As a middle-schooler in Nashua, Joslyn Villavicencio wanted to challenge herself. But she was surprised to find it wasn't as easy as just signing up for harder coursework.
"I had to push myself and had to contact teachers just to put me in the honor roll," she said, "because I was noticing there was a disadvantage if I was in lower classes," especially once she moved up to Nashua High School North.
Exeter Region Cooperative District is slightly less diverse and more wealthy than the state as a whole.
According to the New Hampshire Department of Education, in 2020-21, about 91% of students were non-Hispanic white, while nearly 4% of students were Asian, 2.5% were Hispanic or Latino, about 1.4% were multi-racial, about .8% were Black and about .5% were Indigenous. About 4.2% of students at Exeter High were eligible to receive free and reduced lunch.
Manchester West High senior David Chestnut remembers hearing a distinctly unconvincing pitch from a college recruiter during a giant assembly about why he and his classmates should go to college.
The recruiter tried to get the high schoolers excited about the idea of coming to his campus. But as Chestnut looked around, he saw that few of his classmates were even paying attention, let alone interested.
