Urban Rev (2015) 47:341–363

DOI 10.1007/s11256-014-0295-4

But Good Intentions are Not Enough: Preparing

Teachers to Center Race and Poverty

H. Richard Milner • Judson C. Laughter

Published online: 12 July 2014

 Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

Abstract Drawing from principles of critical race theory, the authors consider the
curriculum of teacher education as a potential policy and practice site for centering
the interconnections of race and poverty in the preparation of teachers. Several
macro-level recommendations are advanced that might influence practices in tea-
cher education and ultimately in P-12 classrooms. These policies suggestions
include (1) Reform the curriculum of teacher education to emphasize a deeper study
of race; (2) Reform the curriculum of teacher education to emphasize a deeper study
of poverty; and (3) Reform the curriculum of teacher education to emphasize a deep
study of the nexus between race and poverty. The authors conclude with the
observation that although teachers and teacher educators tend to have good inten-
tions, those intentions too often fail to meet the needs of Black and Brown students
or students living in poverty.

Keywords Race
Poverty
Teacher education
Student learning
Policy

Practice

In this article, we use critical race theory (CRT) as an analytic tool to explore how
policy and practice in teacher education can be reformed to ensure Black and Brown
students and students in poverty have a better chance of success in the United States
(U.S.) by preparing teachers to center the nexus between poverty and race; we stress
that teachers examine these two factors separately as well as in combination in order
to help build their knowledge and understanding to ultimately inform their practice.

H. R. Milner (&)
Center for Urban Education, University of Pittsburgh, 5806 Wesley W. Posvar Hall, 230 South
Bouquet Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA
e-mail: rmilner@pitt.edu

J. C. Laughter
University of Tennessee, A418 Bailey Education Complex, Knoxville 37996-3442, TN, USA
e-mail: jud.laughter@utk.edu

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From this analysis, we provide three policy suggestions designed to propel teacher
preparation programs toward preparing teachers to meet the needs of all students,
particularly Black and Brown students living in poverty. Our focus is on traditional
and nontraditional teacher education programs because we believe such an emphasis
is essential for teacher development through different routes into teaching.

Teacher Talk About Poverty and Race

As social scientists who have spent considerable time in public school classrooms
studying teaching and learning, and as teacher educators who have worked with
hundreds of preservice and inservice teachers in the U.S., the United Kingdom, and
Canada, we have heard teachers report their concerns, reservations, apprehensions,
and overall anxiety about how to work with public school students living in poverty.
In essence, these teachers, many of whom have good intentions, report their relative
under-preparedness to work with children living around and below the poverty line.
As a reference point, Table 1 provides a recent snapshot of the poverty line
landscape in the U.S. However, these same teachers’ concerns—most of whom are
White—about teaching children who live in poverty pale in comparison to their
concerns about teaching Black and Brown students.
We have found teachers usually feel much more efficacious discussing and
conceptualizing content and teaching practices focused on poverty and socio-
economic status than they do race. Based on their reports, teachers tend to feel more
comfortable teaching children living below the poverty line than Black or Brown
students (Milner 2010a.). But a serious question remains: What happens when these
teachers are put in situations where they (will) teach Black and Brown students who
also live below the poverty line? Not only do they feel less efficacious about
teaching these students or conceptualizing their work to be effective instructors,
some White teachers we have worked with over the years have felt uncomfortable
talking about race and reflecting about their own racial identities and that of their

Table 1 Poverty guidelines for the U.S. adapted from Federal Register (2013)
Persons in family 48 Contiguous States and DC Alaska Hawaii

2013 HHS poverty guidelines

1 $11,490 $14,350 $13,230
2 $15,510 19,380 17,850
3 19,530 24,410 22,470
4 23,550 29,440 27,090
5 27,570 34,470 31,710
6 31,590 39,500 36,330
7 35,610 44,530 40,950
8 39,630 49,560 45,570
For each additional person, add 4,020 5,030 4,620

Source: Federal Register, Vol. 78, No. 16, January 24, 2013, pp. 5182–5183

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students: they adopted colorblind ideologies and positions when reflecting and
talking about the problems they encountered in the classroom and consequently saw
their teaching practices as supposedly race neural. ‘‘I see all my students the same’’
has been a common refrain, thus negating, dishonoring, and ignoring racial
identities and realities of their students (and themselves).
Indeed, in addition to struggling to think about teaching students living in
poverty, teachers struggle (and sometimes simply refuse) to think or talk about the
critical role race plays in the teaching and learning process. Many of these teachers
are White and middle class –mirroring the national teaching force in the U.S. For
instance, Festritzer (2011) reported that 84 % of teachers are White, down from
91 % in 1986, and these teachers are overwhelmingly middle class. However, we
have also observed some teachers of color facing similar challenges. There is no
ontology that declares Black and Brown teachers can automatically teach Black and
Brown students, just as there is no dictum that White teachers cannot teach Black
and Brown students (Laughter 2011). We cannot assume that any teacher
understands how oppression and marginalization work to the detriment of too
many P-12 students of color. Any teacher might not understand the role that racist
and classist systems and structures play in perpetuating the status quo and
maintaining White privilege. In short, our point is all teachers can benefit from
opportunities to engage race and poverty and the ways in which they overlap and
compound.
Structural and institutional commitments and moves to focus on helping all
teachers build consciousness regarding their own identity, others, society, and
cultural practices can be essential in shaping their instructional practices in P-12
schools. For instance, Tatum (2001) wrote,
In a race-conscious society, the development of a positive sense of racial/
ethnic identity not based on assumed superiority or inferiority is an important
task for both White people and people of color. The development of this
positive identity is a lifelong process that often requires unlearning the
misinformation and stereotypes we have internalized not only about others,
but also about ourselves. (p. 53, emphasis added)
In this way, rejecting preconceived, unexamined, racist stereotypes about their own
racial and ethnic group in addition to others’ has the potential to influence how
teachers of color teach (Tatum 2001).
The following conceptions and mindsets are common among teachers we have
studied and taught:
• Mindset 1: If I acknowledge the racial background of my students or myself,
then I may be considered racist.
• Mindset 2: I treat all my students the same regardless of their racial or
ethnic backgrounds.
• Mindset 3: I focus on teaching children and ignore the race of my students
because race is irrelevant.
• Mindset 4: Race does not matter in my teaching because racism has ended.

