Chapter 4: Perceiving the Problem of Poverty and Schooling in the United States: Deconstructing the Class Stereotypes That Mis-Shape Education Practice and Policy¹

A rich history of scholarship demonstrates the ways in which stereotypes affect individual biases and preconceptions. Less attention has been paid to the ways in which stereotypes help frame policy and practice responses regarding social problems, such as the economic “achievement gap.” In this chapter, I examine the nature of poverty-based stereotyping in the United States as it pertains to 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 on, 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.