Analyzing Poverty,Learning,and Teaching Through a Critical Race Theory Lens

Student and Family Homelessness

Student and family home structures, particularly homelessness, have been shown to influence students’ experiences and outcomes in schools, and student voices can help us understand how they navigate multiple environments as homeless youth (Farrugia, 2011). Duffield (2001) examined the effects of homelessness on students’ school attendance, enrollment, and academic success. She described homelessness as “the manifestation of severe poverty and lack of affordable housing; simply put, homeless families are too poor to afford housing” (p. 324). Students become homeless either as individuals or with their families, and homelessness can result from “family problems, economic problems, and residential instability” (p. 325). From an ecological perspective, Nooe and Patterson (2010) conceptualized homelessness in the following way:

Homeless individuals may experience changes in housing status that includes being on the street, shared dwelling, emergency shelter, transitional housing, and permanent . . . hospitalization and incarceration in correctional facilities. (p. 105)

Similar to conceptions of poverty, homelessness is not well defined and categorized both in the literature and in society. Finley and Diversi (2010) stressed this problem and the fuzziness of how homelessness is defined, especially from policymakers’ perspectives because homelessness is seen as a much smaller epidemic than it actually is and consequently resources to assist individuals can be limited. They expressed that the numbers have been distorted, leading people into believing the fallacy that the homelessness situation is not as bad as it seems. In their words,

Let us be clear here. Such distortion has profound consequences for actual lives. For instance, families forced into couch surfing with relatives and friends are most often not counted. . . . Nor are the families living in tent cities, vehicles, and parks around the country. As a result, thousands of lives and stories are buried under an ideologically self-serving sensation that things aren’t as bad as some claim. Or if the housing crisis is as bad as it seems, it is due solely to irresponsible individual choices. (p. 7)

Finley and Diversi (2010) provided a collection of textual representations of homelessness from different vantage points across the United States. The researchers’ goal was to assemble real-life images to contribute to scholarly and public perspectives about the human condition and to provide words and photographic images that are often ignored. Moreover, their point was to extend and problematize scholarly and public discourse that would suggest that homeless people are living in poverty because they have somehow failed as individuals, which may take the pressure and attention away from policies and practices that have not helped much.

Mawhinney-Rhoads and Stahler (2006) observed that

homeless children are particularly at risk for poor educational outcomes, which can have lifelong consequences for their future livelihood and economic independence. If school systems do not provide special educational interventions to address the particular educational barriers that these children face, then it is likely that these children will stay marginalized in the lowest economic rung of society. (p. 289)

In their study, they identified several educational barriers that homeless students experience in schools that should be addressed through policy and practice. One barrier identified was residency—challenges that homeless students and their families face because schools require proof of residency. In essence, Mawhinney-Rhoads and Stahler (2006) found that when students are homeless without a permanent residency or address (or perhaps when they are living out of a car) “the issue of residency can block some students from attending certain schools or maintaining their status in their current school” (p. 291). A second barrier identified by the researchers was what they called “guardianship” (p. 292). The main issue as discussed by these researchers was that “homeless children often reside with a family member who is not a legal guardian” (p. 292) and consequently these children may be denied access to school or be put through turmoil. Another barrier identified for homeless children and their families was the lack of medical records, as students may not have these documents when requested. Students and their families who are transient often lose these types of documents, and this can result in difficulty for their families. Transportation was another issue identified. The authors explained that “because homeless families are so often transient, a homeless child attending school and residing in a temporary shelter within a given school district might move 30 days later to another shelter outside the district boundaries” (p. 292). Such moves can make it complicated to get to school on time or to attend school at all. If the family does not have access to a car or public transportation, homeless students have an added burden to their educational experiences. A final barrier identified was socioemotional challenges where homeless students tend to have difficult times interacting with peers and their teachers. The students may have low self-esteem and may find it difficult to get along with others because they are worried about their home situations or perhaps because they are suffering from lack of sleep or rest. Mawhinney-Rhoads and Stahler (2006) concluded that school reform policies for homeless students need to be responsive and tailored to meet the evolving needs of the students they serve.

It is important to note there are homeless students who “beat the odds,” persevere, and succeed in spite of the conditions outlined above. Moreover, there are students who have a roof over their heads but because they are not on the streets, these students and their families do not classify themselves as homeless (Mawhinney-Rhoads & Stahler, 2006). The story of homeless students should not end with the idea that they only experience turmoil because some of them, whether they classify themselves as homeless or not, succeed in the midst of challenging situations. My point in sharing these examples is not to generalize across the population of homeless students but to provide a snapshot of some consequences and realities of those living in poverty.

CRT would ask how race has affected the lives and experiences of homeless children and their families to gauge if policies, for instance, have helped or hindered progress among particular groups of students. Moreover, what are the racial demographic patterns of homeless children and youth? And perhaps most importantly how might racial discrimination and other forms of oppression and marginalization perpetuate homelessness? Mawhinney-Rhoads and Stahler (2006) found that “today, a significant proportion of the homeless population is comprised of minority, single-mother households with multiple children” (p. 290). In particular, these authors surmised that there was an overrepresentation of homeless Black people, representing about 40% of the homeless population, with children being the fastest growing sector in the United States.

Geography and Social Contexts Matter

In addition to homelessness, the locations where students and their families live seem to influence their experiences in education. Because of structural and systemic inequities (Anyon, 2005; Haberman, 1991; Kozol, 1991, 2005; MacLeod, 1995; Milner, 2010) and what Tate (2008) advanced as geography of opportunity, the topographical landscape can shape where businesses, transportation, housing, and related resources are strategically located. Students and their families are forced to take particular jobs that can be limited by where they live. From a CRT perspective, are Black and Brown people more concentrated in areas where public transportation is scarce, for instance? Moreover, in what other ways can the environment of students and their families contribute to their overall experiences?

Munin (2012) explained how environmental conditions can negatively affect children. He explained that children of color and those living in poverty are much more likely to be exposed to hazardous environmental conditions that can have an influence on their health and consequently their performance in schools:

Families live amid air and water pollution, waste disposal sites, airports, smokestacks, lead paint, car emissions, and countless other environmental hazards. . . . However, exposure to these toxins is not shared equally among our population. Studies show that these environmental conditions disproportionately affect people of color and the poor. (p. 29)

The conditions described above have shown to increase asthma among children, cause mothers to deliver babies prematurely and with low birth weights, increase children’s diagnosis with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and increase student absenteeism (Munin, 2012). Thus, the outside-of-school location—where children live—and the environmental conditions around them can have a profound impact on students and their families. Most of these environmental situations extend far beyond the control of students and their families.

From a social work developmental perspective, Fram, Miller-Cribbs, and Horn (2007) found it important for social workers to study and address links between poverty, SES, and achievement, particularly in the southern region of the United States (also, see Morris & Monroe, 2009). Similar to Tate (2008), much of the conceptualization of their study emphasized the importance of understanding geography of opportunity. Exceptions to the salience of race, though, exist, especially in the south. Beginning in 1998, in their study from the first two years of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study of 3,501 kindergarteners, Fram et al. (2007, p. 317) found that “although race looms large in southern understandings of daily life . . . family structure, maternal attributes, peers’ skill levels, and rural and nonrural location” were the most salient factors in explaining variation in students’ achievement in their particular study.

In addition, the contexts of students living in poverty range from rural to urban. Cass (2010) found that poverty can be more pronounced in rural areas, whereas others see poverty most common in urban environments. In both rural and urban spaces, students living in poverty can experience several disheartening realities: housing instability; hunger; health and nutrition problems; school instability; physical, emotional, and psychological abuse due to stress; family instability; and, perhaps most important for the purposes of this review, inadequate schools and educational experiences. Consider the photos that demonstrate two different types of housing in both rural and urban environments (Figures 3, 4, and 5).

