Perceiving the Problem of Poverty and Schooling: Deconstructing the Class Stereotypes that Mis-Shape Education Practice and Policy

A rich history of scholarship has demonstrated the ways in which popular stereotypes of disenfranchised communities, including people living in poverty, affect individual biases and preconceptions. Less attention has been paid to the ways in which such stereotypes help frame policy and practice responses regarding social problems, such as the economic “achievement gap.” The purpose of this essay is to examine the nature of poverty-based stereotyping in the context of popular discourses regarding the education of poor and low-income students. In doing so, I analyze stereotypes commonly used to locate the problem of the economic “achievement gap” as existing within, rather than as pressing upon, poor and low-income families. I then discuss how these stereotypes have fed deficit ideology and, as a result, misdirected policy and practice responses to gross class inequities in U.S. schools.