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The School To Prison Pipeline

Discipline

a presentation by Elena Fruechtnicht

Police Presence

in Schools

What is the School-to-Prison pipeline?

The School-to-Prison Pipeline refers to the process of starting children in the education system and directing them to end up in prisons and correctional centers.

(NYC ACLU)

What is the pipeline?

Discipline

One of the main pillars of the School-to-Prison pipeline is discipline.

The education system utilized discipline as a way to reduce crime in school and as a result, highlighted racial disparities and increased the connection between the criminal justice system and the education system.

(North 2021)

Resources

Another pillar of the School-to-Prison Pipeline is a lack of resources.

Students of color are more likely to be pushed through the School-to-Prison pipeline. The contributing factors to the increase of disciplinary actions against Black Students can be attributed to a lack of resources within majority-Black schools.

(North 2021)

Culture

The School-to-Prison pipeline is sustained and encouraged by our cultural practices. This includes the fostering of and participation in systematic racism and racist practices.

Why Do We Need to Make This An Issue of Race?

The School-to-Prison Pipeline disproportionally affects students of color. It would be inaccurate and misleading to pretend that race has nothing to do with this subject.

Why This is an Issue of Race

Some Statistics

In preschools, Black children represent 18% of all students, but represent 48% of students who have been disciplined with out of school suspension more than once.

Black children are suspended and expelled at three times the rate of white children.

16% of Black students are suspended; for white students it's 5%.

Black girls are suspended at a rate of 12%. This is higher than the rates of girls in other racial groups, and higher than the rate of suspension for white boys.

Black students make up 16% of enrollment in schools, 27% of students referred to law enforcement, and 31% of students who have been arrested on school-related grounds.

https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/crdc-discipline-snapshot.pdf

This is where the pipeline begins: in an education system that is under-resourced and in a state of destitute.

Studies have shown that what we put into our education system, we get out of it. The schools who have the worst educational performance are the schools who have the least number of resources.

(NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC.)

Lack of Resources

Funding

Non-white districts get, on average, $23 billion less dollars than white-majority schools every year.

(North 2021)

A lack of resources is also the result of basing school funding on property tax. By default, the schools located in areas with high levels of poverty are going to be underfunded. And if federal grants are based on academic performance, and if we know that schools with less resources are more likely to do poorly on academic assessments, they will most likely be overlooked for federal grants. Thus, perpetuating a system designed to lock students in their economic and societal ranks.

(NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC.)

Redlining, although illegal, contributes to the lack of resources in majority-Black schools. On average, homes in majority-Black neighborhoods are valued three times less than homes in majority-white neighborhoods.

(North 2021)

In-School

Resources

One of the consequences of inadequate funding is the lack of in-school reasources. This means a lack of school counselors and nurses.

Studies have shown that Black students are less likely to seek help for their mental health issues from school counselors. This is a reasonable response when resources are not guaranteed.

(North 2021)

In 2000 there were 97,000 expulsions and over three million suspensions in the United States. This method of extreme discipline removes children from a valuable educational envirement, removes their structure, and gives them more time to get into trouble.

Furthermore, children who are suspended are more likely to drop out and/or be incarserated as an adult

(https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/crdc-discipline-snapshot.pdf)

Zero-Tolerance Policies

Zero-Tolerance policies gained popularity in the early 1990s, later in the decade most school districts had adopted some sort of Zero-Tolerance policy.

The idea behind zero-tolerance was that when students break certain rules their punshments were uniform and mandatory. This could be suspension, expulsion, or even referral to law enforcement.

(Winter 2016)

The goal of Zero-Tolerance policies was to prevent small offenses from turning into bigger ones. Instead the result was a sky-rocketing number of suspensions as juvenile crime rates dropped.

(Lind, Dara, et.al)

How Race Contributes to Discipline

While Black and white students are sent to the principles office at a similar rate, Black students are punished more severely than white students.

White students are more likely to be punished for provable offenses such as smoking, drinking, or vandelism. Black students are more likely to be punished for behavioral offenses like talking back or being disrepectful.

(Lind, Dara, et.al)

The presence of police officers in schools, or "school reasource officers", began in 1999 with the Columbine shooting. Originally the idea behind having officers in schools was to prevent other mass shootings. However, the presence of police officers quickly turned into a branch of discipline in schools.

(Lind, Dara, et.al)

It would be inaccurate to say that race has nothing to do with the placement of police offers in schools.

Schools that are more than 50% Black are more likely to have a police officer on campus. Furthermore, Black students make up 1 in 3 students arrested on school campuses even though they only make up the population of 1 in 6 students.

(Lind, Dara, et.al)

Racially-Based

Discipline

Useful Impact?

The presence of police offers has not actually led to more charges for drug and alcohol violations. Students at policed schools are more likely to be arrested than students at non-policed schools. However, they're no more likely to be charged with drug, alchol, and wepons violations than students at non-policed schools.

(Lind, Dara, et.al)

"As adults, we learn it is our responsibility to educate, not to continue to perpetuate, the criminilzation of young men of color."

-Dr. Benjamin Williams

The most effective solution is cultural change.

There is still very much a mindset that children are good or bad and therefore their school is a "good school" or "bad school". This is a harmful idea we as a society have cultivated and it severly harms the students within the schools we label as "bad".

(North 2021)

Solutions and Options

Solutions

There are several ways to help end the School-to-Prison pipeline. One way is to bridge the gap of resources available in schools. This can be done by:

  • Removing the connection between property tax and school funding
  • Federal funding for under-reasourced schools
  • Including specific grant money for schools with poor performance and high poverty rates

Another solution is to include schools in the conversation surrounding the rebuilding of American infrastructure. A lot of schools lack basic reasources like heat, AC, working computers, and other necessities for modern education.

By investing in these schools, we are essencially investing in the students and showing we believe they can achieve great things.

Sources Cited

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