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• Mindset 5: We live in a post-racial society and my classroom practices are, will

be, and should be post-racial.
The conceptions and mindsets above are problematic in many ways. Colorblind,
post-racial ideologies, mindsets, and positions of teachers (consciously, uncon-
sciously, or dysconsciously) make it difficult to recognize institutional, systemic,
and classroom practices and realities like disproportionate referral patterns in
special education and gifted education (Blanchett 2006, 2014), disproportionate
office referral rates and patterns among students of color to the office for
misbehavior who are subsequently suspended and expelled (Davis and Jordan 1994;
Skiba et al. 2002), and an underrepresentation of students of color in school-wide
clubs, organizations, and in other prestigious arenas, such as the school’s
homecoming court and student government (Milner 2010b.).
Colorblind positions make it difficult for such teachers to recognize and address
the above trends or to recognize the brilliance—the many talents—of P-12 student
that often go under-recognized or unidentified. In short, many teachers we have
taught and studied often appear quite uncomfortable addressing poverty and even
more uncomfortable addressing race. Thus, we argue for structural curriculum shifts
in teacher education that address these two areas (poverty and race) and especially
their intersections. This curriculum reform recommendation is shaped by CRT and
what we see as a sense of urgency—essential to address opportunity gaps in P-12
schools (Milner 2010b.).
Consider the comments below expressed by a teacher during a professional
development session Milner, the first author, conducted several years ago in the
U.S.:
Elementary Teacher: I’m going to share with you what I suspect most of my
colleagues really want to say but are too nice to. We work with young
children, and we love all our children just the same. Our principal invited you
here to talk to us about SPECIFIC STRATEGIES to teach our poor children. I
was devouring what you had to say—you were right on target—until you got
to this race stuff. Race has nothing to do with how to teach my kids living in
poverty. What does it matter? Really!
Frustrated and, frankly, a bit agitated, the teacher began to doodle for the
remainder of the professional development session because the focus had taken a
deliberate shift toward the intersections of race and poverty. Indeed, teacher
education programs (structurally and in the classroom) need to stress to teachers that
it is difficult to talk about poverty without thinking seriously about race and their
intersections. Teachers need to wrestle with questions like Does poverty manifest
for White students in the same way as for Black students? How are these emergent
manifestations similar and different? What is essential to understand about these
similarities and differences as educators teaching in the public schools?
The comments of this elementary teacher are not infrequent. We consistently
hear this type of thinking and concern from people training to become teachers in
different types of teacher education programs and structures, those who have been
teaching for years in elementary, middle, and high schools, as well as some

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Table 2 Low-income families by race

Race Percentage of low-income families (%) Percentage of U.S. population (%)

White 42 65.6
Black 22 12.2
Hispanic/Brown 30 15.4

colleagues who teach and study aspects of education as professors. Why is it still so
difficult for people to engage race, even in conjunction with other factors such as
poverty, inside and outside of education?
We are not suggesting that people are in poverty because of their race but want to
demonstrate how race can be a salient factor in how students experience and inhabit
their communities and, consequently, schools. Indeed, teachers should work to
eradicate poverty for all students, not just students of color. However, teachers need
to understand and question why a disproportionate number of students of color live
in poverty and are from lower socio-economic backgrounds if they want to provide
a set of experiences for their P-12 students that allow them to build insights about
inequity. We should not ignore these intersections: proportionally, more people/
students of color live in poverty than do White people. Thus, in a society where race
matters but people do not want to acknowledge or talk about why and how it
matters, many students do not experience poverty at the same rate and they
consequently do not experience living in poverty identically.
Adapted from Munin (2012) and Simms et al. (2009), Table 2 demonstrates the
disproportionate representation of White, Black, and Hispanic (Brown) low-income
families in the U.S. In Munin’s (2012) words,
In an equitable society, if Whites constitute 65 % of the total population, they
should also make up 65 % of those in the low-income bracket. But this group
is actually 23.6 percentage points lower in representation in the low-income
family category. Conversely, Blacks make up a larger percentage than their
overall size in the low-income population by 9.8 percentage points. The same
is true for Hispanics, who constitute a greater share of the low-income group
compared to their population size by 14.6 percentage points. (pp. 4–5)
With this in mind, centralizing the point that teacher education programs need to
prepare teachers to think about the intersections of race and poverty structurally to
inform their instructional practices, we now provide an overview of CRT and its
usefulness for the analyses presented subsequently in this article.

