The School to Prison Pipeline: The Criminalization of American Students The School to Prison Pipeline: The Criminalization of American Students Kimberly N. Wright Western Governors University

Introduction Your permanent record! The thing that was held over most of our heads when we were in school. Your teacher or maybe your parents threatened that your bad behavior was going to end up on your “permanent record” and ruin your life. We shrugged them off, thought they were being dramatic or crazy and didn’t think much of it. Unfortunately for some students, the School to Prison Pipeline is making the threat of a bad permanent record all too real, as well as the consequences behind it. What is happening?
Research suggests that The School to Prison Pipeline is damaging to students because it disproportionately affects poor, minority, and special needs students and is supported by unfairly applied disciplinary policies like “zero tolerance” and the standardized testing requirements backed by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. The School to Prison Pipeline, or Cradle to Prison Pipeline as some may refer to it as is the set of rules and policies that are currently funneling school children into the juvenile and criminal court systems. While order is needed in classrooms, the School to Prison Pipeline is a disservice to students and society given that these policies heavily impact special needs, minority, and poor students.
With the increase of school shootings since Columbine in 1999, schools have become increasingly inflexible in terms of dealing with situations that a decade or two ago would have been handled by the school principal. In 2010 a NYC school student was arrested and sentenced to community service for doodling on her desk with an erasable marker (Aull, 2012). In 2008 a 13 year old Florida student was arrested for repeatedly passing gas in class and turning off his classmates computers (Aull, 2012), and in 2010 a Wisconsin student was arrested for stealing chicken nuggets. In the Wisconsin case, charges were ultimately dropped once officials learned the student obtained the additional nuggets from a fellow student who couldn’t eat them due to a fast. Since 1986 Black and Hispanic students have been increasingly segregated from their white counterparts. At a higher rate, minority students are among those denied diplomas or are held back a grade due to a nationwide increase in mandatory testing.

Across the country Black students are three times more likely to be classified as mentally retarded than their White peers and two times as likely to be classified as being emotionally disturbed. Once these students have been identified, Black and Hispanic students are more likely to be sequestered from their non-disabled peers. In Texas, students face a Class C Misdemeanor for violating truancy laws which can carry jail time along with fines. The problems are so severe that the Texas Legislature moved to decriminalize truancy in bills presented during the 2015 session.
According to Texas Appleseed, between 2010 and 2013 over 6000 students who came before a Truancy Judge were ordered to withdraw from school, took the GED and failed. 80% of those students were Black, Hispanic, or in special education. Dropout rates from school districts around the country are hiding the increasing graduation gap between white and minority students (Wald, 2003). How does the “Pipeline” work? How do disciplinary actions, standardized testing, and special education classification play into the school to prison pipeline? School data suggests that the decision to suspend or excel a student depends on several factors including prior history of the student, particulars of the situation, and the teacher’s ability to manager classroom behavior (Skiba, 2003). However observations of classroom behavior show that the majority of students removed from urban classrooms were not primarily due to dangerous or major infractions of disciplinary policies and usually they weren’t even the worst offenders.
Often times it’s the student’s needs and the school being unable to meet the student’s needs that lead to the student being disciplined. Kids who are behind academically, and unable to perform at the same level as their peers often act out in frustration or humiliation (Noguera, 2003). Once these students are labelled as difficult, incorrigible, and unteachable they tend to believe these things about themselves and act out more in class which leads to a cycle of discipline that can ultimately lead to permanent expulsion. For some of these students, these continued rule violations lead to run-ins with the police and the criminal justice system. School administrators who are at times frustrated themselves from failed attempts to steer children from a “bad path” don’t realize that in throwing their hands up and giving up on these students, are in a way helping shuttle students from school to the penitentiary (Noguera, 2003).
Another strike against students who are already on proverbial shaky ground in terms of academics and behavior is the standardized testing standards imposed by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001. Under the guidelines, schools must at a minimum meet a satisfactory rating in order to receive funds from the federal government, with exemplary being the highest rating. The terms of NCLB increase the unwillingness of schools to re-enroll students returning from alternative schools mainly because these students more often than not fall behind academically and could jeopardize the standardized testing scores of the school (Feierman, Levick, 2009). When you add in discouraged or worse- unconcerned teachers who’ve been threatened with their jobs for the non-performance of their students and they begin taking their frustrations out on the students, this leads to a hostile environment which often times sends the student back into the disciplinary cycle (Darling-Hammond, 2007).

