Craig Sautter's article Who are Today's City Kids? Beyond the "Deficit Model" presents criticisms of the deficit model in education, claiming that it only reinforces negative stereotypes about minority and urban youth. As a replacement, an asset model that builds learning strategies around the personal skills, interests, abilities, language and culture of individual students is recommended. However, implementation details are vague, leaving one to wonder if the transition from a deficit to an asset model would actually be practical.

             According to the article, four minority groups, Native Americans, African Americans, Hispanics and Asian Americans, dominate the population of 185 counties and 2,000 towns and cities. And, there's increasing immigration from Central and South America, the Caribbean Islands, East Asia, and Slavic countries such as Russia. Given this diversity and the student to teacher ratios, it's difficult to imagine how teachers could possibly understand the dynamic and diverse social relationships of family, friendship and community that are unique to each group and incorporate them into their teaching.

             Further, it's unclear how could ignore deficits such as the fact that nearly 14 percent of large city students come to school with limited-English proficiency and that as many as 70 percent of students come from families trapped in a deadly and degrading poverty. Even if teachers could ignore these facts, there's certainly plenty of room to argue that they shouldn't. Sure, the ability to be bilingual is an asset, but the teachers still have to figure out how to teach them English and have to cope with economic impacts on attendance and performance. .

             Essentially, the recommended transition from a deficit to an asset model is flawed because it calls for teachers to ignore the obvious and become a genius at more complex cultural dynamics. At the same time, there's little instruction about how teachers could become these super beings.