The tool – called the Education Justice Tracker – was developed by a programmer for CPEP to help incarcerated students continue their learning as they move through the legal system. A new $600,000 grant from Ascendium Education Group will support the further development of both the EJT digital tool and models to expand the project nationwide.
“His chances of success in the world skyrocket when you add in just a little bit of support from a program like ours,” said Rob Scott, CPEP executive director. “This tool will help twice: to provide support and to study outcomes.”
“Colleges and universities, Cornell included, are at a disadvantage in trying to support incarcerated students, whose progress in school is regularly interrupted by transfers, lockdowns, disciplinary protocols, parole board decisions and releases,” said Scott, who recently joined the Department of Global Development in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences as an adjunct assistant professor.
“This support from Ascendium is a huge boost for our ambitious plan to provide a lasting solution. Bottom line, we want to diminish a major source of inequity in educational attainment—universities losing track of incarcerated students.”
The EJT, developed by computer programmer Terrell Harris, harvests data from state correctional databases which are publicly available and yet, up until now, not easily combed or analyzed. The tool then combines that criminal justice data with university data like student grades and credits earned.
