National FORUM of Applied Educational Research Journal 27(1&2) 2014, Blake Chism & Valerie Ooka Pang - NATIONAL FORUM JOURNALS ((Founded 1982), Dr. William Allan Kritsonis, Editor-in-Chief - www.nationalforum.com

NATIONAL FORUM OF APPLIED EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH JOURNAL
VOLUME 27, NUMBERS 1 & 2, 2014

Transforming Education and Supporting Equity
ThroughOpportunity to Learn Standards
Blake Chism
Doctoral Student
San Diego State University and Claremont Graduate University

Valerie Ooka Pang, PhD
Professor
San Diego State University

Abstract
Opportunity to Learn (OTL) standards originated as a way to compare mathematics assessment
data from different classroomsin a multi-national study. Over the years, OTL has surfaced in
various emanations such as a research construct, equity assessment framework, and finally, asa
policy orientation.The OTL literature makes the case for its prominence in an effective
standards-based accountability system.Through an extensive literature review, Opportunity to
Learn standardsincluded seven core areas:Teacher Quality, School Quality, District Quality,
Content Delivery, Curriculum, Facilities, and Resources. We believe OTL standards providea
comprehensive assessment for transforming education by ensuring that all students are provided
withequity in education; students must have the opportunity to learn the content and skills which
schools are held accountable.OTL emphasizes not only educational inputs and student
performance outputs, but also the importance of student access to learning.
Keywords:

