scitation.aip.org/content/aip/magazine/physicstoday/news/10.1063/PT.5.8155
www.npr.org/2015/12/09/459099492
eblur.github.io/scotus/
lists.asu.edu (registration required)
www.whitehouse.gov/issues/education/k-12/educate-innovate#diversity
www2.ed.gov/about/inits/list/
sites.ed.gov/hispanic-initiative/
sites.ed.gov/whieeaa/
www.aps.org/about/governance/letters/scotus.cfm
“What unique perspective does a minority student bring to a physics class?”
This Dec. 7, 2015, rhetorical statement by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts was not actually seeking to improve physics learning. Justice Scalia's following comments further illustrate the intended argument: “There are those who contend that it does not benefit African Americans to get them into the University of Texas, where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less advanced school … a slower-track school, where they do well.”
The Roberts/Scalia position is well known and discredited as “mismatch theory”—the idea that disadvantaged students should go to less challenging schools or take less challenging subjects; this has also been popularized as “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” In reaction, an “Open Letter to SCOTUS from Professional Physicists” was drafted by the...