Deficit Frameworks and Freedom Writers

Below is the text of a paper I had to write for one of my grad classes. It is pretty long, but if anyone is really interested in knowing more about the mindsets and attitudes involved in urban education... it's a pretty good read, if I do say so myself. A "deficit framework" is a viewpoint of focusing of what urban students/school are lacking... focusing on the negative. The assignment was to watch Freedom Writers, the movie about Erin Gruwell and her English students who published their stories, and to read some qualitative research about deficit frameworks in urban schools-- then compare and contrast the effects of deficit frameworks (or lack thereof) in each. Here is my heart on the issue...

I firmly believe that learning does not happen without a relationship. Therefore, teachers’ attitudes about their students and their opinion of the teacher-student relationship is a key factor in learning outcomes. Two general categories describe the way teachers look at their student: teachers can view students according to a deficit framework or they can see students as asset based.

Joseph Flessa (2009) describes a deficit framework as a negative approach to urban schools and student capacity. Schools set out to “fix” students, leading to a strong focus on what students lack (p. 341). Unfortunately, this mission to “fix” the perceived social deficits of students is an impossible one, and often supersedes the academic mission of a school. In fact, Flessa suggests that educators who rely on a deficit framework to shape their view of students may actually be “constructing their own obstacles and self-limiting their ability to have influence” (p. 336) in terms of making academic progress on a school-wide basis. He refers to the common concept of a “self-fulfilling prophecy,” meaning that students who are expected to fail will indeed fail. Qualitative research strongly suggests that deficit frameworks have a negative effect on student learning outcomes. After all, a deficit viewpoint is the common attitude of urban educators and policy makers in recent years, and the quality of the nation’s urban schools continues to decline. This phenomenon suggests that embracing a deficit framework does not accomplish anything for student learning. In fact, Flessa believes that many educators actually translate their deficit framework into an excuse for student failure. For example, he says that the four principals he interviewed “explained school failure as an inevitable outgrowth of community failure—in effect, blaming parents and students” (p. 336). The key word is inevitable—educators too often believe that a “deficient” social context can never be overcome.

An asset based approach to urban education, on the other hand, involves seeking out strengths in students and in the community, and focusing on these advantages. Doing so communicates value to the students, enforces high expectations for student achievement, and supports student learning. Although Flessa’s research focused specifically on the effects of deficit frameworks, he implies that viewing students and communities as asset based would improve school performance (p. 334). By focusing on what students can do rather than what they can’t do, teachers actually remove barriers to learning rather than limiting the reach of their own efforts.

The film Freedom Writers, about Erin Gruwell’s tenure in an urban classroom in California, provides easily identifiable examples of both types of educator views of student capacity. Gruwell clearly approaches (and engages) her students with an asset-based mindset. She seeks out their strengths and applies them in an effort to improve student learning outcomes. Her administration and fellow faculty, on the other hand, see the students with an obvious deficit framework, referring frequently to “what’s wrong” with these students, and lamenting their cultural “deficits.”

The students in Gruwell’s class are intimately familiar with the gang life. Rather than viewing this as a cultural deficit, Gruwell seizes this knowledge as a strength and believes that her students have a unique insight into “gang” literature like Romeo and Juliet and Holocaust literature. Rather than dismissing her students’ dramatic and violent life experiences as tragic and unthinkable, she realizes what a strong voice these experiences give the students as writers. Thus, she advocates for their voices to be heard, and her students rise to the challenge she issues in order to tell their stories to the world. Gruwell clearly communicates to her class that no resources are undeserved or out of their reach, even going so far as to fly a famous guest speaker from Europe to meet with them. Their teacher’s persistence in discovering their assets clearly engages and motivates the students, as well as makes them feel “at home.” Even more incredible, Gruwell’s students actually begin to have an effect on the community around them. This phenomenon of students influencing community is directly opposite of what usually happens when educators operate on a deficit framework. Instead, something happens that Flessa calls the one-way arrow effect (p. 354). The outside community affects (usually negatively) what goes on in the school, but never vice versa. For example, another English teacher in Gruwell’s school describes teachers living in “constant fear” of the dangers of the community—community affecting school, but not the other way around. Clearly Gruwell’s methods result in extraordinary learning outcomes.

As a stark contrast to Erin Gruwell’s beliefs and actions in the classroom, the administration and other faculty at Wilson High School were firmly entrenched in a deficit framework. In Gruwell’s job interview, the principal explains to her that she will need to revise her lesson plans, because they are too hard for “these kids.” The department chair refuses to provide novels for the class, despite the large number simply languishing on shelves in a supply room. She claims that the students cannot read, do not care, have no ability to understand such literature, and do not even know how to properly care for a book. She focuses solely on what the students do not have and what they cannot do. She also writes off Gruwell’s success by claiming that the students could not be successful outside of her class. This deficit framework really is a self-fulfilling prophecy, because students will certainly fail if never provided with any resources or opportunities to learn.

Two significant and related points stood out to me as I reflected on Flessa’s paper and Freedom Writers. First, I have developed a heightened awareness of the thin line Flessa describes between “assessments of inequality” and “articulations of deficits” (p. 362). After all, I cannot, as an urban educator, ignore the injustices and adversity my students face. It would be silly to pretend that Kingsbury is no different from a wealthy suburban school. But these difficulties are not excuses, and should absolutely never be considered as such. Sometimes I am tempted to teach with a lower degree of rigor, to assign less homework, or to expect a less technical degree of vocabulary from my students. To do so, however, is merely to deepen the injustice that my students already face of attending a lower quality school with a novice teacher and fewer resources. I can, and should, acknowledge the inequalities that exist in education in this city, but I must never for a moment slide into articulating a deficit in my students.

However, even as I write the above paragraph, a question Flessa quotes rings loudly in my ears: “Obviously the social context in which schooling occurs is important, but is it so important that it completely overshadows what schools can reasonably be expected to accomplish?” (Pedro Noguera, as cited in Flessa, 2009, p. 338). The clear answer to this question, implied by Flessa, is no. But many times as I stand in front of my students, I begin to wonder if I will ever be able to truly teach students who seem to have a genetic disregard for authority, apathy running through their veins, students whose parents refuse to bring them to school, and gang members and juvenile delinquents masquerading as seventh graders. In these moments of weakness, I am tempted to fall back on the deficit framework that is so common to those who grew up outside of urban areas. But then I heard one student dispense worldly advice beyond his years to another student, I admire a boy’s fluid dance moves as he glides down the hallway, I listen to the girls in my homeroom chatting with one another in Spanish—and I am reminded on how much my students have to offer the world.