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Figure 3

Rural Poverty Housing

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Figure 4

Rural Poverty Housing

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Figure 5

City Poverty Housing

The photos in Figures 3 and 4 are homes in the rural south that families actually occupy. Both homes are located on dirt roads and the nearest major supermarket is 10 to 15 miles away. There are no public transportation options in the rural town and very few jobs are available in the town. Citizens typically drive (carpool when possible) 20 to 30 miles to another town for work. The closest Wal-Mart to the rural town is approximately 35 miles away. The nearest hospital is about 25 miles away. Those in the rural community typically rent homes with a reasonable amount of property/land around the home. Neighbors are typically at least 20 to 25 feet away from each other. Although families live below the poverty line, some of them own their homes and the accompanying land because it was passed down to them from family members. Property taxes, though, can be challenging for those who own their houses. The value of the land and homes, though, is extremely low due to the lack of infrastructure, business, and related amenities that attract people and corporations to areas.

Whereas people living in rural poverty tend to have land around them without neighbors too close, those living in city poverty, or those living in large urban, metropolitan areas may reside in apartment-style homes, typically known as housing projects, which may be supported through governmental Section VIII programs, governmental housing (Figure 5). Although those living in rural poverty typically do not experience high levels of crime, for instance, those in the city experience higher rates of it. Those in urban cities also benefit from public transportation and other conveniences that large cities have to offer. In short, while both rural and urban families live in poverty, their experiences (benefits and challenges) can be quite different. Schools in both rural and urban areas have their challenges. With poverty being the constant thread, consider the following challenges that are perhaps consequences of outside-of-school difficulties that schools in both rural and urban contexts experience. I have adapted many of these examples from Barton’s (2003) policy analysis, Parsing the Achievement Gap: Baseline for Tracking Progress:

In essence, the different geography of those living in poverty results in similarities and differences, depending on the particulars inherent to the location.

Policy and School Funding

At the heart of what seems to be necessary to reform and improve schools with high representation of students living in poverty (both rural and urban) is the need to increase funding and resources. However, researchers have found that increasing funding, without explicit links to how programs, policies, and practices should be altered or transformed, can be unsuccessful in high-poverty schools (Bracey, 1997; Noguera & Wells, 2011; Nyhan & Alkadry, 1999). In their analysis, Noguera and Wells (2011) concluded that several millions of dollars in funds to support schools had virtually done very little to transform and affect the achievement of students in high-poverty schools. They cite opportunity and support grants as well as other financial supports from several donors and programs, including Annenberg, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Title 1 as somewhat innocuous in making huge strides for children living in poverty. In their words,

While it may be unfair to characterize the reform efforts . . . as a total failure, it is accurate to point out that the changes enacted as a result of the grants did not result in the large-scale improvement that was hoped for. It was especially clear that very little progress was made in the poorest communities where school failure was more pervasive. (p. 8)

Even though this and related arguments about the limitations of increased funding and resources provide a view into the complexity of the matter and provide insight into social stratification and the maintenance of the status quo, one might ask: What would the educational experiences for children living in poverty who benefited from the grants and other programs have been like without the increased support? In other words, some gains, as these authors point are, are better it seems than none at all from my perspective. From a CRT perspective, knowing which racial demographic of students benefitted most from the added resources and how the support correlated with attendance rates, test score gains, graduation rates, and other factors would be logical. Teams of researchers, it seems from this critique, need to be committed to thinking about how increased funding and support programs can facilitate the most effective, wide-ranging, scalable benefits for all students. Although poverty transcends race and is prevalent in communities of students across it, analyzing which populations of students received the added support and their levels of resulting performance could provide important information about how we address the overrepresentation and disproportionate representation of children of color living in poverty. Indeed, our goal should be to eliminate poverty for all racial groups, but from a CRT perspective, examining how resources were used, for whom, and the outcomes can advance the field and perhaps help elucidate why proportionately so many more children of color live in poverty.

In addition, there appears to be a misunderstanding of the relationship between equity and equality when analyzing school resource and fund allocation. Money and resources are unequal in different social contexts (Tate, 2008): Numbers of high-need districts where resources are low too often receive the same resources as districts with much greater resources. For instance, some districts distribute

equally funded programs into schools regardless of how many students need them. For example, a district might allocate $100,000 to each school with English-language learners, even though one school might have 200 students with limited English proficiency and another—often a more affluent school—might have only 20 [students]. (Roza, 2006, p. 11)

Secada (1989) pointed to a major difference between equality and equity. He wrote,

There is a history of using terms like equity and equality of education interchangeably. Though these constructs are related, equality is group-based and quantitative. Equity can be applied to groups or to individuals; it is qualitative in that equity is tied to notions of justice. (p. 23)

Equity, according to Secada (1989), is defined as judgments about whether or not a given state of affairs is just. For instance, equity in education may mean that we are attempting to provide students, regardless of their racial, ethnic, cultural, or SES background, with what they need to succeed—not necessarily the exact same goals and visions across different environments. Secada further explained:

The essence of equity lies in our ability to acknowledge that even though our actions are in accord with a set of rules, the results of those actions may still be unjust. Equity goes beyond following the rules . . . equity gauges the results of actions directly against standards of justice. (p. 23)

In this sense, equity and equality do not necessarily have the same meaning; what is necessary for success in one school or district or with one student may be quite different from the next.

Traditional conceptions of equality and equity may be easier to accomplish in educational policy and reform; it is not very complex to provide schools, districts, and states with the same funding, for example, across the board. However, it is quite complex and multifaceted to outline and carry out equality and equity in educational policies with heightened attention on matters of the particular and distinctive needs of students and families living in poverty.

Wiener and Pristoop (2006) wrote, “States need to take a greater share of education funding and target more money to the districts with the biggest challenges” (p. 9) and the greatest needs. Moreover, Roza (2006) declared that “if public schools systems are serious about closing achievement gaps, they must begin to allocate more [italics added] resources to the students with the greatest needs” (p. 12). Such positions—where policies allow for and allocate funds on a “need” basis, where they are responsive to schools and districts—may seem antithetical to the very essence of what equity or equality actually means or should mean. Critics of such an approach—where funding is distributed across states, districts, and schools with serious attention placed on the financial needs of students—suggest that it is inequitable, in fact, to provide certain communities and certain groups of students with more support than another. Critics may question: How is it equitable to provide one district with something different or more than what another receives? At the core of such a question is the equity and equality debate. From a CRT perspective, careful analyses are needed to determine funding patterns and resource reforms with communities of color. Studying these funding decisions and implementations can help us understand why, proportionately, more people of color live in poverty and perhaps provide yet another explanation for gaps in test scores.

Liu (2006) wrote that “wealthier, high-spending states receive a disproportionate share of Title I funds, thereby exacerbating the profound differences in education spending from state to state. Title I makes rich states richer and leaves poor states behind” (p. 2). In essence, there appears to be instances where richer states receive more funding than states with students from lower SES and poverty. To explain, Liu (2006) stressed that “high-spending states get more Title I money per poor child than low-spending states. The net effect is that Title I does not reduce, but rather reinforces, inequality among states” (p. 2). To illuminate,

Maryland, for example, had fewer poor children than Arkansas but received 51 percent more Title I aid per poor child. Massachusetts had fewer low-income children than Oklahoma but received more than twice as much Title I aid per poor child. Similarly, Minnesota had fewer poor children than New Mexico but received 27 percent more Title I aid per poor child. (Liu, 2006, p. 2)

And according to Liu (2006), wealthier states do not necessarily exert more energy in providing educational support but have “higher per-pupil spending and thus receive higher Title I aid per poor child” (p. 2). Ladson-Billings (2006) concluded that because of the variance in per-pupil expenditure, there is no achievement gap but rather an education debt that our education system owes to so many students, especially those living in poverty, that it has underserved. ¹⁰ Ladson-Billings challenged educational researchers to reconceptualize and move beyond the achievement gap discourse. Irvine (2010) explained that a perceived achievement gap is the result of other gaps that seductively coerce people into believing that an achievement gap actually exists. Rather than focusing on a perceived achievement gap, from her analyses, Irvine recommended that attention should be placed on closing other gaps that exist in education, which cause researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and administrators to believe there is an achievement gap. For Irvine, other gaps that shape our belief in an achievement gap include

the teacher quality gap; the teacher training gap; the challenging curriculum gap; the school funding gap; the digital divide gap; the wealth and income gap; the employment opportunity gap; the affordable housing gap; the health care gap; the nutrition gap; the school integration gap; and the quality childcare gap. (p. xii)

From Irvine’s perspective, when we address the many other gaps that structurally and systemically exist in educational practice, achievement results can improve. Similarly, Delpit (2012) found in her analyses of infant and early development studies that an achievement gap does not exist at birth between Black students and White ones. Her synthesis suggests and is substantiated by Sleeter (2012) that schools actually can cause and reinforce gaps in achievement.

