Twitter Chat: What does Opportunity look like for K-12 students in America?

A recent Brookings Institution report examined pathways to high-quality jobs for young adults and found that while employment rates are high among all young adults, they are higher among those who did not experience disadvantage as an adolescent.

Student Reporting Labs has teamed up with WNET’s Chasing the Dream initiative on poverty and opportunity in America to host a Twitter chat about what opportunity looks like for K-12 students in America. We’ll discuss some of the issues our student reporters tackled in our “Opportunity in America” series, and take a look at some of Chasing the Dream’s reporting on everything from education inequity to four-year college alternatives and college preparedness.

For “Opportunity in America,” SRL reporters looked closely at different educational and economic opportunities available for young people, from college readiness programs for first-generation college students in California to inclusive leadership opportunities for students with disabilities in Hawaii. Some students even visited a natural gas pipeline in West Virginia with SRL producers to explore how the energy industry is luring young people with their high salaries.

Chasing the Dream examines economic and structural inequities in America through impactful storytelling. Stories that explore educational opportunities for young people include Personal Statement, a documentary about under-resourced New York City high school students who took college counseling into their own hands. In New Jersey, a profile of the Newark Youth Court by Student Reporting Labs investigated how the program gives young people the power to implement criminal justice reform at the juvenile level.

Join our upcoming #OpportunityinAmericaChat on Twitter, March 12 at 2 p.m. EST. Rebecca Klein (@rklein90), an education reporter for the Huffington Post who focuses on K-12 issues, and Christina Veiga (@cveiga) an education reporter for Chalkbeat NY, (@ChalkbeatNY), a non-profit news organization that strives to tell the stories of New York students and their access to quality education, will join the chat.