Research

The American Dream is an inspiring ideal. But analysis has shown that the opportunity to improve one’s situation in life is not equally distributed.

This brief summarizes the detailed research findings from Opportunity Insights’ recent paper, Income Segregation and Intergenerational Mobility Across Colleges in the United States, including that, on average, students from low-income families who attend elite colleges see higher future earnings than their peers at less selective schools. However, there is a high degree of segregation by parental income across colleges, with students from high-income families more likely to attend elite or selective colleges and students from low-income families more likely to attend less selective or open-admission colleges. This limits the opportunities available for students from low-income families to see the increased earnings associated with graduating from an elite college.

Across demographic groups, incoming seniors (class of 2021) have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic, and some have altered their college plans accordingly.

Safety is an important condition for student learning. According to research on the science of learning, a supportive school environment—one that creates a sense of safety and belonging in school—improves learning outcomes. This brief summarizes students’ responses to an open-ended survey question that asked them to document their thoughts, feelings, and concerns about school safety.

To learn more about Fee Waivers, see our article titled Using Research to Boost the Fee Waiver Program and Buck the No-Show Trend

At least 55 million students in the United States ended the 2019-2020 school year learning at home due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Students who have their mental health supported do better in school. We wanted to hear from students who recently took the ACT to tell us about the types of mental health supports they have access to at school. The results of this new ACT survey suggest…