What Is Being Done About This?
In the past couple of years the Federal Government, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) have filed lawsuits against various school boards across the country in regards to the overzealous enforcement of zero tolerance policies that are part of the driving force behind the School to Prison Pipeline. Meridian, MS was sued by the federal government for denying students their basic constitutional rights and being incarcerated for minor school infractions. 86% of the students in the district were Black but all referrals to the county youth court were minorities. Among the violations noted by federal investigators: * Children were handcuffed and arrested in school and imprisoned for days without a probable cause hearing. * Children in custody have to wait more than 48 hours for probable cause hearings which is a violation of constitutional requirements * Failure to Mirandize students prior to a formal confession * Children weren’t routinely granted legal representation in the juvenile justice system
In Pennsylvania the Juvenile Law Center filed a class action law suit against former President Judge of the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan and numerous other parties in a kids for cash scheme that involved the judges routinely denying the juvenile defendants proper legal counsel and sentencing them for extended periods in detention centers for minor offenses such as mocking school administrators on social media, trespassing, and shoplifting from big box retailers. In exchange for sentencing the students to for profit detention centers built by Robert Mericle the judges received over $2 million dollars in kickbacks. More organizations and federal agencies have started to weigh in and work with school districts to effectively dismantle this destructive and arbitrary system.
In 2011 Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and then Attorney General Eric Holder announced a joint effort between the two departments called the Supportive School Discipline Initiative that will address the school to prison pipeline and the disciplinary policies and practices that are pushing kids out of schools and into the juvenile and adult prison systems. The goal of the joint initiative is to support good disciplinary practices and encourage a safe and productive learning environment in the classroom (US DOJ, Department of Education 2011). And in November 2013, the NAACP brokered a revolutionary joint promise regarding school discipline with the Broward County Public School District, law enforcement, and community members. The agreement includes alternatives to arrest for misconduct by students that include common sense methods such as counseling and mentoring. The aim is to reduce student suspensions, expulsions, and arrests while ensuring safe learning environments for students (NPR, 2013). Conclusions
For decades there have been students that misbehaved in class. They talked out of turn, smarted off to the teacher, and sometimes engaged in verbal or physical altercations with other students and unfortunately at times with teachers. The difference between 20-30 years ago and now is that seemingly normal adolescent behavior is being regarded as criminal behavior and putting children, who are more often than not minority, come from a low socio-economic background or special needs on a path to prison. School districts need to turn away from the hard core policies of zero tolerance and find ways to reach out to students whose underlying problems at home are generally the driving force behind their lack of self-control in class.
A generation of children have been disregarded and treated as criminals as a means to bolster school ratings, or because teachers and administrators are too lazy, frustrated, or unconcerned to find out what the underlying causes are behind a student’s behavior. And what’s worse is that some of these students are being specifically targeted by teachers and principals simply because they are not white, or because they learn differently than other students. This is a system that needs to be done away with as soon as possible or we will have a generation of students who know nothing more than how to be a criminal.

