Posted: 1:14 p.m. Thursday, July 17, 2014
Viewing every black student as at-risk: Pathologizing children and creating risk
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July 14, 2014
Here is an interesting piece byUniversity of Georgia professor Peter Smagorinsky on the over application of "at-risk" labels in school data collections.
Smagorinsky says data collection is an example of the expected bureaucratic time-wasting built into organizational life. But he says the new wave of data gathering required of teachers is more than simply irritating and frustrating. It requires teachers judge which students are at risk for school failure based on broad demographic data that essentially leave only group label free -- white middle-class kids.
As Smagorinsky notes: "Every student who is not a native-English speaking white kid from a relatively affluent family must be categorized as at-risk; and relatively affluent, native-English speaking white students are treated in this system as free of risk factors."
As a former teacher, Smagorinsky points out some of his least successful students were suburban children of wealth, saying, "They were at-risk for living lives without consequences, which is not among the markers of at-riskness in the bureaucratic world of education."
By Peter Smagorinsky
I talked recently with a high school English teacher in rural South Carolina about her most recent year in the classroom — the second year of what I hope is a long and distinguished career.
Foremost in her mind was a never-ending change in curriculum and assessment. In 2014-2015 her school will implement yet another curriculum. The tests for assessing her students’ learning in relation to this new curriculum have not yet been established, which means that she and her colleagues will be teaching for a large part of the year without knowing the high-stakes test that will serve as the basis of her evaluation for teaching effectiveness. Welcome to the world of school reform.
Related to her job evaluation was her demanding role as collector of student data. Each student, she said, must be classified if any at-risk markers are present: type of Individualized Education Program (IEP), immigrant and home ESL status, minority racial status, socioeconomic status, Viewing every black student as at-risk: Pathologizing children... | Get Schooled | www.ajc.com:
