What are opportunity gaps and how are they hurting students?
“Opportunity gaps” are just what they sound like: gaps in, and therefore lack of, opportunities. The term was academically employed Kevin Welner and Prudence Carter, who wrote the 2013 book Closing the Opportunity Gap: What America Must Do to Give Every Child an Even Chance. It is a term generally used to acknowledge the origins of gaps in student achievement during elementary and secondary schools. In essence, “achievement gaps arise from opportunity gaps.” (Carter and Welner, 1). The important part of the definition of opportunity gaps is that these gaps are literally formed by race, ethnicity, ZIP code, and socioeconomic status of these students. Those circumstances – which are not chosen by the student themself but rather, are arbitrary and happen by chance – determine the student’s opportunities in life. The definition assumes that not “all people have the chance, or opportunity, to achieve to the best of their potential.” (Teach for America).
What is going on in San Francisco?
The San Francisco Unified School District upholds a famously complicated school assignment system, which has been reorganized and transformed in extreme ways over the last 15 years. The system has historically widened opportunity gaps along racial and socioeconomic lines, even when it was amended with the intention of doing the opposite. There are such immense opportunity gaps for students of color, San Francisco was dubbed the “Worst County for Black Student Achievement” and in 2018, a San Francisco NAACP leader declared a “state of emergency” for black student achievement in the county. San Francisco’s problem has largely come down to its school choice model, which was instituted originally for the purpose of diversifying schools. It has, in effect, done just the opposite. School choice has led to deeper segregation and fewer resources for students of lower socioeconomic status, therefore widening the opportunity gaps already present.
header photo: https://www.musement.com/us/san-francisco/golden-gate-bridge-v/
background photo: https://sf.gov
left-hand photo: http://www.theinclusionsolution.me/equity-vs-equality-eliminating-opportunity-gaps-education/
right-hand photo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=qat_3FWpZeQ