opportunity to learn; equity; student access to learning; core standards

Opportunity to Learn (OTL) standards is a framework that has developed from the work
of policy makers, educators, and researchers who are concerned about the ability of students to
have access to subject areacontent and high quality delivery. Though much of the accountability
research in education has focused on student assessment outcomes, OTL presents a more
comprehensive frame of reference in which students are provided with the opportunity to learn
the content on which they are held accountable in schools.The purpose of this article is to
describe the seven core areas of Opportunity To Learn (OTL) standards and to describe how
OTL can assist educators in comprehensively examining the opportunities that students have to
achieve and to make sure that equity is a core value in schools. We believe that educational
equity is dependent upon the ability of districts, schools, and teachers to provide each
component. OTL emphasizes not only educational inputs and student performance outputs, but
also the importance of student access to learning.
Many educational policy makers believe that OTL standards more fully address equity in
education in comparison to solelyutilizingstudent outcomes (Murphy, 1988; Porter, 1995;
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BLAKE CHISM and VALERIE OOKA PANG
Wang, 1998).Through an extensive literature review, Opportunity To Learn standards included
seven core areas: Teacher Quality (TQ), School Quality (SQ), District Quality (DQ), Content
Delivery (CD), Curriculum (CUR), Facilities (FAC), and Resources (RES). These core elements
represent potential benchmarking areas by which school systems can be measured to make
certain that students are provided with the opportunities to learn the content and which schools
are held accountable.
In order to assess student learning, we believe it is vital that educational policy makers,
administrators, and educators examine the seven areas. There are as follows:
Teacher Qualityis key to student learning because the teacher is the most important
component in the classroom. The teacher must be competent in disciplines being taught;
decides on and implements effective instructional strategies; uses motivational methods;
has effective classroom management skills; attends professional development training;
and holds high expectations for students and him/herself.
School Quality refers to the cohesive nature of the school and whether there are
carefully communicated goals and effective leadership in the building.Elements of
schools such as class size, school climate, and diverse staffing are in place. The faculty
and staff are professionals and have high academic standards for student learning as a
collective organization.
District Quality refers to the ability of the organization to provide a comprehensive
system where effective achievement is at its core and includes elements such as the
recruitment and retention of high quality educators, fair compensation for educators,
mandated regular review and adoption of textbooks, required instructional time, common
curriculum standards across the district, and additional programs such as Special
Education and English as a second language to meet the needs of culturally and
linguistically diverse students.
Content Delivery refers to the ability of teachers to engage students in learning. This
area is highly integrated with the opportunity of students to learn. Instructional strategies,
interventions, and lesson planning that teachers choose will determine if students have
access to and are able to learn the content being presented.
Curriculum should meet federal and state standards;the curriculum must be rigorous
and cover depth of content, free from bias, and aligned with district /school curriculum
standards.
Facilities provide for a variety of elements in schools such as the implementation of
enough physical space for student learning, the heating and cooling systems in buildings
are effective, proper lighting is present, a safe environment is furnished, and recreational
and library facilities are provided.
Resources refers to materials and services provided to students such as access to
computer laboratories, internet access, up-to-date textbooks, science lab equipment,
physical education apparatus, and consumable materials like art and office supplies.
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Historical Background of the Opportunity To Learn Standards
Opportunity to Learn as a construct first developed during the 1960s when researchers for
the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) created a
way to validate cross-national studies of mathematics students. Researchers looked for a measure
that would evaluate whether a student had learned specific content (Burstein, 1993). Specifically,
they believed in the importance of measuring if the content for each item was being taught by the
classroom teacher. OTL was introduced as a piece of the First International Mathematics Survey,
and was further refined under the Second International Mathematics Survey (SIMS) between
1976 and 1982. The SIMS OTL used survey data to measure three main areas: the degree of
similarity between intended and implemented coverage, documented differences in curriculum
across national systems, and opportunity to learn within the same country (McDonnell, 1995).
The data were collected primarily by asking teachers to examine each item on the test, determine
whether they believed that they had taught its content to their students, and report their
conclusions on a survey. Though tedious to analyze, this data then allowed researchers to make
an accurate comparison of classrooms in different countries based on whether or not the content
students were tested on was covered. This became the conceptual foundation for OTL standards.
The difference between the intended and implemented content coverage in this study was
measured by having systems-level analyst determine what content was contained in the
curriculum, and then surveying teachers to see whether they had successfully delivered that
curriculum. The distinction is important because both pieces; the curricular content and the
delivery may have a considerable impact on student learning. If the curriculum does not contain
the content, then students cannot be held responsible for learning it, and if the content is being
taught, then teachers should be held responsible for effectively delivering the curriculum to
students in a way that providesthem the opportunity to learn the subject area content.
The curricula study among nations provided details about how math is taught in different
countries (McDonnell, 1995). This research showed that the Japanese curriculum had a major
emphasis on algebra, and that the US curriculum tended to emphasize a broad range of
mathematics, but covered much of the content in a shallow fashion. The study also measured the
way that the content was covered across national systems. Some systems, such as the Japanese
system, were fairly consistent from classroom to classroom with a median of 85% coverage,
whereas the American system had a range of 0% coverage to 100%, with a median at 75%
(Schmidt, Wolfe, & Kilfer, 1993). McDonnell (1995) found that theSecond International
Mathematics Survey(SIMS) OTL data collected, combined with research on the relationship
between student achievement and curriculum exposure support a mechanism that improves
student achievement and also provides more equitable learning opportunities to learners. The
SIMS use of OTL is similar to establishing an exchange rate across two different currencies.
Once their value is established against a set of standards, they can be compared to each other in a
more meaningful way. OTL was not used to find out if one classroom achieved higher than
another, rather it determined if the two classrooms were teaching the items on the test, so that
data from the study could be properly analyzed.

No Child Left Behind Legislation: Moving to Outcome Measures
Therelease of “A Nation at Risk” (ANAR) in 1983 by the National Commission on
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Excellence in Education began the movement away from input-based systems of measuring
educational achievement, to a standards and outcome-based model. The assumptions of ANAR
pointed to the ineffective educationalstructure in the United States (US); the workforce was not
well trainedin content areaslike science and as a nation we lost ground rapidly and fell below the
abilities of individuals from other countries around the world.
It was reported that President Reagan originally intended to abolish the Department of
Education, but the release of ANAR increased awareness of the issue of education and moved
people to action (Bell, 1987). ANAR helped start the movement toward measuring educational
outcomes based on standards. Measuring achievement outcomes against a set of standards,
means that schools know what is expected of them and what their students are expected to
achieve. The standards-based accountability movement has grown steadily since the early 1980s.
The reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) called The No
Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB)was signed into law in 2002 under the George W. Bush
administration. The legislation mandated that states create standards of achievement for students
and schools, and required that they levy penalties for underperformance. The law setachievement
benchmarks, but did not specifically stipulate what should be taught, how the content is
delivered, what amount of time should be spent on the content, how or by whom it is delivered,
nor under what physical conditions content is received. The law punished schools and students
for not achieving the goals, but did not take into account whether or not students are provided
with the opportunity to learn the required content or achieve the required goals.
In contrast, Opportunity to Learn (OTL) standards allow educators, researchers, and
policymakers the ability to measure whether or not students are provided with the opportunity to
learn the content on which they are being tested. These standards also measure whether or not
students have accessto quality instructional materials. When used in conjunction with the
existing accountability system, OTL can provide key assessments of how the system andschools
are doing, and how best to adjust them for improved student achievement.