Critical Race Theory Perspectives

Our analysis of the literature concerning students living in poverty and their
educational experiences draws on CRT to help elucidate the intersections of race
and poverty. This theoretical body of literature allows us to explain, critique,
counter, and analyze what we have read and to perhaps provide a lens for readers to

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think through, critique, and further expand what we/they know and think we/they
know (theoretically, conceptually, and empirically) and how we/they know it and
think we/they know (ontologically and epistemologically).
Critical race theorists perceive issues of race and racism as permanent and
endemic to the very fabric of the U.S., and they begin with the premise that race
matters and should thus be investigated and theorized (Cook and Dixson 2013;
James 2012; Ladson-Billings 1996; Ladson-Billings and Tate 1995; Martin 2009;
Parker and Lynn 2002; Reynolds et al. 2013). In this sense, issues of race are
everywhere, and race will continue to be an area of importance for inquiry and
examination in society and consequently education—even in mostly White social
contexts or discussions concerning a majority of White people.
Developed and conceptualized mostly by scholars of color, CRT emerged from
law as a response to critical legal studies and civil rights scholarship. The major
framing of CRT is that race should be centered in discussions of equity and justice
and critical race theorists are concerned with disrupting, exposing, challenging, and
changing racist policies that work to subordinate and disenfranchise certain groups
of people and that attempt to maintain the status quo (Tate 1997).
Derrick Bell laid the foundations for CRT in two law review articles: Serving two
masters: Integration ideals and client interests in school desegregation litigation
(1976) and Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest Convergence Dilemma
(1980). Ladson-Billings and Tate (1995) introduced CRT into education in a
Teachers College Record publication, arguing that while studies and conceptual
discussions examining race existed in the field of education, the field needed further
explanatory tools to assist in empirical and conceptual arguments related to race.
CRT was an essential movement, some would argue, because multicultural
education frameworks were not pushing the boundaries of race and so required a
more radical school of thought (Leonardo 2013). Ladson-Billings and Tate (1995)
argued that race was under-theorized, not understudied, in education and that the
field suffered from a lack of conceptual and analytic tools to discuss race,
operationalize it, and move the field forward.
Tate et al. (1993) cited scholarship associated with CRT in their analysis of the
history of school desegregation law and related implementation. Tate (1994)
referenced CRT as a school of thought associated with critiquing stock racial
narratives while interjecting voice scholarship as a means to build theory and inform
practice in the law. Tate argued that this was a sound strategy for education
scholarship as he reflected on his educational experiences in a successful urban
Catholic school. Indeed, scholars in education have recognized the promise and
utility of CRT in education, and their work has made meaningful contributions to
what is known about race in education (Dixson and Rousseau 2005; Duncan 2005;
Parker and Lynn 2002; Tate 1997).
Several tenets and principles frame CRT in education. For instance, Howard
(2008) outlined four frames shaping the work of critical race theorists in education.
They
(1)…theoriz[e] about race along with other forms of subordination and the
intersectionality of racism, classism, sexism, and other forms of oppression in

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school curriculum; (2)…challeng[e] dominant ideologies that call for objec-

tivity and neutrality in educational research…(3)…offer…counterstorying as a
liberatory and credible methodological tool in examining racial oppression;
(4)…incorporate[e] transdisciplinary knowledge from women’s studies and
ethnic studies to better understand various manifestations of discrimination.
(pp. 963–964)
Solórzano and Yosso (2001) maintained that CRT ‘‘challenges the dominant
discourse on race and racism as it relates to education by examining how
educational theory and practice are used to subordinate certain racial and ethnic
groups’’ (p. 2). Table 3 provides an overview of how different theorists have
engaged these principles and tenets.
The commonality across all of these theorists (represented in Table 3) is the
repeated view of racism as systemic and pervasive in policy; in fact, this is a general
theme consistent through much of the work building on and drawing from CRT. As
a systemic and pervasive reality, racism thus drives CRT toward systemic analysis;
CRT is not necessarily interested in addressing only the individual beliefs of one
person but the larger system through which racialized beliefs, stereotypes, and
ideologies are developed, maintained, and passed on. Central tenets and principles
employed by each theorist vary depending on the topic and unit of analysis;
analytically, tenets employed to make sense of systems of racism and oppression
include interest convergence, colorblindness, limitations of education or the law,
and a commitment to social justice. Often, these tenets and principles are engaged
through voice and counter-narratives that speak back to or disrupt master narratives
operating through system inequality, inequity, and a host of isms.
Thus, the questions we pose and analyses we provide throughout this article are
used to advance insights about a more complicated perspective regarding policies
and practices that can support teachers, teacher educators, and teacher education
programs in building areas of emphases in a curriculum that centralizes the salience
of race and poverty. In the next section, we describe and disentangle the argument
that policy and practice should center and situate race, poverty, and their
intersections in teacher education to potentially benefit students in P-12 learning
contexts.

Curriculum as Policy and Practice

Where CRT is concerned, it is essential for theorists to maintain the centralization of

the theoretical roots and the intentionality of the theory in ways that allow those of
us in education to transfer features of it to advance what we know and how we know
it in (teacher) education and beyond. The roots of CRT stress application and
transformation of practices for equity.
Two specific aspects of CRT deserve attention in thinking about curriculum as
policy and practice. First, as Bell (1980) and Ladson-Billings and Tate (1995)
demonstrated, legal studies are concerned with policy—the law (amendments,
constitution, bill of rights) and critical race theorists are concerned with analyzing such

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Table 3 Tenets and principles of critical race theory
Author(s) General theme Analysis of the system Central principle(s) and tenet(s) Voice or discourse

