Sequences of Opportunities for Learning

Students' opportunities for learning subjects can be organized into sequences that span grades and schools. Such opportunity sequences are a form of stratification that links students' future opportunities for learning with their earlier opportunities. Using data from a national cohort of public school students, the authors examined national patterns in students' opportunities for learning mathematics and science from Grade 8 to Grade 10. They found that there are national sequences of opportunities for studying mathematics; that is, the level or topics of mathematics that students study in the eighth grade is closely related to what the students take in high school, independent of their academic performance. This is not the case with science; what students study in the eighth grade has minimal and inconsistent effects on the courses they take in high school.