Always remember that “At risk” replaced another designation that was considered too negative. That word was “failing”

No matter what you call something, it doesn't hide what it is.

Let's see.

The US is "at promise" of war with Iran. Donald Trump is "at promise" of being impeached and removed. That cup at the edge fo the table is "at promise" of falling off the table.

Oh yeah, that sounds so much better. I feel much more warmly toward those subjects now.

What are these students "at promise" of? They're at risk of failing.

Changing their label does not change their trajectory.

And while were on the subject of changing words, when did "gift" become a verb meaning "to give?" And why?

"At promise" replaces "at risk." Something else will replace "at promise" sometime in the future, and may or may not be as ludicrous.

@Radwaste: "No matter what you call something, it doesn't hide what it is."

True, no doubt, but it doesn't change the fact that some people have built their entire professional careers, if not their lives, on the opposite premise.

when did "gift" become a verb meaning "to give?" And why?

Angers me, too. In modern misuse, it seems to imply an occasion, like XMas or Birthday, as opposed to me giving my wife my cold. Still *awful*.

Similar to the wretched "incentivize." We have the perfectly good verb: incent. It got "nounified" in a reasonable way with "incentive." But to reverbize a nounification of a perfectly good verb? Idiocy!

"Risk" and "Promise" are not interchangeable.

Risk= peril.
Promise=commitment.

You can't make words mean whatever you want them to mean just so you can "feel good" about them.

Feeling bad or feeling uncomfortable is how your mind informs you that change is needed. I had to become very uncomfortable with my grades in college to admit that I had no clue about how to study or how much. One needs to worry about retirement to save for it. One should feel anxious about getting mugged to avoid going where you will get mugged. The impulse to never feel bad is a recipe for later disaster. It is called denial. So morbidly obese people who can barely walk want to not feel bad about it? Ok, don't feel bad, but bad stuff will happen to you anyway.

I'll be honest. If I was 17 years old and in a program like this because of issues with my family, I would HATE people referring to me as "at risk." I've never associated the phrase with "at risk of failing." To me, it's always meant, "at risk of spending the rest of one's life in jail." If you fail at school, you can always get your GED later. If you go to jail, it's a lot more difficult to come back from that.

However, I wouldn't want to use the term "at promise," either. Maybe "obstacled" would be more appropriate (even though that isn't a word).

My kid's teachers do the same thing. No one makes a wrong choice. Instead they make red choices. As Rad said changing the label doesn't change the thing.

Where there is risk, there is also opportunity. Perhaps that is what these students should be looking for?

This is so typical of American education in the post-WWII era. (1) Invent new terms for commonly understood concepts, in order to create a veneer of intellectualism. (2) Paper over the fact that past attempts to solve the problem haven't worked.

Remember 'New Math' Cousin Dave. Gee, it was only thousands of years old. I guess it was new in the geologic sense.

"Retarded" had to be replaced by "mentally challenged" because it carried a stigma. Kids used it as an insult.
Within 3 year, kids were using "mentally challenged" as an insult, so it became "special" and within 3 years that became an insult.
It's an undesirable status - no one's running out and drinking lead paint trying to become mentally challenged, and no one who is mentally challenged wouldn't do anything not to be. If it's undesirable, it's going to carry a stigma, because the stigma is attached to the circumstances, not the label. How hard is it to understand that?

I say this as a parent of a severely developmentally disabled child. I love him fiercely, and I'm proud of his every small achievement, but that doesn't mean that if I rubbed a lamp and a genie offered me three wishes, the first TWO wouldn't be to remove his condition.

bw1, I understand, but that doesn't change the fact that people are not their disabilities and that polite language needs to reflect that.

Of course, that's a somewhat separate linguistic issue. But how hard is it for any adult, especially, to understand the difference between saying "a disabled person" and saying "a person with a disability"?

Yes, kids are afraid that they could be in the same position one day, via some accident - whether they end up in a wheelchair or with brain damage or both. Thus, they distance themselves from people with disabilities - or do worse. But any parent or teacher should know that fear or other emotions are NEVER an excuse for rudeness, and that rudeness includes the act of shunning, like it or not. Then, of course, they have to TEACH the kids that - and reprimand them when they keep behaving badly.

Just because people who are shunned may try to act as if they don't mind, doesn't mean they aren't seriously hurt.

Btw, I seem to remember reading in the NY Times that old people (folks, proper grammar means we should say "old," not "older") get shunned by strangers, for the same reason.