How can so many students be graduating from high school unprepared to meet their goals for college and careers? Three years ago, TNTP set out to answer that question. Researchers suspected that they could gain a better understanding of students' daily experiences by observing those experiences in action, looking closely at the work students were doing, and most importantly, by asking students directly. Researchers hypothesized that a clearer picture of students' daily experiences could point the way toward changes to policy and practice that would bridge the gap between what students need and what they are getting every day in their classrooms. TNTP 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, TNTP 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, TNTP 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. This technical appendix provides the study's complete methodology, including further explanation of TNTP's analytical approaches and full analysis results. [For the full report, "The Opportunity Myth: What Students Can Show Us about How School Is Letting Them Down -- And How to Fix It," see ED590204. For "The Opportunity Myth: What Students Can Show Us about How School Is Letting Them Down -- And How to Fix It. Executive Summary," see ED590205.]