Years ago, a Chicago high school student told one of us, “If I go to college and don’t graduate, I’ll be worse off financially than the person who just sat at home.” He knew before he even started college that capitalizing on an opportunity like higher education required preexisting confidence to see it through.
For generations of Americans, that confidence was well founded. Working hard in the K-12 public school system reliably opened the door to a college degree and economic advancement.
But that deal is fraying. Nearly all children born in 1940 grew up to out-earn their parents. Among children today, only half will.
Public school students who take even one high-quality high school advanced course can bend that line. But too often, inequitable systems that have little to do with capability or drive predetermine accessibility to these pathways of opportunity.
Quiet engine of the opportunity gap
As authors, we occupy very different positions in the education landscape—one of us ran one of the largest U.S. public school systems and now works with district and policy leaders nationwide and the other leads the organization designing this type of advanced coursework. But we have watched this sorting happen from both vantage points.
In too many schools, the class rosters of advanced courses have the same names every year while equally capable students never make the cut, omitted by a system not designed to look for them.
Researchers call this overlooked group “the missing middle.” A 15-year-old’s access to an advanced course load depends less on innate capabilities than on the schools’ course offerings, prerequisites and screening tools.
That student’s readiness may need to be discovered, proven and defended, but the capabilities are just as strong as those of children whom adults automatically enroll in advanced work.
Too often these overlooked students disproportionately hail from low-income families and communities with low social mobility, including students in rural and tribal schools where the courses were never offered. That difference, multiplied across thousands of schools, is a quiet engine of the opportunity gap.
But as the evidence keeps growing surrounding the benefits of advanced coursework, we must change something. Students who pass even a single AP or IB exam are more likely to enroll in college, perform better in introductory courses and complete degrees on time at higher rates. One course is often the difference between a vague hope of college and a lifelong, compounding credential.
Naming the obstacles
This is why districts are joining the Social Mobility Leadership Network—a new, multiyear initiative of a cohort of superintendents that we are launching to move one million students into high-quality, advanced coursework.
As part of this initiative, network members can access data that surface the students who are ready but overlooked, technical support to rebuild enrollment and prerequisite systems, and peers solving the same problems in real time. They set public goals, track what happens, and share what works.
To put it simply, we are asking district leaders to flip the script. Advanced coursework should not just serve to reaffirm the intelligence of the students we already call smart, it should be a venue for more students to discover they are smarter than we—and they—thought.
For this to happen, we must stop waiting for students to raise their hands and stop screening them through processes built for rejection. We should audit rosters against actual readiness, and actively enroll every ready student.
Let families opt out rather than fight their way in, and build the tutoring, summer bridges, and strong teaching to ensure classroom success.
Leaders will name the real obstacles, like sourcing teachers for these courses, scheduling conflicts, and state policies. These barriers exist. But they only augment the need for collective action. A solution proven in one district can save another district years of trial and error.
Architecture of opportunity
A century ago, the United States decided that a public high school education should be universal and built the system to deliver it. That decision helped power the century that followed.
The upward mobility that system helped cement is now eroding and access to high-quality advanced coursework is one of the strongest levers left to reverse it. Our public schools are where opportunity is built, and it reaches furthest when they open the door to every student ready to walk through it.
The architecture of opportunity belongs to the people who run our schools. All it takes is the willingness to pick up the tools.