OTL: A Comprehensive Model of School Processes
The collection of statistical data on schooling largely focused on inputs such as per-pupil
spending and, to a lesser degree, outputs such as test scores. The late 1980s saw researchers and
policymakers move toward a system that looked at comparing schools and schooling conditions
across geographic areas (McDonnell, 1995). During this time, the OTL constructbecame known
by a number of different names such as: school process indicators, performance indicators,
school delivery standards, and education indicators (Odden, 1990; Ogawa & Collom, 2000;
Porter, 1991, 1993). School performance indicators, such as the Academic Performance Indicator
(API) in California, measured school performance based on a number of different areas, such as
testing, attendance, graduation rates, language assessment, and so on. Though not necessarily
opportunity to learn in spirit, these performance indicators are included here due to the fact that
they provide a valuable assessment complement to the OTL framework included below in Figure
1. Education indicators that measure outcomes instead of opportunity, such as the API, should be
used as assessment of the outcomes resulting from the inputs and processes. On their own, they
do not measure the school system accurately enough to be considered an OTL standard.
Odden (1990) described “education indicators” as measures of educational inputs,
processes, and outputs. These included measuring the graduation rates, SAT and ACT scores,
22

perpupil expenditures, teacher quality, level of adequacy of facilities, classroom discipline, and
others. The measure of success in education was not only what went into the educational process,
or solely what came out, but everything that happened during the schooling process was
recorded. Odden’s use of education indicators is comprehensive in its approach when looking at
school data.
Porter draws the term “school delivery standards” from a report by the National Council
on Education Standards and Testing (NCEST) entitled Raising Standards for American
Education(1992).School delivery standards (SDS) placed more focus on schools and the delivery
of the curriculum by the teacher. SDS is interesting because in a time when the focus was
quickly moving towards output-based accountability, it focused more on input. SDS seems to be
a part of the accountability movement of the 1970s when inputs reigned supreme. School
delivery standards specified how the curriculum was delivered to students. SDS was a narrow
construct, but somewhat aligned with OTL standards.
School process indicators (SPI), as described by Porter (1991) focused on the context of
schooling rather than inputs and outputs that are traditionally measured. These indicators helped
researchers, policymakers, and educators observe what happens in schools. When the outputs are
not what is desired by schools, SPI provided feedback on how to correct the problem. In the
black box scenario, there are known inputs going into the box, unknown processes within the
box, and known outcomes. SPI inspected the black box to determine not only the quality of
teaching and curriculum, but also the quality of the school in general, and the opportunitiesit
provides to students. The curriculum and teaching qualities are also main foci of SPI. An
adaptation of Porter's model can be found in Figure 1. This new conceptual model shows howthe
inputs, processes, and outputs can all be observed via use of school process indicators.

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Figure 1. Opportunity to learn framework: Educational inputs, processes and outputs.
The model takes into account teacher quality, student background, fiscal resources as the
inputs, and measures the achievement, participation, and attitudes as outcomes. The primary
focus, however, is the processes of schooling. What is the quality of instruction? Are the teachers
qualified to teach their subjects? How do the federal, state, and local systems contribute to the
quality of education? These processes are the operations within the “black box” and they provide
a detailed analysis of a student’s true opportunity to learn. This type of assessment in the form of
school process indicators and education indicators was a powerful research tool. It allowed
researchers and practitioners to look at all levels of the education process and continually adjust
to achieve desired outcomes. Because of the potential of OTL or school process indicators to
make positive reforms in education, it wasnot long before they moved into equity assessment and
finally, into the political arena.

