Students at Risk

Several critical problems have been associated with the underachievement of students from high-poverty Title I schools. Although some educators argue that the most serious concerns are basic funding or political beliefs that influence decisions, several important education problems are "alterable, " possibly pointing the way to education improvements for students at risk of academic failure. One of these critical problems involves the shortage of adequately qualified teachers and the preparation of credentialed teachers. For example, 30% of secondary mathematics teachers lack training in the fields they teach, and this figure grows to more than 60% in some states. Furthermore, students in urban schools have only a 50% chance of being taught by a certified mathematics or science teacher.

The most underprepared teachers are assigned to schools and classrooms serving students at risk of academic failure. Teachers from high-poverty schools, for example, have been found to have lower literacy skills on teacher certification tests than teachers from more advantaged schools, and these differences have been found to have a significant impact on students' academic achievement. Furthermore, teachers of students at risk of failure have been found less skilled at implementing more complex approaches to instruction and less capable of identifying students' needs. In addition, teachers from high-poverty schools have been found less prepared to use computers than teachers from more economically advantaged schools.

In a recent profile showing the quality of our nation's teachers, for example, the National Center for Education Statistics found that most teachers educating ELLs or other culturally diverse students did not feel that they were well prepared to meet the needs of their students. Alternative forms of teacher preparation and teacher staff development are being implemented by local school districts to meet the needs of students from high-poverty Title I schools, but they generally have not been effective in training qualified teachers of students at risk of academic failure.

A second critical problem has to do with teacher expectations of students from high-poverty Title I schools. Many teachers generally emphasize remediation for students at risk of failure, which has resulted in teachers' lower expectations for these students and an overemphasis on repetition of content through drill and practice. Teachers, for example, often have such students sit farther away from them, require less work from them, and reward them for inappropriate behavior. In addition, several studies and reviews of research have found that high-poverty schools serving minority students often devote less time and emphasis to higher order thinking skills than do more advantaged schools serving White students. Students at risk of academic failure often have been denied the opportunity to learn higher level thinking skills because it was believed that they must demonstrate the ability to learn the basics or lower levels of knowledge before they can be taught higher level skills.

Finally, a third critical problem has to do with the current teaching practices prevalent in most classrooms serving students from high-poverty schools. The most common approach to instruction found in schools that serve students at risk of failure is the lecture or didactic instruction model, whereby teachers typically teach to the whole class at the same time and control all of the classroom discussion and decision making. This teacher-directed instruction model emphasizes lecture, drill and practice, remediation, and student seatwork consisting mainly of worksheets. Several recent studies examining classroom instruction for students at risk of failure found that this "pedagogy of poverty" orientation exists in many classrooms of high-poverty Title I schools.