A Better Chance recruits academically successful students who are racial minorities to enroll in private college preparatory middle schools and high schools.
Students selected for the program usually perform at or above grade level in math and English, have an overall academic average of at least a B+, rank in the top 10 percent of their class, and participate in extracurricular activities.
Potential A Better Chance students must complete an application with the organization and take tests. A Better Chance then decides whether to refer the student to one or more of its member schools. Students also must go through those schools’ application processes and interviews.
For more information and to apply, visit www.abetterchance.org.
Amber Abernathy doesn’t know where she’d be today if she hadn’t found a way into a private school. She fears she might have fallen in with a bad crowd or ignored the importance of her education.
Abernathy, a high school senior, left behind her College Park public school to attend Holy Innocents’ Episcopal School in Sandy Springs. She landed there with the help of A Better Chance, a national nonprofit group with a major Atlanta presence.
“I’m not saying public schools are bad, but there are a lot more people and personalities that could lead you down the wrong path,” said Abernathy, who wants to major in international business and then seek a law degree. “A Better Chance gave me the tools to succeed and go back and help the people who don’t have the resources they need.”
A Better Chance, funded by contributions from individuals, corporations and foundations, has worked for 50 years to identify promising students from racial minorities and refer them to partnering private schools. The group aims to put minority students in educational environments where they’ll have a greater ability to reach their potential.
The private schools, which in the metro area often charge $20,000 per year in tuition, usually provide financial aid to students recruited by A Better Chance; the organization doesn’t pay tuition costs itself.
However, not all of A Better Chance’s students receive financial aid from the private schools; some have family incomes too high to qualify for assistance. Those students’ parents must decide whether they want to pay full tuition on their own.
Students who enroll in private schools through A Better Chance stay in those schools more than 90 percent of the time, according to the organization.
More than 450 Georgia students are enrolled in grades 6-12 through A Better Chance, and the Atlanta region is the group’s second-largest source of students after the northeast. Twenty-three private schools in the Atlanta area partner with A Better Chance.
These students often need an alternative to public schools struggling with lackluster academic results and threats to their accreditation, said Ivonne Simms, southeast program manager for A Better Chance.
School representatives say they benefit from adding greater diversity to their student populations. The Westminster Schools enrolls 49 A Better Chance scholars, the most of any school in the metro area, increasing the school’s minority enrollment to nearly 30 percent of the total student population.
Arsene Lakpa, a junior from Lithonia whose drive is about 35 minutes to Westminster in northwest Atlanta, said that before enrolling there as a freshman he didn’t feel challenged.
“It’s an eye-opening experience,” said Lakpa, who’s interested in a career in computer science or bioengineering. “I probably would have gone to one of my local public schools nearby where I lived, and I feel like at those schools, it’s a generic learning system. They don’t think outside the box.”
The organization says its goal is to increase the number of well-educated people from racial minorities who can later become leaders.
Jesse Spikes, a corporate lawyer at McKenna Long & Aldridge who ran for mayor of Atlanta in 2009, enrolled with the program in 1966 as the youngest of 13 children in a McDonough family. A Better Chance placed him in a high school in Hanover, N.H., which is near Dartmouth College, where he earned his undergraduate degree before getting his law degree from Harvard University.
Spikes said educational institutions have a long way to go until they eliminate disparities caused by children in low-income families not having as many opportunities.
“I still don’t believe the playing field is level,” he said. “I hope we’ll solve it someday, but for the foreseeable future, we’ll keep wrestling with it. A Better Chance is in there fighting that fight.”
In all, A Better Chance has about 1,900 students enrolled at schools across the country. Its work remains relevant, said Chantal Stevens, national director of the group’s College Preparatory Schools Program, because minorities still lag academically and in career achievement.
“Leadership across the country doesn’t reflect our society,” she said. “We have nothing against public schools. We feel that education is a right, and every child deserves the best education possible, but what we’re doing in this system just isn’t working.”
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