Written By: Jennifer McDaniel, Chief Operations Officer
Building Hope in Education: Why Students Need High Expectations, Not Rescue
Growing up, my sister said something that has stayed with me for years: “Children will always rise to the expectation you set, so set the bar high. They will rise to it.”
At the time, I understood it as encouragement. Today, I hear it as a responsibility.
In education, we spend a lot of time talking about the value of a diploma. We build graduate profiles. We define competencies. We write beautiful words about what students should know and be able to do by the time they walk across the stage. Those things matter. A diploma should mean something. A graduate profile should help schools name the future they are preparing students for.
But a student does not become hopeful because of what is written on paper.
A student becomes hopeful because someone believes they are capable before they have all the evidence to prove it.
That distinction matters, especially now. According to the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, eighth-grade reading scores declined compared with both 2022 and 2019, and 33 percent of eighth graders performed below NAEP Basic in reading (National Center for Education Statistics). These are not just numbers. They are young people sitting in classrooms, trying to make sense of school, adulthood, and themselves.
Recently, we saw this up close. At one middle school, 27 out of 33 students were not reading at a middle school level. Some were barely reading at all. That was heartbreaking enough. But what was even harder was the sense that some adults had already lowered the ceiling. The students had been written off. Expectations had been adjusted downward. Their struggle had quietly become the definition of their potential.
That is where we have to do it differently.
Doing it differently does not mean ignoring the reality of what students need. If a student cannot read at grade level, they need skilled instruction, time, intervention, practice, and support. Hope is not a substitute for literacy. Hope without a plan is just a wish wearing a nice jacket.
But rescue is not the same as support.
Rescue says, “You probably cannot do this, so I will lower the demand.” Hope says, “This is hard, and I still believe you can grow into it. Let’s build the path together.”
Shane J. Lopez, in Making Hope Happen, describes hope as more than optimism. Hope is built through goals, agency, and pathways. Students need something meaningful to move toward, the belief that they can influence their own future, and practical routes to get there (Lopez). One line from Lopez captures the heart of this: “Agency is shorthand for our perceived ability to shape our lives day to day” (Lopez).
That is a powerful reminder for schools. If students experience school as something being done to them, hope shrinks. If they experience school as a place where adults trust them with responsibility, name their strengths, and help them build a plan, hope grows.
Research supports what many educators already know in their bones: expectations matter. A meta-analysis of 261 studies found positive associations between students’ expected achievement and actual achievement (Pinquart and Ebeling). Another review of teacher expectation interventions found that low expectations can have harmful effects, and that changing adult expectations is a meaningful area for school improvement (de Boer, Timmermans, and van der Werf).
In other words, belief is not soft. It is instructional. It shapes what adults assign, what they tolerate, what they celebrate, and what they assume is possible.
Mauricio L. Miller’s The Alternative: Most of What You Believe About Poverty Is Wrong offers a related challenge. Miller argues against systems that treat people primarily as problems to be fixed. Instead, he points toward approaches that recognize people’s strengths, initiative, relationships, and capacity (Miller). That idea belongs in our conversations about students, too. Young people are not empty containers waiting for adults to pour in motivation. They already carry gifts, stories, instincts, humor, survival skills, questions, and dreams. Our job is not to rescue them from who they are. Our job is to help them see what is already there and build from it.
This is especially true for disengaged youth. A student who has stopped trying may not be lazy. They may be tired of failing in public. A student who acts like they do not care may be protecting themselves from the embarrassment of caring and still falling short. A student who rejects help may have learned that help often comes with pity, control, or low expectations attached.
So yes, we need reading intervention. Yes, we need strong teachers. Yes, we need diplomas that reflect real readiness. But we also need adults who refuse to confuse a student’s current skill level with their future capacity.
Set the bar high. Then build the steps.
Give students goals, but make them real. Give them pathways, but make them visible. Give them agency, but do not disappear when the work gets hard. Believe in their greatness, not as a slogan on a wall, but as a daily practice.
At Tomorrow’s Talent, this belief is central to the work: students should not have to get stuck in the middle before someone notices they need a goal, a plan, and a lift. Whether students graduate with a clear direction or are still discovering one, they deserve adults who keep hope in the room.
Doing it differently starts there.
Not with rescuing.
Believing, building, and raising the bar.