In the last 10 years, education scholars have made a concerted effort to shift our nation away from its single-minded focus on so-called “achievement gaps” that are typically based on test score and graduation differences. Instead, we can learn from a balanced approach that also seeks to measure and understand the “opportunity gaps” that drive these achievement gaps.
These gaps in opportunity include both in-school factors, such as tracking systems that ration challenging learning experiences to a select few, and out-of-school factors such as inequitable access to housing and nutrition. Unlike the achievement gap framing—which often simply highlights disparities in test scores without explaining why they exist and thereby implies that students themselves are to blame—opportunity gap language seeks to get at the root of the problem by exposing the systemic social and political structures that provide some students with more and better learning opportunities than others.
The coronavirus pandemic has shown a spotlight on these opportunity gaps. BIPOC students have had less access to in-person learning since the pandemic started—an injustice that poses both learning and mental wellness challenges. People in Black, Latinx, and Native communities have died and been hospitalized from the disease at two or more times the rate of the white population. Although children and young people have been relatively less likely to suffer serious COVID effects, family and community illnesses and death still have a major impact on their lives.
The U.S. Department of Education, in a 2021 publication titled, "Ed COVID-19 Handbook: Roadmap to Reopening Safely and Meeting all Students’ Needs," stresses the need to consider how the pandemic has impacted opportunities to learn (OTL). Under the federal American Rescue Plan of 2021, schools have access to billions of new dollars. But these resources will not be targeted in such a way to provide all students with opportunities to learn unless OTL indicators are tracked and used to target the funds.
Read more about the handbook