Studies from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and the Horace Mann League, working with the National Superintendents Roundtable, suggest things are not as gloomy as some politicians and profiteers seek to make them.
"The takeaway is simple. Our middle-class and wealthy public school children are thriving. Poor children are struggling, not because their schools are failing but because they come to school with all the well-documented handicaps that poverty imposes – poor prenatal care, developmental delays, hunger, illness, homelessness, emotional and mental illnesses, and so on."
It's this quote on which I'd like to focus. This article suggests social, cultural, and financial deficits are hurting American children. Yet some say we can't buy into deficit thinking without making things worse.
Look, accepting as FACT that some kids could come to school LACKING is not deficit model thinking. It's acknowledging realities or possibilities of realities. Jon lacks food in his stomach. Mutumbo lacks housing. Contessa lacks empathy at times. These facts may affect their schooling experiences.
Assuming that all kids who meet certain criteria automatically must be stricken with the same deficits and assuming they do not bring other valuable cultural and critical capital, surpluses even, is closer to dangerous, actual deficit model thinking, but I'd say even that isn't really the proper term for it.
The more accurate and more worrying phenomenon is "DETRIMENT model thinking" in which teachers assume deficits across an array of individuals based solely on demographic information and assume actual and presumed deficits are accompanied by nothing of value which students and teachers can build from to help address actual deficits and that said deficits are so harmful to the students there's no way a school community can work to help students fill in whatever gaps they may have (this would be a "double indemnity deficit model" of thought, right?).
Detriment model thinking is doubly-doubly dangerous when teachers assume that students from more comfortable socioeconomic strata do no come to school with their own deficits but only culturally pre-approved strengths and values, therefore they don't need attention or development work.
We shouldn't over-correct regarding deficit versus detriment. As always, we need to avoid actions based in either/or thought. Maybe every kid isn't a genius in their own way, perfect little beams of sunlight who just need to be admired and loved. But they're not quagmires with no possibility of improving their station either (though, socioeconomically, there's some evidence to suggest bootstrapping happens a lot less often than we like to believe).
Why not come to work every day assuming only that EVERYONE has things on which they need to work, even deficiencies they need addressing, AND has a plethora of capital upon which to build strengths already there which they and their community may be able to develop to help them fill in whatever gaps they might have? Not sure how that feeds a hungry body, but maybe it feeds a hungry soul?
Acknowledging actual areas in which a child's life is lacking is not deficit model thinking.
I just ask if you have a moment to consider the nuance of deficits and detriments when it comes to education.
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