Growing Opportunities Lab
What We Do
The Growing Opportunities Lab is innovating, implementing, and investigating ways to improve developmental and educational opportunities for children. Our focus is on opportunities that unfold within and through family and community.
This work includes:
Basic research into the challenges children from disadvantaged backgrounds face and the ways families and communities use their strengths to overcome those challenges.
Research-practice partnerships to develop strategies for improving children's educational opportunities at home and in their communities.
Policy studies in which we are investigating effective state, national, and international approaches to growing opportunities for disadvantaged children.
Opportunities matter.
The whole child matters.
The whole system matters.
Knowledge built in partnership matters.
The Growing Opportunities Lab Team
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Eric Dearing
Director
Sara Schnitzer
Programs Director
Emma Hart
Postdoctoral Fellow
Elaine Liu
PhD Researcher
Aysenur Ozgoztasi
Phd Researcher
Johensky Celestin
MA Research Assistant
Caroline Conquergood
MA Research Assistant
Caleb Deitch
MA Research Assistant
Examples of our work
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Recent publications and presentations
Spotlight: Opportunity Gap Research
In a 26-year longitudinal study of children from low- and higher-income families in the United States, large gaps in life opportunities at home, childcare, school, afterschool, and in the neighborhood accrued for children born into low- versus higher-income households. These opportunity gaps were, in turn, strongly linked with educational attainment and earnings in early adulthood. This study offers novel evidence that the accumulation of opportunities across contexts and developmental periods is key to understanding the long-term consequences of low family income during early life.
