When teacher expectations of performance are based on the socioeconomic status of a student, the children with low status suffer stigmatization. They are often treated as slow learners, get less time and attention from the teacher and are expected to fail. Moreover, teachers will lower the ceiling for many of these students, treating mediocre work (and work below the potential of students) as high quality. This lack of opportunity compounds over time and surely contributes to poor social, economic, and health outcomes for low-income students across the lifespan.

In addition, low-income African American students are overrepresented in special education classrooms. Low SES students, in general, are overrepresented in suspensions and expulsions. Although behaviors related to poverty may explain some overrepresentation, studies confirm that low-income African American children are treated differently and more harshly for the same behaviors that other children exhibit in schools. That is, the institutional response to African American behaviors is disproportionately punitive. Special education, suspensions, and expulsions all remove children from whatever opportunities to learn that exist in their schools.