With a person’s socioeconomic background and zip code, you can predict their future health and salary with a high degree of precision. This fact was the impetus for the term “opportunity gap” that modern professionals in education use to describe the persisting differences in educational performances and thus career outcomes based on the arbitrary circumstances in which people are born. Historically, the common term has been “achievement gap” to describe this phenomenon but this has rightfully rebranded to more aptly identify the true cause of performance disparities in America: opportunity. 

Despite the common notion that opportunity most strongly dictates success in America, particularly with education (i.e. access to expensive tutors, private institutions…), the groupthink among Americans is that when certain kids can’t get those high grades, it is solely because of their inherent intelligence. It’s a tale as old as time: you’re a parent of a 10th grader named Johnny and the class rank list is publicly released. You see out of this class of 700 students Johnny is only 541 and you’ll probably think “Wow, my Johnny really isn’t as smart as the rest of them.” You’ll see Annie at the top of the class and think “little Annie is so much smarter than my Johnny, I wish he was smart like her.” Parents look down upon their kids for failing or parents won’t even care that their children failed to begin with, but parents never seem to attribute their and other kids’ performance to socioeconomic opportunity. Because of this stigma, Johnny will live the rest of his life believing he is less than and that no matter what he does, he will never be as smart or valued as Annie and most other people. It’s the greatest fallacy in education. 

The opportunity gap directly impacting children technically starts before pregnancy with their family genes. Advances in the field of epigenetics, the study of how behaviors and environments affect genes, provide explanations for what causes intelligence, and more relevant, what prevents it. Intelligence is a complex trait that is determined by both genetic and environmental factors; the idea that certain genes are linked to academic performance and inherent intelligence is undeniable, but it is far stifled by the environmental context of the child and the parents. To be specific, an individual can be born with strong genetic potential for literacy and writing but can be completely illiterate both because of their context and genetic expression. Let’s say the entirety of this child’s extended family and parents were critically acclaimed authors, but the parents before conceiving the child made some bad decisions like dependency on dangerous drugs and became impoverished. In addition to the impoverished context the child is raised in, the impoverishment of the parents will have a detrimental effect on the genetic expression of qualities in the child. The phenomenon of “toxic stress” has become closely associated with intergenerational poverty to describe the effects the harms of poverty, including unsafe communities, unstable familial relationships, and much more, can have on genetic expression. Even if that kid has good schooling somehow (for the sake of the example), the parent’s toxic stress will alter their genes and prevent the expression of their good literacy genes in their child which will affect their school performance. Before conception of  children, poverty creates both environmental and genetic disadvantages for them. 

Parents may also believe that children don’t start learning until they develop the ability to speak, but the scientific truth is the opportunity gap exacerbates from birth. Babies aren’t just laying around, crying, and sleeping all day: they’re learning! 90% of a child’s brain growth occurs from ages 0-5 before they ever reach kindergarten, making this period after birth and thus preschool a critical opportunity for growth or to fall behind. Preschool programs on average close 40% of the kindergarten reading and mathematics income achievement gap, while the highest quality programs completely close it. However, as one can imagine, access to these early childhood education programs can be costly and is somewhat limited to those from impoverished backgrounds. 42% of three- and four-year-old’s in families earning under 185% of the poverty threshold (185% is a common percentage among state governments denoting eligibility for free and reduced price lunches in schools) were enrolled in Pre-K, compared to 54% of children in higher-income families. Thus the gap ensues with only 48% of impoverished children kindergarten ready compared to the 75% of children from modest to high income backgrounds, according to standards of early math and reading skills, learning-related and problem behaviors, and overall physical health. Like a runner in a race, the students that start off with these massive disadvantages much more often than not get left behind in the race of K-12 education. So if you ever wonder why kids become dropouts, it certainly isn’t just a one dimensional story that this kid was a criminal from the start and isn’t worth a dime; that kid was once an innocent child, a blank slate who did not receive the same opportunities as others for no reason at all, as the world let their life fall through the cracks. 

This pervasive notion about “inherent intelligence” as an explanation for the gaps in academic achievement is one of the most pervasive and detrimental lies that plagues our education system. Sure, to some degree inherent intelligence based on genetics is real, but it certainly isn’t the whole story explaining why those who perform the worst are the way they are. Again, those kids who seem to have the genetic potential to be famous authors can easily be dredged down by years of toxic stress before and after birth preventing them from reaching their potential. Despite the circumstances that weighed them down, those kids and everyone around them will believe that they were simply not worth as much as those well-off kids who were given all the academic help, racking up As on their report cards.  

What a horrible lie that will forever waste the intellectual potential of the vast majority of Americans. Comparing students and giving more educational resources to the students who already have more is deeply cruel, unjust, and only reinforces the preexisting disadvantages that can predict one to one the life path of most Americans. Horace Mann, the man who created public schooling in America, and the presidents who have ever championed education such as Lyndon Johnson or Bill Clinton have all said that education was supposed to be a great equalizer that allowed people no matter their background to live the American Dream. But instead, it only reinforces inequities. If our democracy is to ever truly embrace the American Dream and our founding values of equality and liberty, so much work needs to be done to develop the equitable infrastructure that truly gives these disadvantaged kids a fair shot with their lives, instead of leaving them behind.