Milner (2007) Race and racism are endemic, Challenge mainstream Interest convergence Centrality of
pervasive, widespread, and notions of Whiteness as norm narrative and
ingrained counter-narrative
Delgado and Racism is ordinary, not Race and racism are products of social Interest convergence or material Unique voice of color
Stefancic aberrational thought; differential racialization; anti- determinism and ‘‘color-blind’’
(2001) essentialism conceptions of equality
Solórzano and The centrality and Challenge to dominant ideology Commitment to social justice Centrality of
Yosso (2001) intersetionality of race and experiential
racism knowledge
Ladson-Billings Racism is normal in American Critique of liberalism Interest convergence Employs storytelling
(1998) society to analyze culture
Tate (1997) Racism is endemic Portrays dominant legal claims of neutrality Reinterprets civil rights law in light of its Naming one’s own
as camouflage limitations reality
Ladson-Billings Racism as endemic and deeply Challenging claims of neutrality and Reinterpretation of ineffective civil rights Theme of naming
and Tate ingrained meritocracy law one’s own reality
(1995)
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policy. If we see the curriculum of teacher education as such a site—policy, then the
theory can also shed light on matters to benefit and help shape an equitable,
transformative curriculum for teachers and P-12 students. Viewing the curriculum as a
structural site for reform in teacher education in general—that is, what particular
teacher education programs offer and why—is inundated with policy implications.
Secondly, critical race theorists have also been committed to social action (Tate
1997)—moving ideas and ideals into action. Viewing and operationalizing the
curriculum in teacher education as a practice has the potential to act as a catalyst for
social justice that works toward equity for all. For instance, the practice of a
curriculum (or set of curricular policies) in teacher education that centers poverty,
race, and their intersections, demonstrates social justice-oriented action that aligns
with and applies the principles of CRT.
Accordingly, the recommendations made here are situated and framed by a
position that curriculum can be seen as both policy and practice in teacher
education. The curriculum can be defined as what teachers have the opportunity to
learn in teacher education programs and in other contexts, such as in their homes or
community. Here we rely on Eisner’s (1994) postulation of several forms of
curriculum to illustrate the point that curriculum policy and practice can be
operating and functioning even when principles of it are not explicitly constructed:
• The explicit curriculum concerns teacher-learning opportunities that are overtly
taught and stated or printed in documents, policies, and guidelines, such as in
teacher education course syllabi or on teacher education program’s websites;
• The implicit curriculum is intended or unintended but is not stated or written
down and can also be considered the hidden curriculum. The hidden curriculum
occurs through learning opportunities that are implicit and covert in a teacher
education context; and
• The null curriculum deals with what teachers do not have the opportunity to
learn.
Thus, information and knowledge that are not available for teacher learning,
access, opportunity, and exposure are also a form of the curriculum. Teachers are
learning something based on the absence of the material. What teachers do not
experience (regarding race and poverty, for instance) become messages, informa-
tion, and data-points for them and they learn based on the absence.
For example, if teachers are not taught to question or to critically examine power
structures like race and poverty, the teachers are still learning something—possibly
that it may not be essential for them to critique power structures in the world in
order to change them. Stories told (or not), then, are a critical part of all parts of
Eisner’s curriculum conceptions—they influence learning opportunities for teach-
ers. Thus, what is absent or not included in the curriculum is actually present in
what students are (not) learning.
Our point in this article is that teacher education programs should be explicit in
their organization and reformation of race and poverty curriculum opportunities and
that—by drawing from CRT—teacher education program curriculum reforms
should centralize race and poverty. However, although we stress an explicit level of
reformation of curriculum in teacher education, curriculum also acts and operates

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even when actors do not implement it. Curriculum practices are constantly working,
and teachers have the opportunity to interact with various forms of curriculum
whether they are aware of these interactions or not.
We do not mean to suggest that the curriculum is static or a fixed policy or entity;
rather, we understand that curriculum is constantly evolving, moving, and
developing. In this way, curriculum practices can manifest implicitly as well—
which means that teacher educators themselves need to both understand such an
emphasis on race and poverty and be able to teach the structured and structural
macro-level curriculum as well. Indeed, teacher educators attempting to teach and
enact the curriculum emphasis proposed here could do more harm than good if they
do not have a deep understanding of these areas in their attempts to help teachers
grasp the content to inform their practices with students in P-12 environments.
Next, we outline our recommendations for curriculum reform through policy and
practice.

Policy and Practice Recommendation #1

Reform the Curriculum of Teacher Education to Emphasize a Study of Race

Policy and related practice should be constructed to ensure teachers (every teacher)
build robust knowledge about race. In fields such as anthropology and sociology,
people are expected to study and understand race deeply because it is a very real
construct/factor in people’s lives; so too, we argue in education, professionals are
being prepared to work and interact with real people. In their development and
learning in teacher education and training, teachers rarely are expected to do any
historical and deep contextual reading about race. Unfairly, teachers are often
blamed for the underachievement and lack of success of their Black and Brown
students when teacher education programs (both traditional and nontraditional)
rarely provide the kinds of opportunities for teachers to examine what race is and
how salient it happens to be for their careers in education and work with students.
How often, for instance, do teachers read historical texts such as Dubois’s Souls of
Black Folks or Woodson’s The Miseducation of the Negro to understand the
historical landscape of race in society and education and make connections to social
and educational inequity?
The point is that rather than blaming and criticizing teachers for the inability to
empathize with their racially diverse students or when they blame students
themselves for the racist educational system in which they interact, we need to
interrogate teacher education programs carefully and consider just what teachers
know and are expected to know about race. Thus, the first policy and practice
recommendation is for teacher education programs to get serious about teaching
teachers about race. As has been argued, focusing on race should not be an optional
area of knowledge building and concentration. When one examines outcomes on
measures such as test scores, office referral patterns, absenteeism, and rates of
suspension, a consistent focus should be on how to make sense of racial disparities
that exist between and continue to disenfranchise Black and Brown students. Rather

