The “at-risk student” is a construct conjuring imagery of low test scores, spotty school attendance, and concerning home lives. For the racist among us, the term “at-risk student” is likely connected to phenotypical characteristics. For the xenophobic, perhaps the term is attached to tongues that are developing — but not yet fluent in — the dominant language. Further still, perhaps the term “at risk” is informed by limited understandings of, and appreciation for, religious freedom and diversity. (I am reminded of a Muslim student who, a little over a year ago, invented a clock to impress his teacher and was rewarded with handcuffs and a trip to the local precinct.)
The term at risk is often based on the notion of failure. Mainstream language of at risk inspires thoughts of students incapable of (or not likely to) transition into functioning, self-sufficient adults. This is, after all, the first definition of the at-risk student offered up on a Google search, provided by Wikipedia: at-risk students, sometimes referred to as at-risk youth, are also adolescents who are less likely to transition successfully into adulthood and achieve economic self-sufficiency.
Older educational scholarship and current policy seem to glom onto this definition.
Indeed, when language of “a nation at risk” was manufactured in 1983 in the spurious and misguided pursuit of narrow notions of educational excellence, schools were tasked with predicting and then remedying at-risk students. As long ago as 1988, it has been argued (and decided) that academic failure predicted those most likely at risk, by way of reading and math test scores, grades and other numbers that lend themselves to easy measurability. In sum, our nation’s markers of educational success are predicated on a student’s ability to recall forgettable facts, and this is true across subject areas. Those who cannot recall facts in the 30-or-so minutes they are given to complete a single section of a daylong exam are considered at risk.
Of course, there are myriad researchers and educators who oppose this limiting and harmful conception of those considered at risk. There are others still who challenge the use of the term altogether as it has been employed to describe and, ultimately, hurt children.
For instance, urban education teacher and scholar Gloria Ladson-Billings has long argued that “we cannot saddle these babies at kindergarten with this label and expect them to proudly wear it for the next 13 years, and think, ‘Well, gee, I don’t know why they aren’t doing good.’ So if anybody gets it, I know that writing project people know language matters. What you call something matters.”
I agree with Ladson-Billings, while begrudgingly acknowledging that the term at risk is not likely to go away any time soon.
