In the United States, a child’s opportunities to learn are impacted by their location. That is, the specific context of both out-of-school factors and within-school policies and practices vary by state. Layered atop these geographic differences is the long-shadow of racial disparities cast by a history of slavery and ongoing systemic racism in this country.

The Opportunity to Learn Dashboard, a joint project of the National Center for Youth Law and The Schott Foundation for Public Education, explores some of the factors impacting students’ opportunities to learn and the disparities in opportunity to learn experienced by Black and white students in a given state. These factors are initial indicators of potential disparities in students’ opportunity to learn.