Children in California will no longer be deemed “at-risk” because of a change in the legal and educational codes.
The phrase “at-risk youth” was used to describe children growing up in adverse conditions that could have made their lives more challenging. Children who were deemed “at-risk” were given additional consideration in the punitive and educational systems to ensure that their background was taken into consideration.
While programs to benefit “at-risk youth” were popular in California, some found the phrase disparaging. Assemblyman Reginald Jones Sawyer, a lawmaker in California, amended state law to swap out the phrase “at-risk youth” for “at-promise youth” because he believed the language used to describe struggling children was unfair.
“I learned that words matter and once they were called ‘at-risk,’ they almost were in the school-to-prison pipeline automatically,” Sawyer explained to CBS 13. “Let’s stop calling them ‘at-risk.’”
He continued: “No educators, no law enforcement, will no longer be able to call our young people who make a mistake ‘at-risk.’ We’re going to call them ‘at-promise’ because they are the promise of the future.”
Alejandro Galicia Cervantes, a student who had previously been deemed “at-risk,” said the change was necessary. He explained: “I just felt like, damn, I’m like really at-risk? That’s the path I’m heading towards? There wasn’t any, like, empowerment in it.”
Sawyer agreed, saying in a statement: “Children can hear the term ‘at-risk’ used in reference to them and can misinterpret and internalize its meaning — this can have a weighting effect rather than uplifting the potential they each have in working towards a brighter future through persistence in the classroom.”
He added: “At-risk has been used for years to describe predominantly students of color and their plight with social and economic difficulties. The term also promotes the stereotype of a student unable to achieve academic success because of where they live or the minimal amount of resources available.”
The linguistic change was signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom. Similar legislation has been proposed throughout the country, including changing the phrase “at-risk” to “at-potential.”
