Jan 10, 2019 12:00:00 AM
Though students met the requirements of their classroom assignments 71 percent of the time (and earned A’s and B’s), they only demonstrated mastery on grade-level standards 17 percent of the time. Clearly, classroom assignments must be more rigorous to inspire the deep engagement required for learning and memory retention. Additionally, some teachers neither held their students to high expectations nor provided strong instruction. Less than half of the teachers reported that they thought their students could meet or exceed grade-level standards. The features are even more lacking in schools serving marginalized students. Classrooms that serve predominantly high-income students spent twice as much time on grade-appropriate assignments and five times as much time with strong instruction, compared to classrooms with predominantly low-income students. Moreover, classrooms filled with mostly students of color received grade-level assignments much more infrequently than classrooms filled with mostly White students.
If this report is true, then educators are allowing students to live in a fantasy world in which they are succeeding, but not on anything that challenges them. If school systems continue to let students down in this way, we are limiting the opportunities for our next generation to graduate from college in four years. National data makes the “opportunity myth” clear as well. Even though we see higher rates of college enrollment, 66 percent of Black college students and 53 percent of Latinx college students
take at least one remedial course for what they should have learned in high school.
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