This piece is the second in a series of commentaries about the value of using student voice data to inform decision-making in education. In this piece, the authors consider the benefits of including student voice data in systems that monitor students’ opportunity to learn. You can find the first in the series, on utilizing student voice to enhance teacher practice and student belonging in the classroom, here.

The urgency to accelerate learning has never been greater as schools seek to rebound after unprecedented drops in student proficiency and widened achievement gaps following the pandemic. The need for significant and rapid improvement in access to high-quality education is turning the spotlight back to a decades-old concept, Opportunity to Learn (OTL). The U.S. Department of Education’s 2021 COVID Handbook underscores the importance of collecting data on Opportunity to Learn: “States and districts should consider prioritizing OTLs that are related to student outcomes in understanding where increased investments could be made."

Originally defined as the overlap between what is learned and what is tested, OTL has been expanded over the years to encapsulate a broad range of conditions that support student development. The Aspen Institute defines OTL as “the resources, experiences, and expectations students get access to [and that] enable students to pursue their purpose, develop their agency, and contribute as community members and informed citizens”. Research on OTL often examines curriculum, instruction, and amount of learning time, along with teacher effectiveness, instructional resources, learning environment, and school climate. This research has shown that these conditions matter for student development and, equally important, they are not equitably distributed across student populations, underscoring the need to focus on these conditions in order to accelerate learning to meet and exceed post-pandemic learning declines and reduce widened learning gaps. OTL indicators are a valuable tool for examining the root causes of disparities and learning and for informing policy and practice. 

Measures of OTL come from a variety of sources and have typically focused on data that are readily available or relatively easy to collect: school demographics (e.g., racial/economic segregation), teacher characteristics (e.g., years of teaching, credentials), curriculum and coursework, school climate and non-academic supports. The key ingredient missing in most traditional measures of OTL is input directly from students. While all types of student feedback can be beneficial, it is especially impactful when it focuses on those learning conditions that research from the science of learning and development has shown to be crucial to student development. This includes conditions that foster belonging, such as classroom community and identity affirmation, conditions that foster a growth mindset, such as feedback for growth, and schoolwork that feels relevant. A 2019 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report discussed the importance of monitoring access to “supportive school and classroom environments," including school climate while acknowledging that more evidence regarding how to measure these conditions is needed.

Data on student perceptions of key learning conditions can provide important insight into students’ lived experiences in their classrooms and schools, and studies have shown it can provide reliable information and predict meaningful differences in student behavior, achievement, and longer-term outcomes. Moreover, heeding the Aspen Institute’s call for a strategic approach to OTL data that includes addressing disparities among groups and supporting continuous improvement, student feedback, as an input in OTL, can do just this, by illuminating gaps in student learning conditions within schools and classrooms, allowing educators to address root causes of inequity.  

TFA educators are systematically collecting student perceptions of their learning conditions, learning mindsets, learning strategies and motivation. These data, which TFA refers to as “student voice data,” are illuminating what students are thinking and feeling in under-resourced communities across the United States.

Based on this work, we offer three takeaways regarding the use of student voice data for large-scale monitoring.

1. Students’ perspectives on their learning environments can provide reliable and actionable data to inform decision-making in an OTL framework, particularly when it  focuses on features of those environments that the science of learning and development suggests are critical, such as the relevance of classroom material, strong classroom community, and affirmation of student identities. For example, Jackson et al., in their study of school effects on student outcomes, found that schools’ impacts on students’ social-emotional development can be reliably measured using a student survey, which included constructs such as school engagement and connectedness, and these student surveys be used in turn by schools to improve students’ short- and long-term outcomes.
2. Student voice data can complement other data sources, including classroom observations on the quality of instruction and quality of curricula resources. By triangulating across different measures at the classroom and school level, school and district leaders can gain a more comprehensive view of how the interactions that take place in the classroom and the school  (peer to peer, teacher to students, students with curricula materials) are translating to student development.  For example, the MET study found that “Observations alone, even when scores from multiple observations were averaged together, were not as reliable or predictive of a  teacher’s student achievement  gains with another group of  students as a measure that combined observations with  student feedback and achievement gains on state tests."
3. Student voice data should be used to inform decision-making but should not have high stakes for students, educators, or schools attached to them. As Campbell’s Law states: “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.” For student voice data to be actionable, students must feel secure that what they say will be used to further support their learning and not lead to negative consequences for themselves, their teachers, or their schools. 

Research shows that collecting and acting on student voice data can help schools build students’ social and academic skills, allow schools to address root causes of inequities in education, and support systemic educational change efforts around classroom teaching and school climate. As such, including student voice in OTL initiatives will not only enhance a system for monitoring how schools are supporting students, but will promote the expansion of the rationale for schooling beyond academic achievement, to equitable whole child development.

About the Authors

Dr. Katie Buckley is a Senior Research Scientist at Teach for America. In this role, she leads research, measurement, and evaluation related to the social, emotional, and academic development of students. Dr. Buckley works closely with the program team to ensure research-based best practices are integrated into educator development.

Dr. Laura Hamilton is the Senior Director of Education Measurement and Assessment at the American Institutes for Research (AIR). She conducts work on both large-scale and classroom assessment as well as education policy, youth development, and civic learning. She served as an advisor to Teach for America on social, emotional, and academic development.

Dr. Becky Smerdon is a Vice President at Teach For America. In her role, she oversees the research, evaluation, and measurement work of the organization. She specializes in educational equity and reform, along with equity-based research and evaluation.