Students have big, clear javascript:return(false);. They want to be javascript:return(false); and javascript:return(false);, javascript:return(false);, artists, and athletes. 94 percent of students we surveyed aspire to attend college, and 70 percent of high schoolers have javascript:return(false); that require at least a college degree. Most students do what they’re asked in school— but are still not ready to succeed after school. In the nearly 1,000 lessons we observed, students were working on activities related to class 87 percent of the time. They met the demands of their javascript:return(false); 71 percent of the time, and more than half brought home As and Bs. Yet students only demonstrated mastery of grade-level standards on their assignments 17 percent of the time.
Students spend most of their time in school without access to four key resources:
grade-appropriate assignments,
strong instruction,
deep engagement,
and teachers who hold high expectations.
Students spent more than 500 hours per school year on assignments that weren’t appropriate for their grade and with instruction that didn’t ask enough of them—the equivalent of six months of wasted class time in each core subject. And students javascript:return(false); that their school experiences were engaging just 55 percent of the time overall. Students of color, those from low-income families, English language learners, and students with mild to moderate disabilities have even less access to these resources than their peers.
For example, classrooms that served predominantly students from javascript:return(false); backgrounds spent twice as much time on grade-appropriate assignments and five times as much time with strong instruction, compared to classrooms with predominantly students from javascript:return(false); backgrounds. When students who started the year behind grade level had access to javascript:return(false); instruction, they closed gaps with their peers by six months. javascript:return(false); with higher levels of engagement gained about two-and-a-half months of learning. In classrooms where teachers held javascript:return(false);, students gained more than four months. The relationships between the resources and student outcomes were even stronger in classrooms where students started the year off behind. When students who started the year behind grade level had access to stronger instruction, for example, they javascript:return(false); gaps with their peers by six months; in classrooms with more grade-appropriate assignments, those gaps closed by more than seven months.
In short, students and their families have been PAST TENSE VERB . We talk about javascript:return(false); as a series of small opportunities for students—to show up, work hard, earn good grades—that add up to much bigger ones later in life. When students don’t find the opportunities they were javascript:return(false); on the other side of the graduation stage, we assume they or their families must have done something to blow their big chance, or that they were simply reaching too high. Yet we found javascript:return(false); after javascript:return(false); filled with "A" and "B" students whose big goals for their lives were javascript:return(false);, unbeknownst to them and their families—not because they couldn’t learn what they needed to reach them, but because they were rarely given a real chance to javascript:return(false);. That’s the opportunity myth. It means that at every grade level, in every district, for students of every demographic background, school is not honoring their aspirations or setting them up for success. Let’s be clear: javascript:return(false); alone is not responsible for this myth—either creating it or fixing it. At every level of the education sector, from classrooms to statehouses, from schools of education to nonprofit offices, adults make daily choices that perpetuate a cycle of inequity and mediocrity in our schools. Consciously or not, we choose to let many students javascript:return(false); that’s far below their grade level. We could make different choices—choices that could make a real difference in the short term, without an infusion of javascript:return(false);, as well as those that will lay the groundwork for deeper structural change. These are the kinds of javascript:return(false); that could make the difference between students becoming a javascript:return(false);, or leaving that dream unfulfilled. We must choose, in other words, to javascript:return(false); the opportunity myth.