“Standardized” policies that do not take into account the multiple layers of needs and issues in particular contexts often result in inequities and inequalities that can be difficult to control or reverse (Kozol, 1991). A problem is that “district budget documents report how money is spent by category and program rather than by school” [italics added] (Roza, 2006, p. 9). The categories and programs are uniform, so it is difficult to determine which areas need additional funding. As evident in Liu’s (2006) analysis, the reverse should be true. Richer states probably should not receive more funding because they spend more per student. Poorer states conceivably should receive additional funding to help provide additional support for students in need. Districts attempt to provide a “one formula/policy paradigm fits all” approach across the board, and the students (i.e., in states, districts, and schools) who may really need the extra support do not receive it. Roza (2006) wrote,

More often, the patterns are created in response to pressures to equalize services across all schools. Where earmarked categorical funds such as federal Title I money pay for such extra services as full-day kindergarten or reading specialists in high-need schools, more flexible state and local money is often used to fund the same services in the low-need schools. (p. 11)

Indeed, as Ryan (1999) declared from a moral and legalistic perspective, we should be practicing equity in funding because of “basic fairness and decency to innocent children” (p. 315).

School Dependence

Students living in poverty as well as subpopulations of students of color rely and sometimes depend on schools to meet myriad needs that other populations of students may not need (Delpit, 2012). By school dependence, I mean that students living in poverty may depend on the school (teachers, counselors, administrators) to rovide resources to assist them in their development that they may not receive outside of school. This dependence can include breakfast and lunch, academic support in difficult subject areas, as well as exposure to museums and other learning centers through fieldtrips. Whereas breakfast and lunch are necessary for human and academic development for students living in poverty as well as those who do not, those not living in poverty have a greater chance of these needs being met outside of school while those living in poverty have a greater need—that is, they may depend on the school. In essence, research has shown that students from lower SES and who grow up and live in poverty depend more than their more affluent classmates on school to help them understand, navigate, negotiate, and even function in school (Delpit, 1995, 2012; Howard, 2010; Milner, 2010). These students are sometimes classified as school dependent (King, 1993; Klopfenstein, 2005). This means that, although it is important for parents to be involved in the educational experiences of their children, teachers, administrators, counselors, and other school-related personnel play a critical role in the social, emotional, behavioral, and cognitive development of these students because students rely on schools in ways that other students from more affluent communities may not have to. The expectations, responsiveness, and influence of teachers for their students become even more powerful for children living in poverty in this sense because students can rely on their teachers and the structure of school to expose them to the culture of power (Delpit, 1995) in order to help them “do” school successfully. Teachers matter in the overall framework of meeting needs of school-dependent students. Findings from the Konstantopoulous (2009) study revealed that “in early grades, teacher effects in one grade lead to higher academic achievement in the following grade. This finding supports the notion that effective teachers [and teaching] can increase achievement significantly for all students” (p. 108). In other words, teachers can be the difference maker for school-dependent students.

Factor analyses were used to study 1,000 African American and 260 Latino third graders’ perceptions of their school environment (Slaughter-Defoe & Carlson, 1996). The researchers, through their analyses of the 24-item measure, found that African American students viewed their relationships with teachers to be most important in evaluating the school context. These relationships centered not only on schoolwork but also personal problems that the African American students wanted to discuss with their teachers. Latino students stressed that notions of fairness, care, and praise for putting forth effort were most important in their interactions with their teachers. This study suggests that relationship building and sustaining them can have an influence on how welcome students feel in an environment and also demonstrate how school-dependent youth can rely on relationships to help them construct positive attitudes about school and consequently put more effort in their schoolwork.

Parental and Family Involvement

Parental and family involvement crosses the boundary between outside- and inside-of-school. Such involvement can influence how well connected students are to academic and social expectations of schools. Studies related to poverty and what was sometimes referred to as SES focus, to some degree, on the role of parents, families, and their involvement in their children’s education. ¹¹

Focused on parental involvement, in their study of different racial and ethnic groups living in poverty, Cooper et al. (2010) found that African American, Hispanic, and White ¹² students experienced more academic problems than students from more affluent families. However, the researchers found no difference between those from low SES and high SES Asian students—a nontrivial finding. Both groups of Asian students (low and high SES) tended to perform well on academic measures. The researchers also found that “poor” and “nonpoor” African American students both participated in organized extracurricular activities. Unfortunately, the researchers determined that this organized activity did not necessarily correlate with higher achievement in schools for these students although research would suggest that organized activities would supplement students’ in-school learning and consequently their performance on tests. The point here is that family and parental decisions to include students in out-of-school activities, for example, can have an influence on students, and those living in poverty could potentially benefit. However, this was not the case for African American students in this study. The Cooper et al. study determined that strong values and high expectations of the Asian students’ families were common between both the low and high SES students, which resulted in the academic success of students from both groups. From a CRT perspective, analyzing differences within a racial group provides a storyline that complicates generalized notions about particular groups of people. A common story across the literature is the idea that students from higher SES outperform those from lower SES. Moreover, a persistent narrative in the literature is that White students outperform other racial groups of students in both high and low SES groups. For instance, Whiteness is normalized and other racial groups are compared to the constant norm of it (Foster, 1999); even when Asian students outperform other racial/ethnic groups, they are still compared to White students. This study counters those storylines, further supporting the notion that looking at the intersection of race/ethnicity and poverty can provide compelling insight into what we know and what we think and believe we know.

Brooks-Gunn and Duncan (1997) found we know very little about high achieving students who also live in poverty. Although some (and still not enough) students living in poverty beat the odds and succeed in schools and are classified as gifted and high achievers, it is not clear the percentages of these students, where they attend school, and the sources (outside and inside of school) of their academic success. More research is needed in this area, especially with an eye toward racial patterns.

Exceptions exist as some students do attempt to examine those who are high achievers and living in poverty. For example, in their study of African American families living in poverty, Gutman and McLoyd (2000) examined the management and involvement of parents both out of and in school. In their qualitative study, they learned that parents of high achievers used particular strategies in assisting their students with homework and had supportive conversations with their students at home about their potential. At school, parents of high achievers were involved but had particular reasons for their involvement. Outside of school, parents of high achievers had their children actively involved and engaged in community through extracurricular activities—including religious activities. This storyline might counter discourses that might suggest that (a) students cannot be high achievers and/or (b) parents do not have specific, deliberate practices to keep their children involved, engaged, and successful in and out of school. For instance, do Black parents show up for PTA meetings? Questions about why or why not are necessary. Do these parents work during the meeting times? Are there problems with transportation? Moreover, do these parents feel that their needs and interests are being addressed at the meetings? Teachers sometimes have negative images of parents living in poverty when parents do not “participate” or function in school activities to the degree teachers believe necessarily appropriate (Milner, 2007). Understanding why parents do not participate or underparticipate needs to be of central concern in the research community.

