At-risk students
young person who requires temporary or ongoing intervention in order to transition successfully into adulthood and achieve economic self-sufficiency

An at-risk student is a term used in the United States to describe a student who requires temporary or ongoing intervention in order to succeed academically. At-risk students, sometimes referred to as at-risk youth or at-promise youth, are also adolescents who are less likely to transition successfully into adulthood and achieve economic self-sufficiency. Characteristics of at-risk students include emotional or behavioral problems, truancy, low academic performance, showing a lack of interest for academics, and expressing a disconnection from the school environment. A school's effort to at-risk students is essential. For example, a study showed that 80% to 87% of variables that led to a school's retention are predictable with linear modeling. In January 2020, Governor Gavin Newsom of California changed all references to "at-risk" to "at-promise" in the California Penal Codes.
History of the Term "At Risk"
The term "at-risk" came into use after the 1983 article "A Nation at Risk," published by the National Commission on Excellence in Education. The article described United States society as being economically and socially endangered. At-risk students are those students who have been labeled, either officially or unofficially, as being in danger of academic failure. In the U.S., different states define "at-risk" differently, so it is difficult to compare the varying state policies on the subject.
“At-risk students” enters the record as young person who requires temporary or ongoing intervention in order to transition successfully into adulthood and achieve economic self-sufficiency. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what At-risk, students and young can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4812273. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2020 and 1983.
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This entry incorporates text from “At-risk students” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.