OTL: Educational Equity and Access of Students of Color
OTL was becoming burdened with education policy by the mid-1990's while the concept
of school equityin finance was in full swing. Equity consideration prior to this time focused
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solely on input equity, or making sure that resources were equitably distributed among students.
The discussion eventually moved from equity inputs, to student access to learning as equity. This
was an important step, as Murphy (1988) described, because the allocation of aggregated
resources was proven less than effective in producing the outcomes desired. Educational equity
assessments shined a light on the unequal distribution of educational resources and processes,
such as content, time, teacher quality, and homework (Murphy, 1988). Equitable distribution of
resources was never achieved on a large scale, and it remains an unachieved goal to this day.
What began to emerge in educational research during this period was the fact that there was still
a gap in the educational process as far as delivering the curriculum, teacher quality, and school
quality.
Wang (1998) examinedrelevant literature and surmised that many students of color were
more likely to be placed in classrooms where they have much less opportunity, even when their
ability is considered. Educational research recognized that equity in resource allocation did not
translate into desired outputs if the processes were still less than equitable. Baratz-Snowden
(1993)wrotethat, “if students are to be held accountable for their learning, then schools must be
held accountable as well by demonstrating that they provide students with opportunities to learn
what they must learn to meet the standards that have been set” (p. 317). This common theme in
OTL literature reflects the evolution of OTL standards from only school processes as in earlier
years, to the equitable application of those processes. OTL standards for equity assessment
promised to identify gaps in the educational process which are needed to provide equitable
opportunities for all students.
Porter (1995) wrote that OTL advocates see the standards as “an appropriate antidote to
the potentially negative effects of high-stakes testing on students who, through no fault of their
own, attend schools that provide an inferior education” (p. 21). Because the accountability
movement was beginning to gain momentum, and the standards were measured by tests, Porter’s
insistence on OTL standards to create and maintain equity for the process seemed to be a
foregone conclusion. If all students are required to achieve at certain levels, then there should be
a way of ensuring that they are all given equal opportunity to learn the content tested.
The research began to show that students in lower ability groups had far fewer
opportunities to learn. These students are often provided with less experienced teachers, inferior
curriculum, and a chaotic learning environment (Murphy, 1988). Guiton and Oakes (1995)
delivered a concise assessment of OTL as an educational equity assessment tool:
Moreover, the proposed accountability uses of outcome indicators to administer sanctions
and incentives based on individual student and school performance presume an education
system that provides adequate human and material resources to ensure a fair opportunity
for students to achieve those outcomes and that schools’ efforts predominantly account
for student performance. (p. 324)
The assumption underlying outcome-based systems is that all things are equal, and that
students alone are to be held accountable for what they can achieve regardless of the
opportunities presented to them. The research on OTL as an equity assessment proved that there
was an enormous gap between the opportunities provided to students at the top and those
provided to the bottom.
Another key point in the equity assessment field was making sure that schools and
teachers were applying resources and skills adequately to provide opportunities to learn. Darling25

Hammond wrote that OTL can help to determine if schools have the resources needed and are
using them appropriately (1994). Unfortunately for students, it was blatantly clear in many cases
that the resources were not in place to allow schools to properly provide the needed level of
instruction. A good example of this was seen in the state of California; it was eventually settled
in court.
In the California lawsuit of Williams v. California, the plaintiffs argued that the state did
not provide the poorest of its students with proper textbooks, qualified teachers, facilities, and
resources (Oakes, 2004; Oakes & Lipton, 2004). The case found that 45,000 teachers were
working in California schools without full preparation, and that some 6 million students were
being taught by under qualified teachers. Textbooks were either in short supply or of poor quality
in almost twice as many of the lower income schools as in upper income schools. A 1996
General Accounting Office (GAO) study found that 42% of California schools had at least one
building in disrepair. The irony of the case is that it was determined that California was not
providing the poorest of its students the opportunities they needed to learn, but no OTL standards
were required to prevent the same issue from occurring in the future. Perhaps this was because
OTL standards had already run their course through public policy, and met their political end.
The case was similar to Serrano v. Priest in 1976 that argued that California’s school finance
system was unconstitutional because it violated the equal protection clause. In the same way, the
Williams settlement provides standards for what each student should have in order to have the
opportunity to learn.

