Opportunity to Learn: State Access Comparisons

The Lost Opportunity report combines the Opportunity to Learn probabilities for all disadvantaged groups for each state. Review of it reveals that a student’s Opportunity to Learn is best in states with small minority populations (with the exception of Louisiana) and worst in industrialized states with highly concentrated minority—predominately Black— populations.

The stark inequities and absence of real Opportunity to Learn in states such as Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York and Ohio (states that are traditionally known as educationally strong) are particularly striking. While these states have rich resources intended to offer a world-class education to all students, resources are currently allocated in such a way as to deny students from historically disadvantaged groups the opportunities to learn that always have, and continue to be, extended to their White, non-Latino peers.