Not only have studies examined parents’ expectations and values espoused for their children (see, for instance, Cooper et al., 2009), there has also been an emphasis on parents’ expectations of teachers. Whereas parental and family involvement seem to be a critical aspect of students’ academic and social success in schools, research has found that parents place value in and have different expectations and demands of their children’s teachers. Jacob and Lefgren (2007) discovered that parents in high poverty contexts “strongly” (p. 59) placed value on the effectiveness and ability of teachers to raise their children’s test scores. Contrarily, those from higher SES, according to the study, placed more emphasis on teachers’ ability to keep their children “happy” (p. 60). The researchers wrote:

Because academic resources are relatively scarce in higher-poverty schools, parents in these schools seek teachers skilled at improving achievement even if this comes at the cost of student satisfaction. . . . In higher-income schools, parents are likely to oppose measures that increase the focus on standardized test scores at the cost of student satisfaction. (pp. 63–64)

Again, because students living in poverty may be more “school dependent,” parents may rely on teachers and the school to increase students’ test scores. Those from more affluent backgrounds may have the means to seek home tutoring in order to supplement and complement learning necessary for test score success and thus they are not as dependent on schools.

Milne and Plourde (2006) conducted another study that focused on race, poverty, and families. They provided insights from one of the only studies on poverty and students’ academic success. They studied and identified essential elements of success that assisted high achieving students living in poverty. Parents in the qualitative study of six second-grade high poverty and high achievers had educational materials in the home, such as books and other written materials. Parents were deliberate in spending quality time with their children to ensure they (as parents) were aware of student needs and expectations of the school. They had dinner together regularly, talked extensively to their children, and the families served as a strong support system for their children. Through talk in the home, parents also stressed the importance and value of education because they, indeed, valued education themselves. The idea that those in poverty do not value education is countered and disrupted in this study as it is clear that these families living in poverty demonstrated strong beliefs in the importance of it. From a CRT perspective, it is essential that such positive narratives, again, known as counternarratives to negative ones, be told about families of color. The Milne and Plourde narrative helps disrupt and counter conceptions that families living in poverty, Black families in this case, did not value education or that they did not participate and support their children in developing academic and social skills in the home that were transferable to school.

The outside-of-school influences of poverty on education must be understood so that policymakers as well as practitioners understand the complex interplay between outside-of-school situations and what happens inside school. For instance, thinking deeply about how transportation challenges may influence people’s ability to work provides a layer of explanation of students’ lived experiences that might not be considered when educators (policymakers and practitioners) use their own lenses and frames of references based on their personal experiences. Educators may believe that people in a community do not work because they do not want to rather than because they do not have the transportation means to get to work. When there are transportation avenues (busses, trains, for instance), job opportunities may be hours away from those living in poverty because as Tate explained (2008) corporations set up businesses in locations that benefit them (taxes) and the executives’ families such as strong school systems.

Language and Literacy

Unlike the majority of empirical studies published on poverty, those with a language arts emphasis were more qualitative in their research designs and approaches. Although the studies emphasized nuances that too many of the studies in other areas did not, they too rarely had an explicit focus on race to make sense of what they learned about the participants, the policies they reviewed, the instructional practices explored, the learning opportunities available, or the social contexts they investigated.

Language and literacy researchers would argue that reading is a core competence for transcending and overcoming poverty (Adler & Fisher, 2001; Edmondson & Shannon, 1998). ¹³ Perhaps this is the reason studies that focused on subject matter learning (such as mathematics or science) and poverty were mostly concentrated in language and literacy. Edmondson and Shannon (1998) surmised that literacy education and learning to read in particular can help people either “prevent or overcome poverty” (p. 104). Similar to other areas of emphases in the research literature, poverty is linked to student test scores and particularly success in reading. Adler and Fisher (2001) stressed that “children who do not learn to read fluently and independently in the early grades have few opportunities to catch up to, and virtually no chance to surpass, their peers who are reading on grade level” (p. 616). In sharing their synthesis of the research literature regarding effective language and literacy instruction for all students, they explained that “instruction that provides opportunities [for students] to master concepts of print, the alphabetic principle, word recognition skills, and phonemic awareness and that affords engagement and interest in reading through a wide range of materials in the context of developmentally appropriate instruction” (p. 616) were essential.

Building on the established literature, these researchers identified several successful literacy qualities and practices exemplified in their case study of a beat the odds high-poverty school, Emerald Elementary School: strong focus on student outcomes, multiple reading programs in every classroom, shared responsibility for student success, strong leadership at school and classroom levels, and veteran, knowledgeable, and committed faculty and staff. However, this study like many others in the area of language arts did not take race into consideration in their analysis. From a CRT perspective, race is a central component to the ways in which researchers should analyze and think through what they find in their studies. The findings in this study would suggest that the instructional practices and strategies identified above are race- or at best culture-neutral. To be clear, CRT would not argue in support of a one-size-fits-all approach to teaching or implementing an instructional or leadership policy based on race. However, because race and racism are still common in society and in schools, students of color experience inequity and other forms of discrimination that informs their experiences (Milner, 2010), and these experiences should be used to anchor instructional practices and related policies and practices. In what ways might the leadership practices espoused in the Adler and Fisher (2001) study be saturated in White, middle-class ideology, for instance? What instructional literacy practices best meet the needs of students of color living in poverty in a particular environment? What evidence supports these instructional approaches?

Emphasizing the importance of literacy and access to reading materials such as books, Pribesh, Gavigan, and Dickinson (2011) examined differences in school library characteristics and resources such as the number of staff members and books included and/or added to the library. They also studied the schedule and number of days that the libraries were closed in schools where there was a large concentration of students living in poverty. The researchers found “alarmingly, . . . that the students in most need—those attending schools with the highest concentrations of students living in poverty—had the fewest school library resources to draw on” (p. 143). Although this study provides an important view of the conditions of and opportunities for students to use library facilities, again, we know very little about the racial and ethnic background of the populations of students living in poverty and where the libraries were zoned considering my earlier point that geography is important to foreground in studies about poverty, learning, and teaching. It is important to note that examining the intersection of race and poverty can provide a lens for researchers and consumers of the findings of research to disentangle the role and salience of race in the educational experiences, opportunities, and outcomes of the libraries for particular students. In other words, from what racial background are students who are being underserved by the library, and how might knowing this shape how we think about student outcomes and disparities such as those that emerge from standardized test scores, which are often discussed from a racialized framework?

Focusing on reading and other in-school variables, Fram et al. (2007) found that students living in poverty tended to be raised in single-parent homes mostly with mothers with “lower” educational levels, and many of these students were born to teenage mothers. The authors classified these conditions as “risk factors” and identified several school-related practices that shaped students’ experiences. In their words, “the classroom contexts in which they learn are in some ways different, and perhaps less desirable, than those offered to their peers in other schools” (p. 316). They found that teachers were less credentialed and consequently qualified in many of these schools and that students spent large amounts of time in “achievement groups.” Teachers followed general standards without being responsive to the individual needs of students, and their students were tracked into classrooms with classmates who had below grade-level reading skills. Data from their analyses of the first 2 years of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Kindergarten Cohort led the researchers to conclude and advocate for “mixed-ability peer groups” (p. 318) in reading to assist in students’ learning and development and suggested that teachers needed to be better prepared to understand how to work with children living in poverty. In short, the Fram et al. study investigated school-level influences on student achievement.

Curriculum as Policy

In examining the Language Arts curriculum in a school district, Smagorinsky, Lakly, and Johnson (2002) found that district officials expected teachers across the diverse district to use the same curriculum materials, in the same order, and even at the exact same time of day. These researchers explained that the curriculum

uniformity meant that all students, whether living in an affluent suburb, in the inner city, or on a farm on the fringe of the county would receive the same [curriculum] at the same time. . . . The curriculum further tied to standardized county-wide tests that assessed students after each unit, further pressuring teachers to follow the curriculum guide faithfully. (pp. 198–199)

In this way, scripted curriculum does not allow or at best makes it difficult for teachers to respond to the social context and realities of their work: for instance, what is necessary for success in a suburban district might look qualitatively different from a rural or urban environment. Moreover, following a scripted curriculum can be difficult if teachers are concerned about and committed to developing a curriculum that is responsive to the lived experiences of students, especially those whose life experiences are often on the fringes of teaching and learning.

Furthermore, Smagorinsky et al. (2002) found that selected novels were “unappealing” (p. 199) to students and that the flow and organization of the expected curriculum was incoherent and unresponsive to the particular idiosyncrasies inherent to particular social contexts. Although a scripted curriculum may sound like an ideal approach, especially in populations of students who have been underserved such as those in poverty, Ede (2006) wrote, “The diverse ethnic and cultural makeup of today’s classrooms makes it unlikely that one single curriculum will meet the needs and interests of all students” (p. 31).

In a qualitative study of third-grade students, Dutro (2010) investigated the extent to which students from poverty were able to connect with district-mandated reading curriculum. She found that the mandated curriculum portrayed “economic struggle as a temporary condition, located only in historical or national disaster contexts” (p. 255). This researcher also explained that the teacher’s edition for the curriculum, which teachers used to guide learning, included language that did not support students’ critical thinking regarding the relationship between themselves and poverty. In essence, this study demonstrated how the curriculum can be disconnected from students’ lived experiences and how the curriculum can be framed in ways that do not allow them to think about and critique matters in their own communities that might help them understand more deeply how the world works, for whom, and what they can do to transform inequity (Freire, 1998).

From a CRT perspective, documents and policies—if we conceive a teacher’s curriculum edition as a policy document—should be examined to disentangle (Howard, 2008; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; Milner, 2008) the ways in which race shapes what is and is not emphasized in the document. In this sense, a curriculum document is a policy document that can be systematically examined to think about the ways in which particular racial groups of students might experience the curriculum in schools. I agree with Dutro (2010) as she found that curriculum materials should “allow children to see themselves, access experiences that differ from their own, and foster talk about issues of equity and social justice” (p. 257). On a micro level, some teachers may believe, however, that focusing on matters of inequity or social justice is disadvantageous or irrelevant to the “real” curriculum (A. E. Lewis, 2001; Milner, 2010). As a result, they avoid such emphases. CRT would demand that the curriculum be seen as a form of property to help students understand and examine the relationships between and among language and literacy, poverty and race, not only poverty and language arts. Such opportunities can allow students to examine their own lives, make connections, draw conjectures about inconsistencies, and think about the direction of their current or future lives as they interact with others.

Class Size

An additional inside-of-school factor that has been investigated to determine the relationship between poverty, learning, and teaching is class size. Conventional wisdom might suggest that smaller class size would almost automatically increase student test scores. However, results are scattered regarding the effectiveness of reduced class size for student achievement among those living in poverty. Some evidence suggests that reducing class size for students living in poverty has little direct impact on student achievement scores (Nyhan & Alkadry, 1999). Over the past 20 years, states and even the federal government have increased attention on the effectiveness of smaller class sizes for students, and researchers have explored the utility and benefits of smaller class sizes for students living in poverty (Reichardt, 2001).

From my view, to suggest that class size does not matter from a broader, more holistic approach, beyond student test scores, is unreasonable. Whereas researchers may not have found powerful links between reduced class size and student test scores, my research has revealed that smaller class size can have a powerful influence on the sociology of the classroom, especially in populations with large percentages of students living in poverty (Milner, 2008, 2010) and large percentages of school-dependent students. In classrooms with fewer students, I found teachers are able to communicate more directly with individual students, address needs both connected to and disconnected from the curriculum, and plan for more innovative curriculum and instructional practices. Sadly, our obsession with test scores (Irvine, 2010; Ladson-Billings, 2006; Milner, 2012) can limit other potentially beneficial aspects to student development.

Jepsen and Rivkin (2009) studied the effects of reduced class size on student achievement (test scores), specifically in mathematics and reading, in the state of California. They contextualized the study in the following way:

In the summer of 1996, California enacted the most expensive state level education reform in U.S. history. The state’s class-size-reduction . . . program reduced K-3 class sizes throughout the state by roughly ten students per class, from 30 to 20, at an annual cost that exceeds one billion dollars. (pp. 224–225)

Recognizing the complexities of studying the interplay and effects of reduced class size, teacher quality, and student achievement, the researchers concluded that smaller class sizes did raise math and reading achievement. However, these results were not straightforward. The researchers reported that

although the results show that smaller classes raised mathematics and reading achievement, they also show that the increase in the share of teachers with neither prior experience nor full certification dampened the benefits of smaller classes, particularly in schools with high shares of economically disadvantaged, minority students. (Jepsen & Rivkin, 2009, p. 223)

The researchers also reported little or no evidence of class size reduction on demographic characteristics. It is difficult to examine improvements from different racial demographics of students when results do not attempt to determine how well particular groups of students perform as a result of the reduction of class size. Of course, the authors argued that other competing factors made it difficult to determine the effectiveness of class size reduction because teacher quality (the number of years and experiences of teachers) varied. For instance, were increases in student achievement a result of the quality of the teacher or the reduction in class size? The researchers questioned whether the reduction of class size was worth the amount of money spent.

Graue, Hatch, Rao, and Oen (2007) conducted a qualitative exploratory study with nine high-poverty schools to investigate a statewide class size initiative. The class reduction required changes in staffing, instructional strategies, and space allocations. Pupil–teacher ratios decreased, and the researchers concluded that the results were mixed; researchers determined that reforms were necessary both programmatically as well as instructionally. For instance, reducing the number of students in a classroom may not have lasting influences on their test scores if teachers continue teaching in the same ways they had with larger numbers of students. In this sense, what teachers actually do instructionally, these researchers found, was essential to the success of class size reduction. Thus, the researchers stressed the importance of professional development to assist teachers (both individually and schools in the collective) to transition from larger to smaller classroom sizes. Most of the studies in this area have been in elementary schools.

Frameworks and Practices That Do Not (Necessarily) Work

Haberman (2000) explained that students living in poverty are too often miseducated because they are not trained and empowered to think through complex problems. He observed that some students who drop out of school were more developed and prepared to function in society than others who stay in school for 13 years. From a policy and legal studies perspective, Burch (2001) explained that “citizens residing in affluent districts (overwhelmingly White) are educated to govern, whereas citizens residing in economically disadvantaged districts (overwhelmingly people of color) are educated to be governed” (p. 265). Anyon (1980, 1997), Kozol (1991), and Haberman (1991, 2000) all demonstrated, to an extent, that teachers in high-poverty schools conceived knowledge construction as basic skills that students are taught by a teacher (who is the knower) in order to receive a reward (Haberman, 2000).

To illuminate, Anyon (1980) provided one of the most provocative and compelling examples of social stratification and social reproduction produced in schools. She described four layers of schools where students were stratified and where social and societal privileges were either enabled or suppressed at the expense of students. Students in the low-income schools were taught to build knowledge about how to simply function and obey orders. Moreover, students in these schools were not taught to question authority or to engage in critical thinking about the content of various texts they were engaging. Students were not empowered to think about inequity or how to develop skills to confront or change racist and inequitable policies and practices either in or out of school. Much of the learning centered on completing worksheets and direction following, whereas the more affluent schools allowed students to engage in deeply complex activities where they learned how to problem solve, build and convey their positions and arguments, and engage in critical thinking while building and showcasing their creativity. In this sense, schools were complicit, perhaps unknowingly, in replicating and reinforcing the status quo, and perhaps guaranteeing that society will remain stratified. In Anyon’s (1980) words, “Knowledge and skills leading to social power and reward are made available to the advantaged social groups but are withheld from the working classes, to whom a more ‘practical’ curriculum is offered” (p. 366).

I recall walking down a hallway in an urban, high-poverty, elementary school in the Midwest when a teacher proclaimed: “We are not moving until I see a straight line” (see Milner, 2010). I was stunned as I noticed the third graders desperately trying to figure out how to construct the line straight enough so that they could “move.” For approximately 6 minutes, the teacher stood there with a look of disgust on her face because the students apparently could not construct the line straight enough for her satisfaction. I wondered what kinds of learning opportunities the students were missing (or perhaps gaining) during her 6 minutes of “teaching” the students that they would not move until she saw a straight line. This story is not unique. All over the country and especially in urban, high-poverty schools, teachers focus so much on rules that they sometimes forget they are working with human beings who are developing and grappling with a range of matters (Milner, 2010; Noguera, 2003).

Although I have spent a lot of time visiting urban schools (from elementary to high), I have also visited and observed suburban and independent schools. What I have learned is that student behaviors are similar in many ways in these different social contexts (urban/high poverty as well as independent/suburban/wealthy): students talk sometimes without raising their hands, they have conflicts with their classmates, they forget to complete their homework, they sometimes use profanity, and they even struggle sometimes to stand in a straight line (see Milner, 2010). However, there is a stark difference between how the teachers and other adults with power and in charge handle students’ mistakes in suburban and independent schools. In many urban schools, students are treated like prisoners (see the important work of Noguera, 2003, for more on this), whereas in suburban and independent schools, students are treated as individuals who are learning and developing. In many urban and high-poverty schools, students are being taught and are learning how to follow rules but are rarely learning how to develop their own academic, social, and political awareness and positions on issues. In this way, schools are preparing students for the kind of jobs they will assume: to follow directions. Urban and high-poverty spaces are preparing their students to take orders. Suburban and independent schools are preparing their students to develop authority, confidence, and privilege and how to give orders (Anyon, 1980; Haberman, 2000; Milner, 2010). It is important to note that I am not suggesting that teachers should not help students understand rules and the consequences in store for them if/when they do not understand and/or follow them. I understand that we must have rules and laws in schools and society to live and function. However, focusing on rules more than helping students develop other important knowledge and skills is problematic yet so pervasive in schools across the United States, especially in schools with high populations of students of color and those living in poverty.

In addition, some researchers, teacher educators, policymakers, teachers, and principals believe that subject matter expertise is the only real important feature to student and teacher success. However, Haberman (1995), building from 40 years of research of teachers of urban and high-poverty students, explained that while it is essential for teachers to know their content/subject matter, this is insufficient for the kind of work necessary to be successful in urban and high-poverty schools. He maintained that many teachers fail in high-poverty environments because they do not have the ability to connect with students and build relationships with them where students are willing to participate in learning. In this way, subject matter knowledge is necessary but is insufficient in meeting the needs of students living in poverty. Yet many teacher education programs focus much of their attention on preparing teachers in the subject matter and miss another important element to their work: preparing teachers to understand students and to connect with them by building meaningful relationships. Although the idea that building relationships with students may seem logical and straightforward, many teachers struggle to develop them (Milner, 2010).

Ruby Payne’s Framework

Ruby Payne conducts scores of professional development seminars with school districts across the country about teaching students living in poverty. I was quite reluctant to critique Payne’s framework in this research review for many reasons. I decided to include it in this chapter mainly because an important thread of this review concerns instructional practices with students living in poverty and so many school districts across the country draw from and rely extensively on Payne’s framework. I believe it is essential to include aspects of the Payne framework in this review to allow practitioners and those who study and educate/train teachers opportunities to critique and think about what the framework provides, what it does not, and perhaps what it should. Payne’s self-published book, A Framework for Understanding Poverty (1996), outlines her much relied on, underresearched conjectures and assertions for teachers teaching students who live in poverty. According to Payne (1996), the framework is intended to challenge educators—teachers, principals, counselors, and even policymakers—to rethink what they know about the nexus of poverty, learning, and teaching. The book rests on 12 principles:

Poverty is relative. Poverty occurs in all races. Generational and situational poverty are different. This work is based on patterns. All patterns have exceptions. Schools operate from middle-class norms and values. Individuals bring with them the hidden rules of the class in which they were raised. There are cultural differences in poverty. This study is cross-cultural and focusses on economics. We must neither excuse them nor scold them. We must teach them. We must teach them [students] that there are two sets of rules. To move from poverty to middle class, one must give up (for a period of time) relationships for achievement. Two things that help one move out of poverty are: education and relationships. Four Reasons one leaves poverty are: “too painful to stay, vision or goal, key relationship, and special talent/skill.” (p. 3)

Criticism of Payne’s framework, books, lectures, and overall philosophy are extensive (Bomer, Dworin, May, & Semingson, 2008; Gorski, 2006; Murnane, 2007; Osei-Kofi, 2005). Gorski (2006), for instance, explained that Payne’s approach and message fail to critique systemic barriers and inequities in schools and rely on cultural deficit models in explaining the fixed categories she advances. Moreover, Gorski surmised that her work has conservative values embedded throughout the fabric of the texts and messages she sends. An even closer examination of Payne’s work reveals that much of her framework rests on and draws from anecdote; research is thin to support her claims, and few critical analyses of racism, discrimination, and oppression are attended to on any substantive level, a critique that is supported from a CRT perspective. Unlike many frameworks and conceptual analyses, however, Payne does at least address in her framework what might be seen as the elephant in the room in her poverty discussions: race. However, the ways in which she addresses race is stereotypic and undernuanced. Accordingly, the framework seems to do more to reinforce stereotypes than to address systemic and structural forms of racism that can prevent many students of color living in poverty from succeeding. In short, the way Payne attends to race, by suggesting that students and families of color do not understand how to operate in the normative White-mainstream “culture,” can actually do more harm than good because she operates from a deficit perspective and has a shallow, undertheorized understanding of race and the intersection of race and poverty.

Consistent among the critique of Payne’s work and her blaming of students and their families for not understanding how to operate in the normative “middle-class” culture are those outlined in the work of Oscar Lewis (1959, 1961, 1966). From an anthropological perspective (Ladson-Billings, 2009), poverty is not a culture although Lewis and Payne classify and categorize it as such. From an anthropological perspective, Lewis is credited or perhaps criticized for constructing and conceptualizing what he called a “culture of poverty” to describe, contextualize, and name the practices of families in Mexico and Puerto Rican families in San Juan and New York. Lewis identified several behaviors that painted these families as inferior, deficient, and substandard to mainstream cultural norms, expectations, and behaviors. In this sense, according to Osei-Kofi (2005), Lewis and subsequently Payne pathologized those living in poverty. However, it is important to note that Lewis described behaviors and practices of those in these communities because of the structural consequences and conditions of poverty. Although some have argued that Lewis’s work takes a deficit perspective of the communities he studied, a closer examination of his work may demonstrate that in many ways he is describing cultural practices of his research participants that seem to result from material and structural conditions of poverty.

Misunderstanding Meritocracy

Although some educators have a difficult time confronting matters of race and accordingly adopt colorblindness in their work (Lewis, 2001), I have found that they readily identify disparities in students’ SES as causes of gaps in their students’ experiences (Milner, 2010), although hooks (2000) would argue that educators reject and avoid SES and poverty conversations, too. My research demonstrated that educators appeared to be more at ease, confident, and comfortable reflecting about, reading, and discussing how SES, particularly resources related to wealth and poverty, influence educational disparities, inequities, outcomes, and opportunities. However, although educators appear more comfortable addressing SES and class, they tend to misunderstand the SES nexus.

Based on my research, I have learned that educators may embrace the idea that their own, their parents’, and their students’ success and status have been earned. They may believe that failure emanates solely as a result of making bad decisions—for example, a student’s decision not to put forth effort in a class. However, unearned opportunities and consequences are sometimes passed down from one generation to the next. Yet many educators believe that their own success is merited because they have worked hard, followed the law, had the ability and skill, and made the right choices and decisions. They have little or no conception of how class and socioeconomic privilege and opportunity manifest. For instance, wealthy or middle-class teachers of any racial background can fail to recognize their SES privilege and can fail to understand what opportunities this privilege affords them (Kozol, 2005). Teachers in general can fail to understand that they have gained their status through a wide range of unearned advantages, chances, circumstances, and consequences (Milner, 2010). People who grow up in poverty or those from lower SES generally do not start their educational or life experiences in a fair or equitable position (Ladson-Billings, 2006).

At the center of the meritocracy argument for student success is opportunity. Darling-Hammond (2010) found that we are placing too much emphasis on student test scores in the name of achievement and outcomes and that we actually should be focused on opportunity gaps rather than achievement gaps, and I agree (Milner, 2010). That is, U.S. society is philosophically and ideologically structured such that all people are supposedly created equally with the same opportunities for success. In reality, however, educational practices and opportunities are not equal or equitable (Anyon, 1980; Darling-Hammond, 2010; Henslin, 2004). There is enormous variation in students’ social, economic, historic, political, and educational opportunities, which is in stark contrast to the “American dream”—one that adopts and supports meritocracy as its creed or philosophy. Still many educators believe that if people, their students in particular, just work hard enough they will be rewarded and will achieve success. They can fail to recognize systemic barriers and institutional structures that prevent opportunity and success, even when students are hard working. If the meritocracy argument were accurate, from a sociological perspective, Henslin (2004) wrote,

All positions would be awarded on the basis of merit. If so, ability should predict who goes to college. Instead, family income is the best predictor—the more a family earns, the more likely their children are to go to college . . . while some people do get ahead through ability and hard work, others simply inherit wealth and the opportunities that go with it . . . in short, factors far beyond merit give people their positions in society. (p. 174)

Thus, meritocracy seems to be a myth because it maintains that any person living in U.S. society will achieve the “American dream,” as long as he or she has the ability, works hard, is effortful, follows the law, and makes good decisions. However, opportunity gaps can

undermine one of our most powerful and core beliefs that we as Americans cling to: that no matter what circumstances children are born into, all have the opportunity to become educated and, if they work hard, to pursue their dreams. (Randolph-McCree & Pristoop, 2005, p. 2)

This philosophy can reject institutionalized and structural issues and barriers that permeate policies and practices such as racism, sexism, classism, and discrimination both in the classroom and in society. The meritocracy argument does not appropriately take into consideration social reproduction and property that wealthier students often inherit—materially, physically, socially, and culturally—capital and property that have been and continues to be passed down from one generation to the next (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995).

A permeating theme of a meritocratic way of seeing the world centers around a we/they binary that some adopt as they position themselves and their “earned” success in opposition to others. Apple (2006) explained that

the binary opposition of we—they becomes important. . . . For dominant groups, “we” are law-abiding, hardworking, decent, and virtuous. “They”—usually poor people and immigrants—are very different. They are lazy, immoral, and permissive. These binary oppositions act to exclude indigenous people, women, the poor, and others from the community of worthy individuals. (p. 22)

These dichotomous, binary conceptions can allow people to rationalize their successes as those that have been earned through their being law-abiding, hard-working, and virtuous. An important question in this regard is the following: How can we expect students to have the same outcomes on achievement measures when structural inequities place some groups of students in poorly run schools with fewer resources and underqualified teachers while others receive the opposite (Darling-Hammond, 2010; Ladson-Billings, 2006)? Overall, what I have outlined in this section has not seemed to work although the mindsets, practices, and approaches are consistently present in schools serving high populations of those living in poverty.

Toward a Radical Classroom Reform Pedagogy

Noguera and Wells (2011) were resolute and unyielding in their critique of what they called a No Excuses Reform Movement where decision makers in support of it proclaim that poverty is not and should not be an obstacle to meeting the needs of students. This movement would suggest that, on a micro-level, “a combination of hard work, good teaching, and accountability are all that are needed to produce a greater degree of educational success” (Noguera & Wells, 2011, p. 11). Although I agree that myriad factors can hinder progress in classrooms when teachers are working with students living in poverty, there is evidence to suggest teachers can be responsive to students’ needs although too many are not. Both the ineffective preparation of teachers as well as the lack of support they receive while teaching are reasons for teachers’ inability to be responsive to and effective for students living in poverty (Darling-Hammond, 2010). To be clear, I agree that it will take more than a teacher and/or a particular instructional approach to address poverty in learning and teaching at scale. If teachers wait on meso- or macro-level policies and mandates to support their work, however, serious progress may never be made because those in power may operate from ideological positions, many times disconnected from empirical research and also moral consciousness. The political, in this sense, is ideological (Anyon, 2005; Noguera & Wells, 2011), and policymakers may not understand the huge levels of privilege they have when making decisions for students and their families. Thus, similar to “No Excuse Reformers,” we should not allow poverty to supersede teachers’ and school districts’ attempts and documented success to teach in transformative ways with children living in poverty.

Because there is no specified, definitive body of collective literature that addresses effective pedagogical practices to meet the needs of children living in poverty, I draw from an established body of research that has been developed empirically about teaching practices that have proven successful for students whose needs have historically not been met in school. Some of these studies and frameworks were constructed specifically with children living in poverty. In this section, I provide insight for what I will call radical classroom reform pedagogy. The instructional practices (mindsets, policies, approaches) described in this section are radical in the sense that they sound logical to many practitioners, theorists, and researchers but require more than just words for practitioners attempting to implement them in schools with strict, myopic, traditional bureaucracies that can make it difficult for teachers to actualize. They are also radical in that in many instances they are not being implemented for one reason or another in classrooms across the United States because many teachers operate as they always have. They see instructional practices described in this section as inappropriate, too controversial, or something extra or additional that they must learn and enact with particular groups of students. They may become frustrated and believe that parents of their students should prepare them to assimilate into the classroom instructional practices already established—whether they are effective or not for all students.

Several pedagogical frameworks exist and are well established in the research literature that can help educators meet the needs of students living in poverty. Some of the most compelling research in the area of responding to the needs of students whose outside-of-school experiences are complexly difficult is grounded in what Ladson-Billings (2009) conceptualized and called culturally relevant pedagogy, Gay (2010) conceptualized and called culturally responsive teaching, Moll and colleagues conceptualized and called funds of knowledge (Moll & Gonzalez, 2004), and C. D. Lee (2007) conceptualized and called cultural modeling. Although most of the frameworks I review and draw from in this section have culture in their description, I am not suggesting that there is a culture of poverty as O. Lewis (1966) and R. Payne (1996) have conceptualized. Rather, I am suggesting that students and families living in poverty can engage in cultural practices (Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003) as a reaction to or in opposition to the material conditions and structural inequities that can be lastingly devastating for them, their families, and communities.

Consistent across these theories about instructional practices (what will be referred to as frameworks throughout this section) is the importance of teacher learning and understanding of the background and lived experiences of students. In particular, teachers are challenged to develop tools to inquire and learn about the outside-of-school aspects of students, their families, and communities. Teachers are learning about their students’ assets, evolving understanding and knowledge base in subject matter areas, their preferences, experiences, successes, challenges, and worldviews both inside and outside of the classroom. C. D. Lee (2007) explained that teachers should think about and use this learning about their students as “cultural data sets” (p. 35) from which to build and learn. Similarly, Ladson-Billings (2009) explained that teachers should study their students in deciding what to teach and how. What teachers learn about students should be centralized both in the curriculum ¹⁴ (what students have the opportunity to learn) as well as through instruction (how they teach the curriculum).

Moll and Gonzalez’s research pointed to the necessity to learn from and with the families of students as important curricula and instructional sites in the classroom. The funds of knowledge emphasis have a powerful connection to how we might think about working with families, and parents in particular, to develop instructional practices. The framework necessitates that teachers see or perhaps locate expertise of students and their families as assets—even those living in poverty. Moll’s framework would recommend that family members of students teach teachers about home practices that can be linked to the subject matter taught and covered inside of school. Lee’s cultural modeling framework also challenges teachers to focus on outside-of-school factors that shape learning inside of school. However, her framework is linked more closely to students themselves in everyday practices whereas Moll’s framework is broader in scope. The idea here is that students and teachers are actively engaged in knowledge construction and learning about the outside-of-school practices of students and families that can be mirrored and connected to the in-school curriculum in different subject areas for instruction. C. D. Lee (2007), in her important book, Culture, Literacy, and Learning: Taking Bloom in the Midst of the Whirlwind, provided explicit examples of how teachers in different subject areas including literacy and mathematics can use students’ practices to connect with learning in school. Interestingly, some would argue that mathematics, for instance, does not require attention to students’ particular worldviews or outside-of-school cultural practices. They see mathematics curriculum and instruction as neutral. However, both Lee and Ladson-Billings (2009) demonstrated how essential understanding who students really are can be in the teaching and learning exchange across the different subject matter areas.

In short, from a curriculum perspective, Ladson-Billings (2009) explained that teachers should use their learning about students and their families to construct, deconstruct, and reconstruct what is taught in schools and also how the curriculum is taught. Additionally, CRT would recommend that teachers carefully examine the (common core) standards and related policy expectations to ensure students’ racial backgrounds and interests are not ignored or overlooked in what is required and expected to be covered.

These instructional approaches would suggest that students in P-12 schools should be actively engaged in learning about poverty in their different subject areas and developing tools that empower them to speak against injustice, inequity, and also to change unfortunate realities. For instance, three interrelated tenets shape Ladson-Billings’s conception of culturally relevant pedagogy: academic achievement, sociopolitical consciousness, and cultural competence. I want to draw from her empirical conceptualization of sociopolitical consciousness as a site to explain what teachers can do instructionally to address poverty and race. In explaining the interplay between educational content/subject matter and society, Ladson-Billings (1992) maintained that culturally relevant pedagogy is an approach that empowers students to examine and critique what they are learning to make connections to the real world (outside of school). It emphasizes not only academic success but also social success and helps students maintain important identity characteristics that form aspects of who they are, who they want to be, and who they are becoming.

This instructional framework suggests that students in P-12 classrooms develop a critical consciousness and that they move beyond spaces where they simply or solely consume knowledge without critically examining it. The idea is that teachers create learning environments where they develop voice and perspective and are allowed to participate (more fully) in the multiple discourses available in a learning context by not only consuming information but also through deconstructing and reconstructing it (Freire, 1998). It also encourages teachers to help students identify and think about issues in their community such as unemployment and develop knowledge and skills to determine what unemployment means to them, their families, and communities.

In this sense, students are posing questions like why more people of color live in poverty and how issues of inequality may contribute to this representation. For instance, the idea that the unemployment rate plays a meaningful role in national debates as well as in local contexts for teachers and students would be centralized and incorporated into curricula and instructional opportunities to enable both teachers’ and students’ levels of critique, positioning, and consciousness. In this way, through exposure to structures that perpetuate and ensure poverty, students are equipped to develop a kind of sociopolitical consciousness that empowers them to want to change how society works both for themselves and for others. Sociopolitical consciousness means that students are not willing to accept situations that place their families, for instance, in situations where they depend on a system to “rescue” them from the realities of poverty. Rather, students become equipped to think about why things are as they are in their localized communities and make connections to broader structures on meso and macro levels. Moreover, students are empowered to move beyond the individual to systemic, collective matters that shape the world. A pressing question, though, from this perspective is age/developmental appropriateness for students to experience such curriculum and teaching.

In this sense, the teacher is not the only or the main arbiter of knowledge (Eisner, 1994; McCutcheon, 2002) and curriculum construction in a classroom. Students are expected and empowered to develop intellectually and socially in order to build skills to make meaningful and transformative contributions to society. Students in poverty are challenged to think about why they are in poverty and to question inequitable circumstances that contribute to these situations. In essence, culturally relevant pedagogy is an approach that helps students “see the contradictions and inequities” (Ladson-Billings, 1992, p. 382) that exist inside and outside of the classroom. Through culturally relevant teaching, teachers prepare students with skills to question inequity and to fight against the many isms and phobias that they encounter while allowing students to build knowledge and to transfer what they have learned through classroom instructional/learning opportunities to other experiences.

Finally, similar to questions about when it is most developmentally appropriate for students to discuss and learn about race in the curriculum (A. E. Lewis, 2001; Milner, 2010), some question the appropriateness of discussions of poverty and SES in the classroom (hooks, 2000). Although teachers may opt not to have discussions or develop curriculum materials and instructional practices about SES or poverty, students do often think about these issues and even at an early age (Chafel, 1997). Although their ways to communicate may not be as forthcoming or nuanced as older people about poverty, they know that differences exist between and among people (Anyon, 1980). So should we ignore this knowledge that students have because teachers/adults do not feel comfortable to address it? According to Haberman (1991), students should be engaged in questions like why are some people poor while others are rich? And what is poverty and how do people get out of it?

Indeed, teachers’ thinking and beliefs shape their practices with students (Banks, 2001; Gay, 2010). Accordingly, the ways in which teachers think about students in poverty, their situations, and whether they believe it is appropriate for them to include aspects of poverty in their instruction can play a role in what students learn and how they develop (Gay, 2010). Whereas I have provided instructional strategies that seem important in meeting the complex needs of students who have lived or are living in poverty, Gutiérrez and Rogoff (2003) cautioned against essentializing and generalizing practices based on traits of individuals or even groups of people, students, and families. They encouraged researchers, theoreticians, and practitioners alike to understand the complexities—the “importance and benefits of knowing about the histories and valued practices of cultural groups rather than trying to teach prescriptively according to broad, underexamined generalities about groups” (p. 20). In this regard, instructional practices outlined here are meant to help teachers understand and gauge students’ experiences and practices and to examine the practices of students (inside and out of school) in order to use them as opportunities to build curriculum and teach students. Thus, I am not suggesting that teachers implement these practices without deeply examining the needs, realities, and practices of their students. All the evidence reviewed in this section of the chapter suggests that the curriculum and instructional practices should be tailored to help students recognize how oppression, discrimination, and marginalization are central to why many people (of color) live in poverty. Students, then, learn how to understand, interpret, and read the world and the word (Freire, 1998) and work to mobilize themselves and others out of poverty. Students are knowers and teachers construct the learning environment in a way that showcases and honors what students know. Again, students move from a self-motivated perspective where they are only concerned about themselves to a more collective one where they realize that when another person (or people) lives in poverty, we all are at a disadvantage.

In sum, based on my review in this section, P-12 teachers are encouraged to (a) learn about students’ outside-of-school situations and realities; (b) learn to recognize and name the assets that students and their families possess; (c) connect outside-of-school experiences to the “real,” expected curriculum in school; (d) build meaningful and sustainable relationships with students and their families; (e) use real-world examples and situations about poverty in instructional practices; (f) help students recognize injustice; (g) empower students to change inequitable, unfair policies and practices as they encounter them; and (h) develop what I am calling radical classroom reform pedagogy as an instructional framework for teaching, not an add on to what and how they should be teaching.