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than continuing to allow teachers to blame parents or the students themselves for
these patterns, helping teachers understand that students writ large are operating in
educational systems that were not designed for them—historically and
contemporarily.
Students have complex racial identities and these complex identities should be
considered; yet, many teachers are allowed to complete their educational training
without any or very few opportunities to really learn about race. Moreover, when
teachers do learn about race, the learning tends to be superficial at best (Milner
2010a). CRT would demand that policies be in place to equip teachers with
expertise to understand and operationalize race in order to apply a deep historical
understanding to the improvement of educational outcomes for those who have been
systemically disenfranchised. Again, the idea is for teachers to learn and know more
in their efforts to respond to students in their practices.
We understand that emphasizing race (and poverty) in the curriculum of teacher
education is not novel. An established body of research has examined and revealed
the potential promise of race centralization in the preparation of teachers (Cochran-
Smith 1995, 2004; Ladson-Billings 1999; Sleeter 2008). We want to focus here on
how race is taught in teacher education and what is emphasized. From a CRT
perspective, it is essential for teachers to learn about race from an historical
perspective, contemporary perspective and also from a critical perspective. They
need to know that race is not biological, that racism is a system, and that the
economic rationale for dehumanization slaves through systemic racism has its
origins in responses to abolition movements of the Enlightenment (Laughter 2011).
They need to know that racism is a social construction with very real implications
but that, as a social construction, it can be analyzed and dismantled.
Dating back to Dubois (1903) and Woodson (1933), researchers and theorists
have attempted to unravel and understand the salience of race and education
because race is not a myopic, linear, simple construct. Teachers need to grapple with
the interrelated nature of race and education with explicit implications for their
practices—that is, their instruction.
According to many scholars, race is physically, socially, legally, and historically
constructed. The meanings, messages, results, and consequences of race are
developed and constructed by human beings, not by some predetermined set of laws
or genetics. Genetically and biologically, individuals are more the same than they
are different. According to Nakkula and Toshalis (2006),
there is no biologically sustainable reason for establishing ‘races’ as distinct
subgroups within the human species…. Race is a concept created in the
modern era as a way of drawing distinctions between people such that some
might benefit at the expense of others. (p. 123)
Although they lack reliable research to substantiate it, there are still those who
support a eugenics perspective as a way to understand and explain why some racial

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groups of people do not fare as well as their White counterparts on academic

measures.
Our analysis of empirical research and policy does not allow us to accept the
‘‘eugenics’’ frame that there is a ‘‘biological basis for the superiority of Whites’’
(Howard 2010, p. 28). In the simplest and plainest form, White people are not
biologically or genetically superior to other groups in terms of intelligence or
achievement. But how many teachers implicitly or subconsciously buy into a
eugenics conception about how the world works and why their Black and Brown
students may not be faring well? How many teachers were prepared by teacher
education programs that still teach (perhaps implicitly) perspectives that embrace
work like the Bell Curve or some variation of the achievement gap? Although
teachers may not recognize or be aware of these conceptions as originating in
eugenics, it is certainly worth providing space for them to examine them. Indeed,
students in P-12 can suffer most when deep examinations of race are not part of
teacher learning and development—learning and development that can serve a
critical role in helping teachers make appropriate decisions with their P-12 students.
Helping teachers understand what race is and how it is defined and conceptu-
alized can be an essential area for them in building knowledge to inform their
practice. Race can be constructed in the following ways:
• Physically constructed: Based on skin color, people in society construct ideas,
characteristics, and beliefs systems about themselves and others. These physical
constructions are sometimes inaccurate, but the constructions remain. It is
important to note that physical constructions of race vary from one society to the
next. For instance, constructions of race in continents such as Africa or Asia are
different from constructions of race based on phenotype in North America;
• Socially constructed: Based on a range of societal information and messages,
people construct and categorize themselves and others. Racism often grounds
itself in these constructions through mythological connections of physical traits
to assumptions about morality, intelligence, or achievement (Montagu 1997);
• Legally constructed: Laws in the U.S., for example, help construct race;
landmark cases and legal policies like the Naturalization Law (1790), Plessy v.
Ferguson (1896), Takao Ozawa v. United States (1922), Brown v. Board of
Education (1954) and subsequently Brown II, Milliken v. Bradley (1974) all
influence our constructions and definitions of race in U.S. society;
• Historically constructed: Historical realties related to how people have been
treated and how they have fared in a society also shape the construction of race.
In U.S. society, for instance, a history of Jim Crow laws, slavery, and racial
discrimination for some and racial privilege for others force us to construct and
think about race in particular ways.
In terms of policy, teacher education programs need to be restructured (with
support from accreditation agencies) to ensure that teachers in teacher education
programs are required to deeply study race beyond cursory discussions. And these
policies should be transferable across different teacher education programs so that
teachers across the U.S. have access to high quality curriculum opportunities that
address and examine. As Eisner (1994) declared, teachers are decision makers

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capable of making decisions to inform their practice once they have been provided
access to the kinds of information that can help them make rationale, responsive
decisions for P-12 students.

