The Payne of Addressing Race and Poverty in Public Education: Utopian Accountability and Deficit Assumptions of Middle-Class America

Abstract

Historically and currently, education discourse and policy are impacted by crisis rhetoric and utopian expectations for public education. Schools are failing, the narrative goes, but that failure is measured against a standard of success by all students without regard to the impact of socioeconomic conditions on student outcomes. Further, our educational approaches to children living in poverty are corrupted by deficit assumptions and practices as characterized by the workbooks and programs presented by Ruby Payne. Educational reform should be guided by a commitment to social reform and by a shift away from deficit perspectives and toward nuanced and realistic understandings of children living in poverty. The lives and education of children of color are disproportionately impacted by inequity and reduced practices, both reinforced by social assumptions driving educational discourse and policies that are doing more harm than good for an educational system designed to support a free people.