Deficit thinking is a pseudoscience founded on racial and class bias. It "blames the victim" for school failure instead of examining how schools are structured to prevent poor students and students of color from learning. Dismantling Contemporary Deficit Thinking provides comprehensive critiques and anti-deficit thinking alternatives to this oppressive theory by framing the linkages between prevailing theoretical perspectives and contemporary practices within the complex historical development of deficit thinking. Dismantling Contemporary Deficit Thinking examines the ongoing social construction of deficit thinking in three aspects of current discourse – the genetic pathology model, the culture of poverty model, and the "at-risk" model in which poor students, students of color, and their families are pathologized and marginalized. Richard R. Valencia challenges these three contemporary components of the deficit thinking theory by providing incisive critiques and discussing competing explanations for the pervasive school failure of many students in the nation’s public schools. Valencia also discusses a number of proactive, anti-deficit thinking suggestions from the fields of teacher education, educational leadership, and educational ethnography that are intended to provide a more equitable and democratic schooling for all students.

International Deficit Thinking: Educational Thought and Practice explores the incontrovertible reality of the persistent and pervasive academic achievement gap in many countries between marginalized students (primarily of color) and their economically advantaged White counterparts. For example, International Deficit Thinking discusses the cases of low-socioeconomic Black and Mexican American students in the United States, Indigenous Māori students in New Zealand, and immigrant Moroccan and Turkish pupils in Belgium. The predominant theoretical perspective that has been advanced to explain the school failure of marginalized students is the deficit thinking paradigm—a parsimonious, endogenous, and pseudoscientific model that blames such students as the makers of their own school failure. Deficit thinking asserts that the low academic achievement of many marginalized students is due to their limited intellectual ability, poor academic achievement motivation, and being raised in dysfunctional families and cultures. Drawing from, in part, critical race theory, systemic inequality analysis, and colonialism/postcolonialism, award-winning author and scholar Richard R.Valencia examines deficit thinking in education in 16 countries (e.g., Canada; Peru, Australia; England; India; South Africa). He seeks to (a) document and debunk deficit thinking as an interpretation for school failure of marginalized students; (b) offer scientifically defensible counternarratives for race-, class-, language-, and gender-based differences in academic achievement; (c) provide suggestions for workable and sustainable school reform for marginalized students.

This volume examines the school-to-prison pipeline, a concept that has received growing attention over the past 10–15 years in the United States. The “pipeline” refers to a number of interrelated concepts and activities that most often include the criminalization of students and student behavior, the police-like state found in many schools throughout the country, and the introduction of youth into the criminal justice system at an early age. The school-to-prison pipeline negatively and disproportionally affects communities of color throughout the United States, particularly in urban areas. Given the demographic composition of public schools in the United States, the nature of student performance in schools over the past 50 years, the manifestation of school-to-prison pipeline approaches pervasive throughout the country and the world, and the growing incarceration rates for youth, this volume explores this issue from the sociological, criminological, and educational perspectives. Understanding, Dismantling, and Disrupting the Prison-to-School Pipeline has contributions from scholars and practitioners who work in the fields of sociology, counseling, criminal justice, and who are working to dismantle the pipeline. While the academic conversation has consistently called the pipeline ‘school-to-prison,’ including the framing of many chapters in this book, the economic and market forces driving the prison-industrial complex urge us to consider reframing the pipeline as one working from ‘prison-to-school.’ This volume points toward the tensions between efforts to articulate values of democratic education and schooling against practices that criminalize youth and engage students in reductionist and legalistic manners.

The third edition of the best selling collection, Chicano School Failure and Success presents a complete and comprehensive review of the multiple and complex issues affecting Chicano students today. Richly informative and accessibly written, this edition includes completely revised and updated chapters that incorporate recent scholarship and research on the current realities of the Chicano school experience. It features four entirely new chapters on important topics such as la Chicana, two way dual language education, higher education, and gifted Chicano students. Contributors to this edition include experts in fields ranging from higher education, bilingual education, special education, gifted education, educational psychology, and anthropology. In order to capture the broad nature of Chicano school failure and success, contributors provide an in-depth look at topics as diverse as Chicano student dropout rates, the relationship between Chicano families and schools, and the impact of standards-based school reform and deficit thinking on Chicano student achievement. Committed to understanding the plight and improvement of schooling for Chicanos, this timely new edition addresses all the latest issues in Chicano education and will be a valued resource for students, educators, researchers, policy makers, and community activists alike.

Students of Color and the Achievement Gap is a comprehensive, landmark analysis of an incontrovertible racialized reality in U.S. K-12 public education---the relentless achievement gap between low-socioeconomic students of color and their economically advantaged White counterparts. Award winning author and scholar Richard Valencia provides an authoritative and systemic treatment of the achievement gap, focusing on Black and Latino/Latina students. He examines the societal and educational factors that help to create and maintain the achievement gap by drawing from critical race theory, an asset-based perspective and a systemic inequality approach. By showing how racialized opportunity structures in society and schools ultimately result in racialized patterns of academic achievement in schools, Valencia shows how the various indicators of the achievement gap are actually symptoms of the societal and school quality gaps. Following each of these concerns, Valencia provides a number of reform suggestions that can lead to systemic transformations of K-12 education. Students of Color and the Achievement Gap makes a persuasive and well documented case that school success for students of color, and the empowerment of their parents, can only be fully understood and realized when contextualized within broader political, economic, and cultural frameworks.

"Indexes to papers read before the Museums Association, 1890-1909. Comp. by Charles Madeley": v. 9, p. 427-452.