From the brief: We’ve been telling students that doing well in school creates opportunities—that showing up, doing the work, and meeting teachers’ expectations will prepare them for their futures. Unfortunately, that’s a myth. We partnered with five diverse school systems, rural and urban, district and charter, to listen to students’ views on their educational experiences and observe how those experiences played out, in real time, in their classrooms. While “student experiences” include many things within and outside school, we chose to focus on a set of in-school elements that offered a window into what students were doing in their classes and how they perceived that time. Above all, we wanted to understand students’ aspirations for themselves, what kind of lives they wanted to lead, and how school was preparing them to live those lives— or letting them down.