At-Risk Students

Kathryn G. Herr

The term at-risk students describes youth who are seen as being in danger of not being able to assume constructive adult roles in society, whose life chances may be diminished long before they reach adulthood. It is a term attributed to those students who are not succeeding in school, who often eventually leave school without graduating, or who graduate without the necessary skills to function as productive citizens and workers. How students come to be unsuccessful in school has been framed in various ways, and this framing becomes critical to any discussion of what can be done to remedy the problem. Commonly, school failure has been individually attributed as a personal and private failure on the part of a student. From this lens, the factors associated with being at risk are seen as residing in the individual student and/or the student's family. These factors could include membership in a racial ...

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