What does "at-risk" mean?
"At-risk" refers to students who are not performing well in school and who are potential dropouts. Characteristics of these students include being low academic achievers, demonstrating little school participation, and having low self-esteem. At-risk students are disproportionately male and minorities. They are generally from low socioeconomic status families. They typically exhibit impulsive behavior, have problematic peer relationships, family problems, drug addictions, and pregnancy which prevent school achievement (Donnelly).
History of the Term
The term "at-risk" dates from the the presidency of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. His program "A Nation at Risk" was an educational reform program which targeted U.S. schools that were deemed to be "failing." The term "at-risk" was then expanded to refer to"failing" students themselves. The "Nation at Risk" report can be read at here.
Critiques of this label
The label of 'at-risk" is problematic for many reasons. Most importantly though labeling students as "at-risk" leads to assumptions being made of them which may or may not be correct. These assumptions can then lead to the student developing a self-fulfilling prophecy. For instance, if a young girl is labelled as at-risk and others assume that she will drop out of school after becoming pregnant, she may adopt this view of herself. This could then lead her to behave in a way which results in her becoming pregnant and dropping out of school, thus causing a self-fulfilling prophecy to take place. If the label of at-risk were challenged on the other hand, she may learn that the label does not apply to her, leading to a different life outcome.
Gautier's Views on the "at-risk" Term
"I was born and raised in Brooklyn and when I was coming up, there were a lot of enrichment programs for minority students. Upward Bound and other programs like that were created to
close the achievement gap between the minority or low income kids and the children from wealthier families and better resourced schools. I am a product of those programs. I participated in that and I was still going to school and living with kids in the neighborhood who didn’t have those opportunities. That’s really interesting to me. When you start calling kids “at-risk” or “low-performing,” you start seeing them as statistics instead of people. I wanted to remind people that these children are individuals, human beings."
U-Stars Plus project
Various programs have been developed to help "at-risk" students. One of these is the U-STARS Project. This program is an instructional framework for teachers of young children, grade K-3. It seeks to provide an environment that nurtures children's potential. It focuses on children who may be overlooked due to cultural/linguistic differences, poverty, or disabilities. The main philosophy of the program is inspiring teacher's to shift their view of "at-risk" students to "at-potential".
http://www.cec.sped.org/ustars/