"Dallas ISD’s police department, for instance, issued criminal citations to 92 10-year-olds in the 2006-07 school year, the latest year for which such data is available. Alief ISD’s officers issued 163 tickets to elementary school students in 2007. And “several districts ticketed a 6-year-old at least once in the last five years,” according to a recent presentation to the state Senate’s Criminal Justice Committee by Texas Appleseed. Such tickets, often given for “disorderly conduct” or “classroom disruption,” typically are handled in municipal courts or by county justices of the peace and can have fines of between $250 to $500, police and court officials say, though some courts route many students into community service in lieu of fines."Compulsory attendance is turning into compulsory fines and medication for being poor or unlucky or just there. Police have no place in an education system but tying funding to compulsory attendance ensures that coercion and enforcement are a key part of the so-called learning experience.
Families would normally want to help their children but the compulsory attendance laws expect poor families to not want to help their children and therefore ensures that families with fewer resources have no alternatives. And wealthier families always have choices.
In fact, the overgrown administrative and testing layer is directly tied to the fact that families are disenfranchised from the education process. And so we get a steady stream of reforms and programs designed to remedy the problems caused by compulsory attendance and the mindset it creates.
And in hard times, we get even more police in the schools, a place that should be where families can turn for support and learning services, if schools were providing learning services for families.
voluntary attendance
the cost of getting tough
department of education police
school to prison pipeline
schools increase policing of kids and families
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