Policy and Practice Recommendation #2

Reform the Curriculum of Teacher Education to Emphasize a Study of Poverty

In addition to race, we recommend that teacher education be organized to help

teachers intimately understand poverty. Policy and related practice should be
constructed to ensure teachers (every teacher) build robust knowledge about
poverty. Although teachers and others tend to inaccurately use poverty as a
descriptor of students and their social status in society, it is unclear how many
teachers have the opportunity to deeply understand and study poverty, what it
means, and how they might be able to utilize and implement their understanding in
their work with real students. Clearly, it is difficult to define what is meant by
poverty.1 Cass (2010), in her report Held Captive: Child Poverty in America,
reminded us that ‘‘15.5 million children are living in poverty in America—the
highest child poverty rate the nation has seen since 1959. And the younger the
children are the poorer they are’’ (p. 3). While numerous studies demonstrate
relationships between poverty and other variables, qualitatively it is less clear just
what it is.
Poverty, in many ways, is socially constructed because there is diversity in
people’s experiences of living around or below the poverty line. In this way, and
from a philosophical perspective, we suggest that poverty is not an absolute term but
a relative one that depends on a wide range of factors beyond yearly income, factors
like wealth, occupation, income, education, power, and social status; thus, teachers
need to be able to understand poverty as a fluid construct and not stereotype their
students and families based on quantitative indicators and metrics. To be clear,
poverty and socio-economic frames are indication of structural orientations—not
descriptors or students or people.
Teachers can benefit from understanding how difficult it can be for those in
poverty to gain access to high quality healthcare, to eat healthily (especially fruits
and vegetables that may be too expensive or that those living in poverty may have a
difficult time acquiring due to the fact that they live in food deserts, in both rural and
urban spaces), or gain access to high quality, effective schools.
1
Social class and poverty are linked (Anyon 1980; Rothstein 2004; Weis and Dolby 2012). They are not
treated identically in the research literature. For instance, Weis and Dolby (2012) explained that class
should be understood as ‘‘practices of living…The books we read (or if we read at all); our travel
destinations (if we have them and what they look like); the clothes we wear; the foods we eat; where and
if our children go to school, how far and with what degree of success, with whom, and under what staff
expectations and treatment; where and with whom we feel most comfortable; where we live and the
nature of our housing; where and if we attend and complete postsecondary education, and under what
expectations for success and imagined or taken for granted financing (parents, public/state/national/
federal money, on or off campus job) are all profoundly classed experiences, rooted not only in material
realities but also in shared culturally based expectations and understandings…’’ (p. 2).

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For instance, not all students fail because they live in poverty, and many live
meaningful and productive lives (McGee and Spencer 2012) although a popular
perspective is that those living in poverty are inferior and need to be understood in
order to save or fix them (e.g. Payne 1996). Poverty is usually defined (1) based on
the federal government’s formula of the poverty line, (2) based on free and reduce
lunch formulas that vary from state to state, or (3) based on particular characteristics
and situations people find themselves in because of the amount of monetary and
related material capital that they have or do not have.
It would be worthwhile for teachers to understand how poverty has been found to
have lasting effects on peoples’ social, economic, and psychological wellbeing
(Pritchard 1993), and how studies of poverty and socio-economic status have been
linked to school size (Coldarci 2006), trust (Goddard et al. 2009), students and
teachers’ sense of community (Battistitch et al. 1995), classroom and school
technology use and integration (Page 2002), growth trajectories in literacy among
English language learners (Kieffer 2008), public high school outcomes and college
attendance rates (Toutkoushian and Curtis 2005), the ability of young children (ages
5–8) to self-regulate (Howse et al. 2003), and course selection and enrollment in
rigorous mathematics (Klopfenstein 2005).
The point here is that there is a wide range of available knowledge within and
beyond the silo of education and the practice of teaching that can be educative for
teachers as they work to support P-12 students in poverty. However, teachers need to
have the ability to critique and make sense of this body of knowledge, theory, and
research because some of the studies present their participants and study contexts in
deficit and deficient ways. Unexamined syntheses of this literature can actually
perpetuate inequity and the status quo and do more harm than good. Of course, an area
that must be addressed is the identity of teacher educators making policy decisions and
teaching in teacher education (a point that falls outside of the space for this discussion).
Still, teacher education programs that do not provide teachers with opportunities
to interrogate poverty in order to more deeply understand how structural inequity
manifests can leave teachers grossly underprepared to teach. For instance, drawing
from the U.S. Bureau of the Census (2005), Burney and Beilke (2008) explained
how ‘‘a family is considered to be poor if its income for a particular year is below
the amount deemed necessary to support a family of a certain size’’ (p. 297).
Consider data from 2009 (Table 4) and 2011 (Table 5) respectively, which outlined
the poverty levels for families and individuals according to the U.S. federal
government.2
In examining Tables 4 and 5, we see how the poverty line is increasing as defined
and classified by the federal government while the economy seemed to be
worsening. For instance, excluding Hawaii and Alaska, in 2009, a family of four

2
In defining and ‘‘measuring’’ poverty, the U.S. Census Bureau (2012) used ‘‘a set of money income
thresholds that vary by family size and composition to determine who is in poverty. If a family’s total
income is less than the family’s threshold, then that family and every individual in it is considered in
poverty. The official poverty thresholds do not vary geographically, but they are updated for
inflation…The official poverty definition uses money income before taxes and does not include capital
gains or noncash benefits (such as public housing, Medicaid, and food stamps)’’ (http://www.census.gov/
hhes/www/poverty/about/overview/measure.html).

