At TNTP, we believe that public education can and must be the great equalizer that our country has long promised. In fact, we have set this mission as our new North Star: Economic and social mobility for all young people, no matter where they come from.
Right now, the circumstances that a young person is born into too often predict the options they will have in their adult lives. America can only fulfill the promise of making education a great equalizer if our shared destination is a future in which no variable – not race, not zip code, not socioeconomic status – limits opportunities for young people.
As a nation, we must ask ourselves:
- How can we better prepare young people to navigate a dynamic world and workforce?
- What will it take for education to deliver on its promise of economic and social mobility for all?
- What experiences and opportunities across sectors will prepare young people to thrive in life?
Today, TNTP is launching Paths of Opportunity, a new series of publications and resources drawing on empirical and applied research to answer these critical questions.
Our first report, Paths of Opportunity: What It Will Take for All Young People to Thrive, explores how young people’s experiences during their school years shaped their economic and social mobility in adulthood, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997. We found that:
- Few young people who experienced poverty in adolescence experienced meaningful economic or social mobility in adulthood.
- Strong academic outcomes made mobility much more likely.
- Those who most need a strong academic foundation were the least likely to get access to it.
- Strong academic outcomes alone didn’t outweigh the effects of poverty.
We know from The Opportunity Myth that to achieve strong academic outcomes, students need access to grade-appropriate assignments, strong instruction, deep engagement, and teachers with high expectations. But if improving academics alone, even at scale, can’t level the playing field for young people experiencing poverty, what will?
To answer that question, TNTP identified five interconnected factors that we believe will drive economic and social mobility for young people: strong academics, career-connected learning, social capital, personal support, and civic engagement.
In September, we will publish the next report in our series, focusing on the five percent of schools that have been successfully changing academic trajectories for students—and sustaining those results for over a decade.
Throughout our Paths of Opportunity series, we’ll continue to refine and share our evolving understanding of the factors most critical for mobility, offer promising practices and innovations, and lift up successes we see working in communities across the nation.
Today, we invite you to learn more about the connection between a strong academic foundation and mobility, as well as the five factors that can help break cycles of generational poverty in Paths of Opportunity: What It Will Take for All Young People to Thrive.
Together, we can transform America’s public education system so that every young person—every generation—thrives.
