or failure which will result in retention at the end of the year. To the social worker, "At-Risk" may mean that an abused child is "At-Risk" for becoming an abusive parent. To the social or economic analyst, an "At-Risk" child is one who is born out of wedlock, grows up in poverty and is likely to repeat the cycle (p. 3).
Barbara Z. Presseisen (1991) writes, "'At-risk' appears to be the latest semantic label of American education attached to several groups of students who have experienced difficulty or, in fact, failure in their careers as learners" (p. 5). She lists some of the other labels that "at-risk" has come to encompass: "culturally deprived, low income, dropout, alienated, marginal, disenfranchised, impoverished, underprivileged, disadvantaged, learning disabled, low performing, low achieving, remedial, urban, ghetto, language-impaired" (p. 5). The term most often links children whose learning difficulties arise from the complications of poor economic backgrounds.
Dyslexia is among the most common learning disabilies exhibited by at-risk children; it is a disability that has only recently been widely examined and analyzed. While a diagnosis of dyslexia does not automatically place a child at risk, this barrier to learning is often present in those children facing other obstacles, adding to their difficulties in the classroom. Presseisen (1991) contends, "As much as 15 percent of the entire population may exhibit symptoms of various handicapping conditions akin to dyslexia" (p. 9). The "at-risk" category also includes those whose cannot speak or read English well, since this places students at a distinct disadvantage in the classroom, where most progress is tied to reading, listening, and speaking proficiency.
When America was first settled, however, classrooms and schools were uncommon institutions. Lawrence A. Cremin (1976) observes that Colonial education initially followed British tradition: "Most Eng...