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Table 4 Poverty guidelines for the U.S. adapted from Federal Register (2009)
Persons in family Poverty guidelines Poverty Poverty guidelines
48 Contiguous guidelines Alaska Hawaii

2009 poverty guidelines for the United States

1 $10,830 $13,530 $12,460
2 14,570 18,210 16,760
3 18,310 22,890 21,060
4 22,050 27,570 25,360
5 25,790 32,250 29,660
6 29,530 36,930 33,960
7 33,270 41,610 38,260
8 37,010 46,290 42,560
For each additional person, add ?3,740 ? 4,680 ? 3,740

Source: Federal Register, Vol. 74, No. 14, January 23, 2009, pp. 4199–4201

Table 5 Poverty guidelines for the U.S. adapted from Federal Register (2011)
Persons in family 48 Contiguous States and DC Alaska Hawaii

2011 HHS poverty guidelines

1 $10,890 $13,600 $12,540
2 14,710 18,380 16,930
3 18,530 23,160 21,320
4 22,350 27,940 25,710
5 26,170 32,720 30,100
6 29,990 37,500 34,490
7 33,810 42,280 38,880
8 37,630 47,060 43,270
For each additional person, add 3,820 4,780 4,390

Source: Federal Register, Vol. 76, No. 13, January 20, 2011, pp. 3637–3638

earning below $25,360 was considered below the poverty line whereas in 2011, a
family of 4 earning less than $25,710 was considered below it. The increase in light
of the significant economic downturn over the course of the two-year period was
$350 although more families struggled financially. The federal government’s
classification has significant implications for the kinds of resources available to
families, such as welfare support, subsidized housing (including section VIII),
healthcare assistance, and head start opportunities for young children. But if
teachers are not prepared to understand their particular classroom situations in light
of poverty, they do not have a chance to systemically understand broader structures
that can influence students and their family’s engagement and success with
educational facilities.
Moreover, unfortunate outside-of-school realities can be common among
students living in poverty, and these influence students’ experiences and outcomes

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in school. Teachers should be exposed to information that helps them understand

that P-12 students living in poverty may have experienced the following, realities
that are far beyond the control of students:
• Health and nutrition problems. Health problems include high rates of ‘‘asthma,
ear infections, stomach problems, and speech problems’’ (Duffield 2001, p. 326).
Eating patterns may be sporadic, not eating well-balanced meals or missing
meals altogether;
• Attending school fewer days than other children, transience, arriving at school
late, and having difficulty concentrating on learning and interacting with
classmates;
• More likely than those not living in poverty to be homeless.
This knowledge can help teachers empathize with their students and their
families rather than condemn them (Milner 2010b).
Student and family home structures, particularly homelessness, have been shown
to influence students’ experiences and outcomes in schools. Lee, Tyler and Wright
(2010) found that ‘‘homeless children suffer from their parents’ poverty, as
evidenced by more frequent school mobility, absenteeism, and grade retention;
lower achievement test scores; and a greater risk of learning disabilities, behavioral
disorders, and related problems’’ (p. 505). Likewise, Duffield (2001) examined the
effects of homelessness on school attendance, enrollment, and academic success.
She described homelessness as ‘‘the manifestation of severe poverty and lack of
affordable housing; simply put, homeless families are too poor to afford housing’’
(p. 324).
Students become homeless either as individuals or with their families, and
homelessness can result from ‘‘family problems, economic problems, and residen-
tial instability’’ (p. 325). Nooe and Patterson (2010) conceptualized homelessness in
the following way:
Homeless individuals may experience changes in housing status that includes
being on the street, shared dwelling, emergency shelter, transitional housing,
and permanent…hospitalization and incarceration in correctional facilities. (p.
105)
Finley and Diversi (2010) stressed that homelessness is not well defined, and this
fuzziness can be seen by the public and policymakers as a much smaller epidemic
than it actually is. Consequently, resources to assist homeless individuals and
families can be limited and limiting.
Finley and Diversi (2010) expressed that numbers have been distorted, leading
people into believing the fallacy that homelessness is not as bad as it seems:
Let us be clear here. Such distortion has profound consequences for actual
lives. For instance, families forced into couch surfing with relatives and
friends are most often not counted… Nor are the families living in tent cities,
vehicles, and parks around the country. As a result, thousands of lives and
stories are buried under an ideologically self-serving sensation that things

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aren’t as bad as some claim. Or if the housing crisis is as bad as it seems, it is

due solely to irresponsible individual choices. (p. 7)
Powerfully, Finley and Diversi (2010) provided a collection of textual represen-
tations of homelessness from different vantage points across the U.S. Their goal was
to assemble real life images to contribute to scholarly and public perspectives about
the human condition and to provide words and photographic images that are often
ignored. Moreover, their point was to extend and problematize scholarly and public
discourses that suggest that homeless people living in poverty do so because they
have somehow failed as individuals, which may take the pressure and attention
away from policies and practices that have not helped to ameliorate homelessness.
Teachers may blame homeless families, individuals or those living in poverty for
their current situations without looking structurally at why things are as they are. Thus,
centering poverty is essential in curriculum reforms. As Apple (2006) maintained,
the binary opposition of we—they becomes important…For dominant groups,
‘‘we’’ are law-abiding, hardworking, decent, and virtuous. ‘‘They’’—usually
poor people and immigrants—are very different. They are lazy, immoral, and
permissive. These binary oppositions act to exclude indigenous people, women,
the poor, and others from the community of worthy individuals. (p. 22)
These dichotomous, binary conceptions allow people to rationalize their success as
earned by being law-abiding, hard-working, and virtuous. Providing teachers with
opportunities to critique and critically examine issues of poverty can help them
situate and perhaps better conceptualize and contextualize their beliefs and practices
with P-12 students and their families.

