Can our youth succeed with unequal learning opportunities?

By Dale A. Blyth, Ph.D., February guest blogger

The idea of equal educational opportunities in America has been a driving force for a long time. From the Brown vs. Board of Education decision that separate schools are inherently unequal — to a variety of present day efforts to improve schools, we continue to believe educational opportunities are the key to a better future. Education still benefits from its image as the great equalizer even if schools are decreasingly seen as delivering on that goal.

Today these efforts more often are denoted by the poor result — the achievement gap — than by the cry for equal opportunity. And unfortunately Minnesota is a leader in almost all the wrong ways in this area with the second worst achievement gap in the nation. It is not just that our white students do better but that our minority students do worse.

What would happen if we shifted back to a social justice approach that emphasized the importance of equal opportunities — but with an important twist. What if we called for equality in LEARNING opportunities?

Why shift from “education” to “learning” language? Because our society has shifted to a 24/7 array of learning opportunities related to technology, media and fundamental changes in our economy and way of life. In the report A New Day For Learning there is a call to rethink the learning day as well as the time and places where learning occurs. We must begin to shift from an emphasis on education as formal schooling only and learners only as students. Instead we need to recognize that learning takes place in many ways, at many different times, and in many different places. We need to move from only caring about the equality of opportunities for students in school and begin to think about equalizing opportunities for children and youth as active engaged learners in families, schools, programs and communities.

Youth as engaged learners with equal access to an array of learning opportunities should become our driving goal. Youth certainly need opportunities to become engaged in school as students focused on learning content and skills. But they also need opportunities to become engaged in informal settings with parents, mentors, peers and community members in learning about new places and ideas such as visiting museums or engaged in community service. And just as important, and perhaps an area where we can make more systematic progress, are opportunities to become engaged in non-formal settings such as youth programs where youth choose what they want to learn and can develop a sense of mastery, belonging and confidence that they are important actors in their own learning and that what they do matters.

Perhaps dramatically increasing the percentage of youth at age 14 who are constructively engaged in their own learning through multiple learning opportunities is just as important a goal as reading by third grade.

We must find ways to shift the debate from a narrow focus on equal educational opportunities through schools designed to close a test score gap, toward the far larger problems of inequality in access to quality LEARNING opportunities — opportunities that are a mix of informal, non-formal and formal. Such a debate must come to recognize and address the inequalities in access to and the value of engagement in summer, afterschool and the variety of community learning opportunities beyond the classroom. It is these inequalities that are both a major cause of the achievement gap as well as a major source of young people’s disengagement from the learning process.

It is this OPPORTUNITY GAP that we must close from cradle to career if we are to not only close the achievement gap but support success for all youth in college, work, citizenship and life.

Comments

[wokie weah]

Thank you Dale for a thoughtful article on learning,equality, and opportunity. The sooner we acknowledge the reality of unequal learning opportunities,the closer we will come to finding a solution strategy. My hope is Minnesota will be led by a strong vision. Youthprise is committed to working with other organizations and across sectors to close the opportunity gap.

[Samantha Grant]

Thanks for starting this conversation. I have an educational background in special education, and one of my very wise professors drummed into our heads that fair doesn’t mean equal. I agree that there are unequal learning opportunities for youth, but what if we looked at it through the lens of fairness? Would be see an even larger gap?

Having the frame of fairness has allowed me to think about youth programming in a more responsive way because opportunities are built around what is best for the community or individual. What is best for one youth may not be best for all youth. It also doesn’t necessitate that quantity is the most important driver.

What are your thoughts on this switch from equality to fairness?

[State Representative Joe Mullery]

Dale, thanks for making this important statement. It is exactly what I have been trying to get through to legislators and administrators. All recent research backs you up, and we aren't going to close the "achievement gap" in classroom learning until we work with the "whole child" as they are growing up.

[Dale Blyth]

Representative Mullery, always good to hear from you and to have you championing holistic approaches to learning and development in the state. The research on the importance of these approaches is indeed clear and I will highlight more of that story in my next blog in mid-February.

[Dale Blyth]

Samantha raises an interesting question about the difference between fair and equal and which is more appropriate.

I deliberately choose the language of equal opportunity for historical and social justice reasons. When we as a society come to recognize that something positive is necessary for our democracy, such as public education, we work through law and advocacy efforts to make sure that everyone has equal opportunities to access them. Whether we succeed is certainly a question but it is the moral and civic obligation that comes from this language which I was trying to bring into the debate.

While fair access to opportunities is needed, too many might argue that life is not fair and that parents and young people ought to be able to use anything that gives them an advantage.

As a society, however, we all lose when everyone does not have equal and appropriate access to the things we consider necessary for the positive development and learning of our younger citizens. Non-formal learning opportunities can, in my view, no longer be viewed as simply nice and for which we should work to ensure fair access. Rather, these opportunities are increasingly necessary if we are to close gaps that are hurting the competitiveness our society and the success of our young people. We need to make sure there is equal access to these opportunities and that they are valued for all. Without that sense of necessity we will too easily fail to make the investments needed - whether public, private or personal.

I do wish to be clear that the opportunities various young people engage in will and should be different. I am not arguing for equalizing what young people engage in but rather their opportunity to access the variety of learning opportunities that matter to their development and ultimately to their and our nation's success.

[Josey Landrieu]

Dale, thank you for a thought provoking post. I couldn't agree more with the issues you raise around the Opportunity Gap and new ways of looking at learning (where and when it happens). I also think that it is critical for practitioners, educators, and researchers to illustrate more clearly how learning DOES happen outside of formal schooling and how it ADDS/COMPLEMENTS the learning experience for young people.
I often think of how parents and youth view their experience in out-of-school time activities as also being part of their education...from a holistic perspective on learning and education the OST field plays a major role in forming and educating our youth.
So the discussion can happen both ways. One being that the field continues to demonstrate how learning occurs in OST experiences and the other is that we learn how youth and parents (even community members at large) see as the value of the OST experience in relationship to learning and education.

[Jenny Wright Collins]

Dale, thank you for this piece which articulates an important message for the field of education and youth development. Thanks to the research you and others have conducted we know that youth of color and youth from low-income homes are less likely than their peers to be involved in learning opportunities outside of the school day, and less likely to perceive those opportunities as high quality if they are involved. So the opportunity gap is real, and there appears to be a "quality gap" as well.

In Beacons we are committed to not only closing the opportunity gap and the "quality gap", but also to giving voice to those young people who have been most impacted by the gaps in Minnesota's opportunities and outcomes. In Beacon Centers across Minneapolis we "engage youth as leaders and learners" because we believe that the 3,000 young people we partner with are so much more than just "students"--they are contributors, decision-makers, and leaders in their schools, communities, and city. I hope that everyone reading your blog post will strive to work in partnership with young people to provide asset-rich environments for ALL youth in Minnesota in which they can build the relationships, skills, and confidence they need to thrive today and in their futures.