Unfortunately showing up, doing the work, and meeting teachers’ expectations does not always prepare our students for the world that awaits them after they graduate. The far-reaching and extensive report from TNTP levels the following bombshell;
Students spend more than 500 hours per school year on assignments that are not appropriate for their grade and with instruction that didn’t ask enough of them.
The study bases its findings on a review of 4,674 primary assignments representing 21,993 samples of student work, observations of 942 lessons and 422 classroom and surveys representing 2,973 students. Many other data tools such as district administrative data like course description and student grades were used to further characterize what was going on in the studied classrooms. TNTP repeatedly argues that providing age-inappropriate instruction is not malicious but is most prevalent in classrooms with high poverty rates. Student are receiving average grades in high school but are not prepared for college entrance exams let alone the freshmen level course work.
Many ambitious recommendations are provided including getting better assignments in front of all students immediately. This will raise the floor for students’ experiences, particularly for students of color and those from low-income families. A higher baseline would mean that many more students are getting good enough experiences in school. TNTP also suggests listening to students, and conducting rich and nuanced conversations with where “real talk” can happen and educators can better understand what they need to provide in order to help students meet their personal goals for the future.
Due to the incendiary conclusions, the report has drawn criticism from many in the education community. Even with the study’s rich data sets it is still limited to a handful of districts, none of which were chosen randomly. However, in the world of squishy education research The Opportunity Myth is as extensive as it gets. I hope that educators take a moment to chew on this report even if it’s not perfect. Many times teachers get defensive and reject reports that present hard truths before they read and reflect on what the research is telling us. It is not because they don’t want to change, is that because they are are already at near burn-out levels in regards to their morale. No teacher wants to hear that they may be doing their students a disservice especially when they are working as hard as they can.