Policy and Practice Recommendation #3

Reform the Curriculum of Teacher Education to Emphasize a Study

of the Nexus Between Race and Poverty

A third and final curriculum reform we discuss in this article focuses on the
intersections of race and poverty. While we stress the need for teacher education
programs to structure curriculum opportunities and practices for teachers to
understand poverty as an independent factor, CRT would also stress that poverty be
understood through the lens of race. Munin (2012), building from DeNavas-Walt
et al. (2009), provided a contemporary picture of families living below the poverty
line by race (see Table 6): White families represent about 9.4 % of those living in
poverty, while Black and Hispanic families represent 23.7 and 22.3 % respectively.
Munin (2012) shared an important point of clarification of the data in Table 6:
Families of color are much more likely to live in poverty and thereby have less
access to societal benefits granted to the economically privileged. However, it
is important to point out that this [race and poverty] is not a perfect
correlation. Not all people of color are poor, nor are all White people rich. It is
very difficult to live in poverty, regardless of one’s race. (p. 7)

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Table 6 Families below poverty

Race/ethnicity Percentage below poverty line (%)
line by race
White 9.4
Black 23.7
Hispanic/Brown 22.3
Asian 10.2

It is difficult to understand the interrelated convergence of race and poverty without

first understanding them individually. Understanding the links between and among
race, social class and/or poverty (Arnold and Doctoroff 2003; Ladson-Billings 2006;
Lareau 2003; Ullucci 2012) is essential because many teachers believe that race is
insignificant and they ignore it—especially during a period in history when the
United States has elected an African American president.
Even based on our recommendations, we recognize practitioners, policymakers,
teachers, principals, counselors, theoreticians, researchers, and all community
members still struggle to understand how race matters in society and consequently
in education. While a large body of research and conceptual arguments makes clear
that race matters in education and outside of it3 (Boutte 2012; Gooden 2012;
Reynolds 2010; Sealey-Ruiz 2011; Tillman 2002), some deliberately avoid it
because they rationalize that issues of disparity and disproportionality in educational
outcomes are consequences solely of SES rather than race. However, Ladson-
Billings and Tate (1995) explained,
Although both class and gender can and do intersect race, as stand-alone
variables they do not explain all of the educational achievement differences
apparent between Whites and students of color. Indeed, there is some evidence
to suggest that even when we hold constant for class, middle-class African-
American students do not achieve at the same level as their White
counterparts. (p. 51)
Coope et al. (2009), drew from the 2007 U.S. Census Bureau to claim, ‘‘Although
poverty cuts across racial lines, the likelihood of growing up in an impoverished
family is much higher for racial-minority children than for White children’’ (p. 861).
While multiple layers of discourse related to disparities, inequities, and realities in
education are racialized, we have learned that many White teachers’ discourses in
public schools demonstrate that they struggle to see the link between poverty and
race (Milner 2013). Teachers need to understand why so many more students/
people of color live in poverty due to racism and other forms of discrimination.
Indeed, teachers we have studied who teach Black and Brown students and
students living in poverty tended to feel much more comfortable talking about or
thinking about poverty or social class than race, and many seemed to struggle to see

3
Lareau (2003) demonstrated how race shows up in segregated housing patterns she observed.
Moreover, her study revealed that middle class Black parents monitored the ‘‘racial composition of each
activity’’ (p. 121) before enrolling their children so that their children were not the only Black children in
particular activities.

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the relationship between the two. Practicing teachers may ignore or minimize race,
racism, and discrimination as explanatory rationales for these patterns (Milner
2010b). In their minds and discourses, poverty and social class trump race, as well
as their intersections. In a policy brief entitled The Colors of Poverty: Why Racial
and Ethnic Disparities Persist, Lin and Harris (2009) posed some provocative,
rhetorical questions: ‘‘Given substantial progress in civil rights and anti-discrim-
ination policies—as well as the increased ethnic diversity of the nation—why is
poverty still so colored? Why have racial differences in poverty persisted for so
long?’’ (p. 1).

Conclusions

Finally, Irvine (2009) declared that the curriculum of teacher education must change
drastically in order to improve the P-12 learning opportunities of students in
schools. In their study of high poverty urban schools, Slaughter-Defoe and Carlson
(1996) explained,
It is important to search for the main effects of race and culture in any study
within a society that is as stratified as that of the United states…However, not
only are they [race and culture] important to society generally, they are also
important to education. (p. 69)
As stated, from a CRT perspective, curriculum as a site of policy can be examined,
reformed and transformed to center race and poverty and their intersections.
Transforming the curriculum requires that teacher educators themselves are
committed to such transformation and that they are prepared to teach content in
ways that do not perpetuate and reinforce inequity. Our suggestions include required
curriculum opportunities for teachers outside of teacher education in fields such as
sociology, cultural studies, Africana Studies, social work, and/or anthropology,
where questions of race and poverty take a much more central, critical, and
complex role than what we have seen in education.
In this sense, a curriculum is a policy document that can be systematically
examined to reflect the ways particular groups of students might experience learning
and life. We realize that constructing and implementing policy as we have described
herein cannot serve as a panacea to redress inequality and inequity in public schools
across the country. However, we do believe that what we propose can be a necessary
step in the complex challenge of preparing teachers to educate all students
effectively.
We have rarely, if ever, met teachers who did not have good intentions for the
students they taught. Teachers tend to want the best for their students and desire to
support them in ways that allow them to succeed. But the fact is—good intentions
are falling far short of what is necessary for academic and social success for all P-12
students. Overwhelmingly, the students who are grossly underserved in schools
across the U.S. are Black and Brown students and students living in poverty. With
this in mind, curriculum policies and practices to educate teachers need to reflect the
reality of those who are being poorly served in P-12. The final question remains:

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When will we get serious about providing the kind of teacher education curriculum
that can shed light on what is necessary to both understand and teach all students
effectively?

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