The Connecticut school is part of a new generation of inclusive science and technology high schools that have become more popular in the last decade. Barbara Means, an educational psychologist at SRI International, a California-based research institute, says that while there is no hard data on the number of these schools, a reasonable estimate would be somewhere between 250 and 500.
These new high schools, which rely on open admissions instead of competitive criteria like tests and grades, have multiplied to meet the exploding demand for workers with math, science and technology skills.
"For too long in the United States, the notion was that engineering and math were only for these smart, nerdy kids," says Sharon Lynch, a science education professor at George Washington University in the District of Columbia. "Where we are in our lives right now, everybody needs those skills."
White and Asian students dominate advanced science and math classes in high school. In 2008, 9 percent of Hispanic and 10 percent of black students in the U.S. took advanced algebra or calculus, compared with 22 percent of white students and 43 percent of Asian students, according to the National Math + Science Initiative, a group working to boost student performance in these fields.
One way to close that racial gap, educators argued, was to create more science and technology high schools for all students, schools where students could be coached to get through tough courses, regardless of ability.
When Lou Allen started the Science and Technology Magnet High School of Southeastern Connecticut in 2005, he didn't woo the state's top students. Instead, in accordance with state law, admission was based on a lottery. Allen's goal was to recruit more low-income Hispanic and black students, who for too long were blocked out of schools exclusively for math and science because their grades fell short of perfection. "It's all strictly luck," says Allen of New London's admissions policy. "We take whoever we get and we pride ourselves on that."