tools, educators can begin to supplement traditional lesson plans and projects with live chats with real people working in the fields that students are studying and industries they might eventually work in.

These tools could help K-12 schools begin to address exposure gaps. Still other innovative approaches—like Braven—aim to help higher education institutions address stubborn opportunity gaps that tend to persist even as older students get closer to entering the workforce. Braven partners with universities to provide an “Accelerator Course” to arm first-generation college students with skills, internship experiences, and networks. The program is delivered through local volunteer near-peer young professionals working in high profile firms the likes of Facebook, Prudential, and Audible. According to its latest impact report, compared with peers nationally, Braven college graduates are more likely to have at least one internship during college. Their cohorts also experienced statistically significant growth in the closeness of friendship networks and advice networks with volunteer professionals.

What schools and colleges can do to surface ‘lost Einsteins’
Opportunity is something young people are—or aren’t—networked into. Although the notion of “networking” can reek of a shallow exercise at cocktail parties or ad-hoc connections on LinkedIn, Chetty’s research suggests that exposure to certain professions has deep, long-lasting consequences. Education institutions can address this reality by exploring emerging tools and approaches designed to reach beyond students’ inherited networks and, in some cases, immediate geography. If we don’t, countless “lost Einsteins” will be deprived of—and deprive us of—a brighter future.

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