It’s an awkward phrase — “at-promise” — but I sort of like it.
”At-promise” is how the public schools here in Alexandria, Va., refer to students who previously might have been labeled “at-risk.” I learned about this nomenclature yesterday from The Washington Post‘s Jay Mathews, whose Class Struggle blog harkens back to a July 23 newspaper column by Alexandria Superintendent Morton Sherman explaining the district’s rationale.
“We use the term at-promise’ in Alexandria City Public Schools to describe children who have the potential to achieve at a higher rate than they are currently achieving,” Morton wrote in the Alexandria Gazette Packet. “Really all children are at-promise because we, as educators, have made a promise to each and every child that we will work toward higher achievement for all ”
“At-risk” means at risk for failure, and it’s an important designation. It tells adults who work with these children that they have special needs, in the broadest sense, and deserve extra support. Two years ago, I wrote an ASBJ series called “Children at Risk,” which looked at some of the reasons why disadvantaged children are more likely to fail, reasons that include inadequate nutrition and health care, dysfunctional family life, and childhoods spent in violent or drug-prone neighborhoods. By the time I reached the end of the series, however, I wanted a more positive name for these students. So the last story (so far) uses a kind of hybrid label: “Children at Risk/ Children of Hope.”
There are good arguments for all these designations. I’ve given those for “at-risk.” Here’s Cathy David, Alexandria’s deputy superintendent, making the case for “at-promise’ at a school board meeting last year. She’s quoted in Mathews’ blog as well:
“The previous at-risk model was a deficit model that identified and categorized children by criteria such as low income, special education, ethnicity or English language proficiency, with the assumption that if the criteria fit the children, then the child must have some sort of deficit. The at-promise’ model comes from strengths.”
On balance, I’d have to concur. So I disagree with former Arlington (Va.) school board chairman David Foster, who told Mathews that “at-promise” is “a politically correct term that conveys no meaning.”
No meaning? Then, try this experiment. Close your eyes and think of the “at-risk” child. Now do the same for “at-promise.” Do you see the same person? If the latter image is any more hopeful; if it, in any way, conveys possibilities rather than just problems, then I say the designation has accomplished something. Cast yourself in the role of a teacher, and perhaps it’s accomplished even more.
One big caveat, however: I wrote Children at Risk to dispel the notion that everything can be overcome with education. To think this way lets society off the hook for problems such as child hunger now at unprecedented levels – and the lack of affordable housing and health care. Richard Rothstein, author of Class and Schools and other works, has been an eloquent proponent of this view.
On the flip side are those who say the schools get an unwarranted pass when they claim they cannot overcome the effects of poverty on poor children. The Education Trust, a Washington D.C. research and advocacy group, tends to take this side.
They both have their points. So let’s call these indispensible students “children at-promise” and recognize both the tremendous challenges they bring to school and the attributes they possess to overcome them.
Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor
