At Risk
A term most recently recycled by William Bennet during the Reagan years, 1976-1982, and codified in the cantankerous A Nation At Risk report, the most recent incarnation of the blame educational failure on the poor excuse.
Cognate to remedial, (see Mike Rose in "Lives on On the Boundary") whose origin as a medical term is associated with disease; appropriated into educational administrators' lexicon by the early 1920's. An idea that employs people to diagnose various disabilities, defects, defecits, deficiencies, and handicaps, and then tries to remedy them.
"Smart kids get to participate, at risk kids get to memorize" (Michelle Fine, 1988, Accelerated Learning Report).
See Oscar Lewis and the sociology of Daniel Patrick Monniyhan and Nathan Glazer for laying the social policy and theoretical groundwork for "The culture of poverty": The single minded focus on pathology rather than possibility.