OTL As A Policy Instrument
Federal government data collection historically measured two characteristics; raw test
scores as outputs and inputs such as the amount of money spent per student. As mentioned
above, research began not only to look at the input and output measures, but also at what
happened in between. OTL expanded from the SIMS arena into what became known as
classroom or education indicators. The indicators included measures of content delivery
standards, course offerings, teacher training and experience, availability, and amount of
instructional materials. The publication of the National Council on Education Standards and
Testing (NCEST), Raising Standards for American Education: A Report to Congress, The
Secretary of Education, The National Education Goals Panel, and The American People, helped
move OTL to a policy tool (1992). This report changed the name from Opportunity to Learn
standards to school delivery standards, however the underlying intent was the same.
An interesting dynamic arose in this report that ultimately proved to be the back breaker
for OTL. As the report was being written, members of NCEST were forced to reach a
compromise on whether OTL or school delivery standards should be standardized at the federal
level or designed at the local level. The question of whether education reform strategies should
build from the local level up or be handed down from the top is not new to education; it is one of
the long-standing debates in education and policy in general. What occurred next proved to be
detrimental to the evolution process of OTL and signaled the demise of the constructas far as
policy implications go.
When the No Child Left Behind act (NCLB) was signed into law in 2002, the legislation
provided little in the way of OTL andmoved much of the burden of achievement onto students.
In fact, one phrase on page 115 STAT. 1454 of the law seemed to blatantly try to avoid being
26

confused with OTL by stating that students should be able to “achieve the knowledge”and
skillsthus, NCLB’s wording placed much more of the accountability of learning on students (No
Child Left Behind, 2002). Several sections referring to migratory students and other students
who might be considered “at risk”explain that states should provide students with the
opportunity to “meet” the strict content standards, not opportunity to learn. In NCLB, the onus to
meet the standards is squarely placed on the student’s shoulders as is the burden of learning as
stated above. Dougherty (1996) pointed out that OTL standards do just the opposite by taking the
responsibility for achievement from the student, and requiring the school to demonstrate that the
student has the opportunity to learn what is required of them.
Another important aspect of NCLB is that the phrase opportunity for a hearing is used
29times in the bill. The insertion of litigious language into the reauthorization opened the door
for educational systems to be corrected in court. The polarizing nature of the political arena took
the constructof Opportunity to Learn Standards from a highly functional tool to obsolescence in a
few short years. In the intervening years since Goals 2000, the only mention of OTL in literature,
educational policy or otherwise, has been in sparse patches of educational research.

OTL: Recent Research
Recent studies have identified specific OTL “opportunity areas.” For example, Boscardin
et al. (2005) measured OTL in terms of three main areas: teacher experience and expertise,
content/subject area, and student background. Venezia and Maxwell-Jolly (2007) also identified
three similar approaches: content of instruction, the pedagogical process, and instructional
resources such as curricular materials, technology, facilities, and use of instructional time. Other
studies concluded that curricular materials, textbooks, technology, and equipment vary greatly
among schools, and are more likely to be used in the wealthier neighborhoods (Oakes & Lipton,
2004; Oakes & Saunders, 2004).
OTL wasdivided into two main camps. The first one focuses on classroom-level
indicators, and is measured using teacher surveys, logs, interviews, and observations. The second
camp is focused on school and classroom resources such as textbooks, instructional materials,
and traditional inputs. Gearhart et al.(1999), measured students’ OTL in the classroom and
examined the extent to which students were provided the opportunity to learn the information
taught in the classroom.
Gillies and Quijada (2008) measured OTL in terms of total instructional time, hours in a
school year, days school is open, teacher attendance and punctuality, student attendance and
punctuality, teacher-student ratio, instructional materials per student, time in classroom spent on
task, and reading skills taught by grade. Relatively unique among OTL research, which is largely
theoretical in nature, the authors created concrete OTL standards such as 850-1000 hours of
schooling per year, whether or not (a) there were schools within 1 km of students’ homes, (b) the
teacher was present every day, (c) the student was present every day, and (d) there were
sufficient instructional materials available every day. They also created an “opportunity index”
that measured these inputs in order to produce a rating. The process was used in developing
countries to demonstrate the lack of opportunity to learn in those countries. This method could
easily be expanded and implemented as part of a statewide assessment and accountability
system.
Stevens (1993) defined her conceptual framework for OTL in terms of content coverage,
27

