Current estimates show that historically high percentages of American children live in poverty. In order to serve them well, educators must understand the particular experiences and challenges these children face. Increasingly, the professional development of teachers on the topic is drawn from the work of Dr. Ruby Payne, a self-proclaimed expert on poverty and poor children. In this article, we examine the conceptual and empirical foundations of Payne’s A Framework for Understanding Poverty and vignettes in an accompanying teacher workbook that depict the lives of poor children and their families. Situating Payne’s argument within decades of scholarship conceptualizing poverty, we assess the extent to which it accurately reflects a contemporary, research-based comprehension of the issue. Reminiscent of earlier “culture of poverty” perspectives, Payne’s work essentializes the values, behaviors, and orientations of poor people; reinforces misconceptions and popular stereotypes; and suggests poor people have choices about whether or not to remain in poverty. This has serious implications for how teachers come to understand the nature and causes of poverty, and it misdirects well-intentioned efforts to educate poor children by disregarding the larger social context in which they live and are expected to succeed.
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Cite This Article as: Teachers College Record, Date Published: July 18, 2006 http://www.tcrecord.org ID Number: 12596, Date Accessed: 9/2/2010 10:23:07 PM
Jennifer Ng University of Kansas E-mail Author JENNIFER C. NG is an assistant professor in the School of Education at the University of Kansas. Her primary research interests include the socialization of beginning teachers in urban schools, as well as such multicultural issues as race, class, and gender. Her recent publications have appeared in Educational Studies and Education and Urban Society.
John Rury University of Kansas E-mail Author JOHN L. RURY is a professor of education at the University of Kansas. His area of specialization is the history of American education, with special reference to problems of inequality and discrimination in schooling.
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