Segregation 2.0: America’s school-to-prison pipeline

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/brown-v-board-students-criminalized?cid=sm_facebook



In an iconic image painted after the Supreme Court’s historic Brown v. Board of Education decision, Norman Rockwell depicted a solitary black girl, dressed in a crisp white dress, walking to class on what is obviously her first day at a newly desegregated school. What sears the image in our memory are her surroundings: four federal marshals, assigned to protect her as she makes her way through a hostile crowd.

Were the painting done today, it might show law enforcement acting in a very different capacity. Instead of leading a black child safely into school, the image might very well be of police officers escorting a child out.

Sixty years after the Brown decision, de facto segregation persists because of a complex web of factors rooted in our nation’s long history of discrimination. But segregation is only one of the issues faced by students of color. Increasingly, minority children are drawn into the so-called school-to-prison pipeline – the phenomenon in which draconian disciplinary policies force students out of the educational system and into the criminal justice system.

This extreme approach – which includes the overly strict enforcement of zero-tolerance policies, the use of suspension and expulsion at younger and younger ages, and increasingly turning students over to law enforcement – has resulted in a skyrocketing number of students receiving harsh punishments. Much of the increase is the result of heightened concerns over school violence, even though research shows there is no safer place for kids than in school. Another factor is the persistent misperception that students of color are inherently more dangerous.

Whatever the cause, the effects of the pipeline are both damaging and unfair. These policies have contributed to the criminalization of the classroom, whereby small infractions that would in the past have led to a trip to the principal’s office and a sharp warning or detention, now become the basis for out-of-school suspension, expulsion, or, increasingly, a trip to the police station. While white children have become victims of the school-to-prison pipeline, it is students of color who feel its effects most harshly.

The clearest indication of this criminalization has been the proliferation of law enforcement in our schools. Police officers have become a regular and growing presence in schools across America, particularly in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color. Instead of investing in guidance counselors and librarians, school districts are pouring money into school resource officers to patrol schools, permanent metal detectors and state-of-the-art surveillance systems. Often students must submit to regular and invasive searches of their bags, coats and lockers from police officers. A place that should be a safe and enriching environment has increasingly taken on the air of a penal colony. The result has been a corresponding increase in kids being pushed out the school-house door and through the prison gates.

Fifteen-year-old Kyle Thompson is one such victim. A year ago, the black freshman got into a playful tug-of-war with his teacher over a note. When Kyle saw the situation had turned from lighthearted to serious in a flash, he dutifully handed the note to his teacher. The incident got Kyle placed in handcuffs, then put on house arrest, and ultimately expelled from all state public schools for a year because of Michigan’s zero-tolerance laws – laws which take kids like Kyle and harshly punish them regardless of the circumstances.

The impact on students like Kyle is severe and long-lasting. Pushing children down the school-to-prison pipeline by taking them out of school and placing them in the criminal justice or juvenile detention system all but eliminates their chances of getting into college or even graduating from high school.

These policies, statistics show, disproportionately affect black students.

In the United States, 16% of all students enrolled in U.S. public schools are black, while 51% are white. Nevertheless, black students are suspended and expelled at three times the rate of white students, according to data recently released by the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights. More damning is the fact that black students account for 31% of all school-related arrests when they make up only one-sixth of the public school population. In other words, there’s a one-in-three chance that every time a police officer leads a student out of school in handcuffs, that student is black.

The harmful impact is not limited to those students actually expelled from schools. The transformation of schools from institutions of learning to places more reminiscent of prisons exacts a daily toll on all students. Children get the message, and it angers them and tears at their self-esteem. They feel the stigma of suspicion and lower expectations that comes with schools that feel more like cell blocks patrolled by guards than safe places administered by teachers who care about them and their future. “They’re treating us like criminals, like we’re animals,” one New York City public school student told ACLU researchers a few years ago.

In 1954, the problems of racial discrimination were explicit. Today they are subtle and structural. The Supreme Court in Brown may have put an end to de jure segregation, but the school-to-prison pipeline is once again teaching children of color that they are indeed separate, and certainly not equal.

 

Sad it's has come this....... how do you raise a child without homeschooling them? Public education is doing nothing for these children.

 

Honestly here is how you improve early public education

1 Make district "Service areas" illegal Give parents an unlimited amount of school choice. If someone thinks their public school in the ghetto is not good let them send their kids elsewhere.

"Service areas" mainly is what public schools use to keep the poor kids away. While service areas in name all they do is provide a disservice, and perpetuate inequality.

2 Vouchers to cover private education, and price controls to fix private education at the same cost of the voucher. Make private K-12 schools unable to discriminate based on academic ability or the parents financial status. Ban private schools from factoring previous academic performance as a factor of admittance.

I guarantee when the sons, and daughters of the rich are forced to share schools with the poor you will see a rise in educational standards. Hell maybe they will consider redistributing the wealth when their kids come crying home after experiencing people outside of the bourgeoisie bubble.

 

I think part of the reason that it's come down to this is because Obama's in the White House.

 

Who the fuck pays for private school vouchers??

The government.

Just reform the damn public schools and stop trying to subsidize a parallel 'public' school system.....for profit.

Parents need to become more politically mobilized and speak to their school boards about how unfair and unjust these zero tolerance policies are.