time on task, emphasis variables, and quality of instructional delivery variables. Her framework
focused entirely on variables within the classroom. Additional OTL studies included the
importance of content instruction (Porter, 2002), access to information through guidance
counselors as OTL (Cooper & Liou, 2007), content exposure and coverage as well as
instructional conditions, practices and processes (Muthen et al., 1995).
The common denominator of much of the OTL research is that each framework or
conceptual model requires that many different data points be continually gathered, assessed, and
adjusted in order to provide students with the opportunities they need. The current system of
accountability relies almost solely on test scores, or student out-puts and focuses little on
analyzing the inputs leading up to student performance measures. It is impossible to change what
educators do not measure.

Conclusion
Opportunity to Learn presents a holistic framework for educational leaders, policy
makers, and teachers to consider as they work towards equitable education for all students. It is
vital that student test performancesare examined within a comprehensive context where various
components such as teachers, schools, districts, content delivery, curriculum, facilities, and
resources are considered, otherwise the dominant focus becomes the learner. Research has found
that many students from underrepresented communities have not been given the opportunity to
learn (Pang, 2010), though they are being held accountable for subject area content (Wang, 1998;
Oakes, 2004; Oakes & Lipton, 2004).Equity in education points to the importance of ensuring
that each student is provided with what they need in order to access high level content through
effective instructional delivery. We believe OTL standards are an important avenue that leaders
in education must include in their assessment process. The use of OTL is an equity issue.
Without using a comprehensive organizational process of assessment, equity in education will
not be provided to students, especially those who are members of marginalized communities.
Opportunity to Learn standards provides a wealth of possibilities for further research.
Key recommendations include continued study of the core areas in order to define their most
salient components.Additionally, one of the most important areas of research is the development
of a comprehensive framework for OTL wherethe creation and validation of assessment tools for
measuring the effects of OTL on students opportunities to learn are included. Scholars can also
investigate school districts and individual schools developing case studies where OTL standards
are used in a process of continual improvement. These case studies will demonstrate the
strengths and weaknesses of the Opportunity To Learn frameworkand suggest revisions so as to
more fully provide for equity in education for all students.

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Authors
Blake M. Chism is a doctoral student in the joint PhD program in Education with San Diego
State University and Claremont Graduate University. His research interests include School
Finance, Educational Assessment, and Educational Technology. He currently works as an
educational consultant for Dell Services focusing on technology integration in K-12 and Higher
Education.

Valerie Ooka Pang is a professor in the School of Teacher Education at San Diego State
University. She has published several books such as Multicultural Education: A Caringcentered, Reflective Approach (2010) and Struggling To Be Heard: The Unmet Needs of Asian
American Children with L. Cheng (1998). In addition, Pang has published in various journals
including Educational Researcher, Harvard Educational Review, The Kappan, The Journal of
Teacher Education, Action in Teacher Education, Theory and Research in Social Education,
Educational Forum, Multicultural Perspectives, and Social Education. Pang has consulted with
organizations such as Sesame Street, Family Communications (Producers of Mr. Roger’s
Neighborhood), and Scott Foresman. Pang was a senior Fellow at the Annenberg Institute at
Brown University and honored by organizations such AERA, San Diego State, and the
University of Washington’s College of Education.

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National FORUM of Applied Educational Research Journal 27(1&2) 2014, Blake Chism & Valerie Ooka Pang - NATIONAL FORUM JOURNALS ((Founded 1982), Dr. William Allan Kritsonis, Editor-in-Chief - www.nationalforum.com

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National FORUM of Applied Educational Research Journal 27(1&2) 2014, Blake Chism & Valerie Ooka Pang - NATIONAL FORUM JOURNALS ((Founded 1982), Dr. William Allan Kritsonis, Editor-in-Chief - www.nationalforum.com