ABSTRACT
Samantha, a vivacious seventh grader at Hillside School, a middle school in the predominantly low-income mountainous outskirts of northern Virginia, loves science class. “Are we doing lab work today?” she often asks Ms. Grady, her science teacher, as she hurries into the classroom. By all apparent accounts, Samantha has a gift for the sciences, too. She aces all of her quizzes and tests and regularly helps classmates who are struggling with experiments.
