Opportunity Description

Schools across the US continue to be segregated across racial, cultural, and socioeconomic lines. This limits opportunities students and families have to support one another across differences and threatens to not only perpetuate and widen achievement gaps and future inequalities, but also, continue to fuel the "compassion deficit" we are facing in grave ways in the US today.

While reducing segregation is an inherently sociopolitical problem, we've started to find that computational methods like AI, data science, etc. can support the design of alternative policies that could reduce segregation in schools (see here for some of our early work [1]). We'd like to build on this work by bringing in new datasets from [2] in order to develop more accurate models that could actually support school districts across the US in designing policies to foster more integrated and connected schools and communities.

[1] https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-computer-scientists-create-tool-that-can-desegregate-schools-and-shorten-bus-routes/
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/08/01/upshot/rich-poor-friendships.html

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Duration

Flexible — would welcome a longer-term engagement but we can also find a way to scope for short term if preferred

Compensation

Paid ($18/hr — also happy to discuss other options like course credit if preferred)

Lab

Plural Connections Group