Works Cited
1). Aull, E. (2012). Zero tolerance, frivolous juvenile court referrals, and the school-to- prison pipeline: Using arbitration as a screening-out method to help plug the pipeline. Ohio State Journal of Dispute Resolution, 27(179-206), 28-28. Retrieved May 20, 2015, from http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/students/groups/osjdr/files/2011/12/Aull.pdf. The purpose of this source is to show examples of how students are being treated as criminals for minor offenses.
2). Fowler, D., Mergler, M., & Johnson, K. (2015, March 31). Class Not Court. Retrieved May 20, 2015. http://www.texasappleseed.net. This source provides background information on the Texas Truancy laws that criminalized students for being too poor to afford to pay court costs associated with truancy violations.
3). Wald, J., & Losen, D. (2003). Defining and redirecting a school-to-prison pipeline. New Directions For Youth Development, 9-15. The purpose of this source is to support the argument that school districts that have high occurrences of students being suspended and expelled as a means of class discipline are using drop out figures to mask the increasing graduation gap between Black and White students.
4). Skiba, R., Simmons, A., Staudinger, L., Rausch, M., Dow, G., & Feggins, R. (2003). Consistent Removal: Contributions of School Discipline to the School-Prison Pipeline. This source provides information on the driving factors behind who gets suspended and why.
5). Noguera, P. (2003). Schools, Prisons, and Social Implications of Punishment: Rethinking Disciplinary Practices. Theory Into Practice, 341-350. Information provided in this source gives an idea as to the driving forces behind the behavior exhibited by students that leads to disciplinary problems.
6). Feierman, J., Levick, M., & Mody, A. (2009). The School-to-Prison Pipeline . . . and Back: Obstacles and Remedies for the Re-Enrollment of Adjudicated Youth. This source provides background on how the schools at times make it difficult for students returning from alternative schools or detention centers to re-enroll or stay enrolled once they return to their regular campus.
7). Darling‐Hammond, L. (2007). Race, inequality and educational accountability: The irony of ‘No Child Left Behind’. Race Ethnicity and Education, 10(3), 245-260. This article provides background information on the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and how it impacts the school rating system and how schools use test scores as a deciding factor when allowing expelled students to return to the classroom.
8). Mohr, H. (2013, March 22). Mississippi School Discipline Case: District, Feds Reach Deal Over Harsh Disciplinary Practices. Retrieved June 1, 2015. This web news article provides details of the settlement reached between The Meridian, MS schools and the federal government over the violation of student’s constitutional rights concerning school discipline.
9). Warner, D. (2011, August 11). Former judge sentenced to prison for "kids for cash" scheme. Retrieved June 1, 2015. This news story provides information on the conviction of former Judge Mark Ciavarella in the Kids for Cash scandal in Pennsylvania, a scheme that systematically deprived juveniles of their constitutional rights.
10). SECRETARY DUNCAN, ATTORNEY GENERAL HOLDER ANNOUNCE EFFORT TO RESPOND TO SCHOOL-TO-PRISON PIPELINE BY SUPPORTING GOOD DISCIPLINE PRACTICES. (2011, July 21). States News Service. Retrieved June 3, 2015, from http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-262594059.html? This news release provides information on the joint initiative between the Department of Education and Department of Justice to help schools break their participation in the school to prison pipeline.
11). Fla. School District Trying To Curb School-To-Prison Pipeline. (2013, November 5). Retrieved June 3, 2015, from http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/11/05/243250817/fla-school-district-trying-to-curb-school-to-prison-pipeline
12). Loving, L. (2012, March 6). Suspensions and Expulsions: The School to Prison Pipeline. Retrieved June 6, 2015, from http://www.theskanner.com/news/northwest/13556-suspensions-and-expulsions-of-black-students-the-school-to-prison-pipeline-2012-03-06
13). How High-Stakes Testing Feeds the School-to-Prison Pipeline Infographic. (2013, July 7). Retrieved June 6, 2015, from http://www.fairtest.org/pipeline-infographic

Questions & Answers

Q: Zero tolerance policies were supposed to be for incidents of sexual harassment and gun violence, why are they being used to discipline students for arbitrary things like talking back or writing on desks?
A: There are no concrete answers as to why zero tolerance policies are being, for lack of a better word, abused. The school districts give out basic guidelines under the districts zero tolerance policies for schools to follow. It is left to the administration of a particular school on the interpretation of those rules. Unfortunately with that kind of latitude, the rules are applied harshly towards some and leniently, if at all for others.
Q: Are teachers and school administrators willing participants in this school to prison pipeline, or are they unwitting players of an unfair game?
A: I can’t say that teachers and school administration aren’t aware of the existence of the school to prison pipeline problem; this is a phenomenon that is discussed in teaching seminars and in handouts by the Department of Education as well as teachers unions. That being said, I don’t believe that all teachers and administrators are fully aware of the lasting impact of over reactive punishment to minor infractions. Especially to students who are already on the fringe.
Q: Standardized testing was around long before the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), how did the implementation of that law play a role in the school to prison pipeline?
A: Prior to the NCLB, there was no federal mandate for states to monitor the progress of their school systems with testing scores. Some states, such as Texas had yearly testing for students and an exit level test for high school students in their sophomore year. However, the NCLB requires that schools receiving Title I funding via the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to show Academic Yearly Progress (AYP). The receipt of those funds is tied to a school’s AYP. Schools that regularly score below Satisfactory face a reduction or loss of funding at a minimum and more severely, closure. In order to meet the AYP for the district, some schools have pushed out low performing students by sending them to alternative schools, or GED programs. The NCLB outright encourages schools to utilize zero tolerance policies and refer students to law enforcement for disciplinary matters.