The "opportunity gap" in US public education -- and how to close it

How can we tap into the potential of all students, especially those who come from disadvantaged backgrounds? Sociologist Anindya Kundu invites us to take a deeper look at the personal, social and institutional challenges that keep students from thriving in the United States -- and shows how closing this "opportunity gap" means valuing public education for what it really is: the greatest investment in our collective future.

My first job out of college
was as an academic researcher

at one of the largest juvenile
detention centers in the country.

And every day I would drive
to this building

on the West Side of Chicago,

go through the security checkpoint

and walk down these brown, brick hallways
as I made my way down to the basement

to observe the intake process.

The kids coming in
were about 10 to 16 years old,

usually always black and brown,

most likely from the same impoverished
South and West Sides of Chicago.

They should've been
in fifth to tenth grade,

but instead they were here
for weeks on end

awaiting trial for various crimes.

Some of them came back to the facility
14 times before their 15th birthday.

And as I sat there on the other side
of the glass from them,

idealistic with a college degree,

I wondered to myself:

Why didn't schools do something more
to prevent this from happening?

It's been about 10 years since then,

and I still think about how some kids
get tracked towards college

and others towards detention,

but I no longer think about schools'
abilities to solve these things.

You see, I've learned that so much
of this problem is systemic

that often our school system
perpetuates the social divide.

It makes worse what it's supposed to fix.

That's as crazy or controversial

as saying that our health care system
isn't preventative

but somehow profits
off of keeping us sick ...

oops.

(Laughter)

I truly do believe though
that kids can achieve great things

despite the odds against them,

and in fact, my own research shows that.

But if we're serious about helping
more kids from across the board

to achieve and make it in this world,

we're going to have to realize
that our gaps in student outcomes

are not so much about achievement
as much as they are about opportunity.

A 2019 EdBuild report showed

that majority-white districts
receive about 23 billion dollars more

in annual funding than nonwhite districts,

even though they serve
about the same number of students.

Lower resource schools are dealing
with lower quality equipment,

obsolete technology

and paying teachers way less.

Here in New York,

those are also the schools
most likely to serve

the one in 10 elementary school students

who will most likely have to sleep
in a homeless shelter tonight.

The student, parent and teacher
are dealing with a lot.

Sometimes places are misplacing
the blame back on them.

In Atlanta, we saw that teachers
felt desperate enough

to have to help their students
cheat on standardized tests

that would impact their funding.

Eight of them went
to jail for that in 2015

with some sentences as high as 20 years,

which is more than what many states
give for second-degree murder.

The thing is though, in places like Tulsa,

teachers' pay has been so bad

that these people have had
to go to food pantries

or soup kitchens just to feed themselves.

The same system will criminalize a parent
who will use a relative's address

to send their child to a better school,

but for who knows how long
authorities have turned a blind eye

to those who can bribe their way

onto the most elite and beautiful
college campuses.

And a lot of this feels
pretty heavy to be saying --

and maybe to be hearing --

and since there's nothing quite like
economics talk to lighten the mood --

that's right, right?

Let me tell you about some of the costs

when we fail to tap
into our students' potential.

A McKinsey study showed that if in 1998

we could've closed our long-standing
student achievement gaps

between students
of different ethnic backgrounds

or students of different income levels,

by 2008, our GDP --

our untapped economic gains --

could have gone up
by more than 500 billion dollars.

Those same gaps in 2008,

between our students here in the US
and those across the world,

may have deprived our economy

of up to 2.3 trillion dollars
of economic output.

But beyond economics, numbers and figures,

I think there's a simpler reason
that this matters,

a simpler reason for fixing our system.

It's that in a true democracy,

like the one we pride
ourselves on having --

and sometimes rightfully so --

a child's future
should not be predetermined

by the circumstances of their birth.

A public education system should not
create a wider bottom and more narrow top.

Some of us can sometimes think

that these things
aren't that close to home,

but they are if we broaden our view,

because a leaky faucet in our kitchen,

broken radiator in our hallway,

those parts of the house that we always
say we're going to get to next week,

they're devaluing our whole property.

Instead of constantly looking away
to solutions like privatization

or the charter school movement
to solve our problems,

why don't we take a deeper look
at public education,

try to take more pride in it

and maybe use it to solve
some of our social problems.

Why don't we try to reclaim
the promise of public education

and remember that it's
our greatest collective responsibility?

Luckily some of our communities
are doing just that.

The huge teacher strikes
in the spring of 2019 in Denver and LA --

they were successful
because of community support

for things like smaller class sizes

and getting things into schools
like more counselors

in addition to teacher pay.

And sometimes for the student,

innovation is just daring
to implement common sense.

In Baltimore a few years ago,

they enacted a free breakfast
and lunch program,

taking away the stigma
of poverty and hunger

for some students

but increasing achievement
in attendance for many others.

And in Memphis,

the university is recruiting
local, passionate high school students

and giving them scholarships
to go teach in the inner city

without the burden of college debt.

And north of here in The Bronx,

I recently researched
these partnerships being built

between high schools,
community colleges and local businesses

who are creating internships
in finance, health care and technology

for students without
"silver spoon" connections

to gain important skills

and contribute to the communities
that they come from.

So today I don't necessarily have
the same questions about education

that I did when I was an idealistic,
perhaps naïve college grad

working in a detention center basement.

It's not: Can schools
save more of our students?

Because I think
we have the answer to that --

and it's yes they can,
if we save our schools first.

We can start by caring about the education
of other people's children ...

And I'm saying that
as someone who doesn't have kids yet

but wants to worry a little bit less
about the future when I do.

Cultivating as much talent as possible,

getting as many girls
as we can from all over

into science and engineering,

as many boys as we can
into teaching --

those are investments for our future.

Our students are like
our most valuable resource,

and when you put it that way,

our teachers are like our modern-day
diamond and gold miners,

hoping to help make them shine.

Let's contribute our voices,

our votes and our support

to giving them the resources
that they will need

not just to survive

but hopefully thrive,

allowing all of us to do so as well.

Thank you.

(Applause and cheers)