The fact that a student can be SUSPENDED FROM ALL STATE SCHOOLS for a nonsense tug at a paper from a teacher is insanity.

We're dealing with some shit today that's 100x worse than it ever was in the '60s and '70s.


We also need a serious influx of Black teachers into public schools. Too many of these teachers see these kids as 'other', and not one of themselves.

And what the fuck does Obama being in the WH have to do with these extreme disciplinary measures being enforced in public schools???:smt017

Events like Columbine and the rash of school shootings is the reason so many public schools are on edge against potential violent activity among students.


I know where I live in Virginia when a school system experiences middle class or White flight from the local schools, the school board dump millions of dollars into local schools with upgrades in facilities and teachers until the public school operates in terms of academic opportunity like a public-private school.

White parents may not want their darlings to sit next to Tyrone living on public assistance, but when that same school has a PC allocated for every student and a science lab on par with the local community college, including smaller classrooms and individual tutoring, White parents suck it up and go along with the program.

We've got public schools where I live that used to be considered 'in the 'hood' now 25-40% White and these same neighborhoods have experienced White gentrification for the last 10-20 years.

If you turn a city public school into a top flight academic institution, most parents are less willing to move out of the neighborhood and more willing to invest their money and time into the community as a whole.

 

You just won most ignant post ever , I'm sure you are proud

 

That's pure fantasy, the rich would never let that happen. We are better off home schooling our kids and funding our own teachers and equipment. Every parent coughs up 250 dollars monthly to pay for teachers and a facility to teach in. They really don't need much to produce excellent students. Take a trip to Jamaica some time.

 

You and I both know this has always been around. What I'm trying to imply in my post (this is the way I talk on here) is that this has become exacerbated during his time in office. It also explains that there are more police officers patrolling around these schools than there were in any other time.

Obama and Holder even did try to intervene when it came to disciplinary procedures throughout the schools. The systems refused and kept doing their own thing.

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/educ...o-drop-zero-tolerance-discipline-policies.ece

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/201...ng-racial-disparity-in-school-discipline?lite

 

It's not fantasy.

I'm talking about White flight from urban/surburban schools by working class and middle class White folks which is the real problem.

Rich White folk don't have a problem with whoever attends their schools, because most send their kids to $20,000 a year private HS schools.

 

I think andreboba and TDK are both making good points. White flight DOES deprive school systems of critical resources as they vote with their feet, taking their tax dollars with them. Chalk this resulting funding shortage up to the ridiculous way the US devolves funding and administrative responsibilities to local property tax base. This in turn is a product of the US' parochial obsession with federalism (largely to preserve slavery) and local control (which is why we have schools teaching creationism rather than uniform standards). But it's also quite true that the wealthy are less concerned about this, as they price access to them and their children prohibitively high to let the market mechanism do the rest. If you are at their schools, you're either wealthy enough for them to tolerate you, or you've received one of their few scholarships for carefully vetted "outsiders".

However, it's also quite possible for poor black communities to achieve higher educational outcomes. British West Indian [sic] communities often do a great job of this, particularly at the elementary school level. This requires some of the solid cultural foundation and shared sacrifice seen in the islands. Their problem is that resource shortages are more glaring as the child grows and moves through the educational system, often necessitating moves to other countries for university. If all black children in the US could get a West Indian elementary and secondary school experience and a US university level education, it would be great.

 

yeah, on the surface its foul what happened to the kid and it is true (research says) black kids get harsher punishments..but those kids can be some badass mofo. they will make lose your religion. i have substituted and did collaborative teaching (help the main teacher)....seen it first hand.

kids will tell "im not doing that" . you will spend ,literally, 70% of the time trying to get silence so you can teach.

 

What happened to Kyle should not have happened. It's absurd to kick a child out of every public school in the state over something like that. Seriously, WTF! Suspend him for a couple of weeks, then move on.

However, why in the hell was he playing with the teacher like that? Why does he have the mindset that the two of them are on the same level? That's an issue right there. The teacher tells you to hand something over, you hand it over. It all starts in the home. Understand that your child is not better than anyone else's child. Prepare that child to learn before he or she starts school. Bet those little Asian and Indian kids would have handed the note over without question. You know the ones who dominating our asses academically and in the work force.

We should be raising our children to know that they must learn in school regardless of the teacher. In other words, as my parents told me, "I don't care if the teacher likes you or not. I don't care if the teacher is mean. I don't care what them white kids do. You do what the teacher says. You don't talk back and you better bring me A's and B's. No excuses just spankings if you don't. And, if you got a problem with the teacher, you tell me and I'll handle it. You ain't grown. 'Cause, if I hear about you actin' up, that's yo ass, boy." Then back it up with action.

Once a child understands that concept, anything else you do is icing on the cake.

In conjunction with that, black parents need to become more involved with the schools. Help shape school policy. If the school knows you're an involved, yet reasonable parent, they are far less likely to try and pull some B.S. on your child. And if they do, you rain hell down on them in the form of law suits and negative media coverage. See, if you make sure that your kid is in the right, you stand a far better chance of beating them at their own game.

 

you are so rite. i cant really add on to it but if the parents were involved deeply the kids wouldnt act up.

 

Wish I could rep you. Well said

 

i think if the teacher call the parents when the child is good also call when the child is bad then the parents would be up to not fightIng the teacher.

parents have a bad habit of not believing thier kid is acting up. thats the major problem.