Leslieanne John wanted to avoid the low-performing, often dangerous high schools in the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn, N.Y., where she lived. But when she didn’t get accepted into any of the other schools she applied to as an eighth-grader in 2011, she decided to take a chance on a new school. Called Pathways in Technology Early College High School, or P-Tech for short, the school had opened in a nearby neighborhood the year before.
John found the vocational school challenging and her fellow students smart and competitive. Her father encouraged her but warned that as a young black woman hoping to enter the technology world, she had to work four times as hard as anyone else.
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