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METHODOLOGY
But these decisions are rarely based on concrete information about how students actually experience school—because those of us in and out of schools who consider ourselves education “experts” rarely bother to ask. Instead, the crucial work of getting students the education they need and deserve is built on a lot of guessing, based on adults’ experiences and implicit biases: guessing at what kids want out of their lives; what kind of content and instruction will engage them deeply and therefore allow them to learn; what factors truly influence academic outcomes.
Filling our collective information gap about what students really think and feel is an essential piece of helping more students succeed. We have to stop guessing and inform our decisions—on everything from teacher training to curriculum to resource allocation—with input from students and clearer information about their daily experiences. That’s what we set out to do in this study. In our work in schools and districts across the country, we’d seen so many dedicated educators working hard, often in deeply challenging conditions, to give students what they need and deserve. Yet in many of these same classrooms, we observed lessons that weren’t nearly challenging or engaging enough to prepare students for academic or professional success after high school. We didn’t know how to help our partners address these issues because the solutions weren’t clear to us, either. We wondered if we could improve the support we provided to schools and districts if we ourselves had a better grasp on the student experience. We came to the conclusion that the only way to do that was to look closely at what students were doing in school every day, and ask students themselves how they perceive it.
THE OPPORTUNITY MYTH
More than 50 million children each spend roughly 1,200 hours every year in public school classrooms in this country.10 Over the course of their K-12 careers, that amounts to more than 15,000 hours in the lives of each child. During those hours, adults have nearly all the power. They decide everything from what work goes in front of students to how they spend their time; from what their classrooms and school buildings look and feel like to what tests they need to pass and what courses they need to graduate. Ultimately, those choices determine how well-equipped students are to meet the goals they set for themselves when they leave school.
ARE “COLLEGE-READY STANDARDS” THE RIGHT BAR? In our research, we’ve used academic standards
students must read, or tell teachers how to help
for college and career readiness as an important
students master the target skills. Instead, they seek
bar against which we assessed assignments and
to clarify the thinking and problem-solving abilities
classroom practices.
students need in order to be ready—by the end of
We believe that bar is the right one because it defines what students should be able to do at each grade level. Standards are not curriculum: They do not, for example, identify an explicit set of texts
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their K-12 careers—for the expectations of collegelevel work. Since the vast majority of students told us they aspired to attend college, that bar matters: It is the very one students themselves have defined.
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