This infographic was up at Suspension Stories.
Showing posts with label school to prison pipeline. Show all posts
Showing posts with label school to prison pipeline. Show all posts
criminalizing failure
Education Radio: Criminalizing failure: How high stakes testing warps identities, opportunities and communities:
This is one of the best shows I have heard recently on this topic but I want to point out that testing links two different worlds together: the world we hear so poignantly about in this show and a another world, a world of good schools and clean suburbs, corporate campuses, and top colleges. The ones who pass these tests are also affected: they may feel smarter than they are and they may assume they know more than they do. Those who test well and get the grades and achieve may come to accept many aspects of this coercion and sorting system as beneficial. They may become comfortable with social and institutional practices that are overly punitive and destructive. They may not actually know what they think they know.
How could so many top-level economists not see the global financial crisis? How could so many economists follow groupthink and not question the models they learned? How could Europe actually try an austerity that is so vicious on its surface? How could anyone think that was the way to go forward? How much intellectual energy is expended on trivial activities that could have tackled more meaningful work? Why do we have so many poorly built and designed houses, suburbs, services and products? Why is there so much waste generated? The systems we raise our children within affect us all.
Those who do well on standardized tests may pose even greater challenges to all of us than those who fail.
background posts
side effects of the literacy factory model
school to prison pipeline
training passivity
social deficit
creeping institutionalization
socialization
the Prussian model
grading in the stone age
Howard Wainer on testing
better living through testing
the language of control: achievement
related
Over 230 Texas School Systems Pass Resolution to Rein In High Stakes Testing
"In this week’s program, we take a closer look at how high stakes testing is impacting what happens in classrooms, how teachers see students, how students see themselves, and the kinds of society we are building through how young people are being educated. The impact of high stakes tests is both broadly social and intimately personal. Socially, high stakes testing re-segregates our schools, marginalizes black and brown children, young people who live in poverty and children who do not learn in traditional ways. High stakes testing tells us who we will value, and who we will not value, and makes room for us to criminalize youth, especially black and brown youth, opening the path to the school to prison pipeline. It operates within and builds on white supremacy, and exploits long standing privileges and oppressions. And, as with any dominant discourse, high stakes testing enters our consciousness and begins to structure how we see ourselves, each other, and the kind of world we want to build."via Blog this'A sensitive look at the full ramifications of high stakes testing and the way it impacts kids. Much of this would also apply to most forms of grading practiced in the US though teachers do have somewhat more control over that process. The schools are a service for families and kids and schools should support every child. And doing this fully and fairly would strengthen our social relationships and build our human capital. We cannot have a sift and sort approach to children: we can provide services that are supportive and helpful to families. We might be astonished at the variety and depth of the many skills and talents that human beings possess were we not so bent on invasive shaping and sorting, all based on disproved science and all extremely anti-social in design.
This is one of the best shows I have heard recently on this topic but I want to point out that testing links two different worlds together: the world we hear so poignantly about in this show and a another world, a world of good schools and clean suburbs, corporate campuses, and top colleges. The ones who pass these tests are also affected: they may feel smarter than they are and they may assume they know more than they do. Those who test well and get the grades and achieve may come to accept many aspects of this coercion and sorting system as beneficial. They may become comfortable with social and institutional practices that are overly punitive and destructive. They may not actually know what they think they know.
How could so many top-level economists not see the global financial crisis? How could so many economists follow groupthink and not question the models they learned? How could Europe actually try an austerity that is so vicious on its surface? How could anyone think that was the way to go forward? How much intellectual energy is expended on trivial activities that could have tackled more meaningful work? Why do we have so many poorly built and designed houses, suburbs, services and products? Why is there so much waste generated? The systems we raise our children within affect us all.
Those who do well on standardized tests may pose even greater challenges to all of us than those who fail.
background posts
side effects of the literacy factory model
school to prison pipeline
training passivity
social deficit
creeping institutionalization
socialization
the Prussian model
grading in the stone age
Howard Wainer on testing
better living through testing
the language of control: achievement
related
Over 230 Texas School Systems Pass Resolution to Rein In High Stakes Testing
juvenile justice in the news
 |
Zipperman said “a citation is an educational tool,” and so it is expected that middle-school students will receive more citations than older students. He also noted that overall citations were “trending down over the past three years,” with African American students’ citations “trending lower” and white and Latino students’ citations rising in proportion.
Alternatives to Youth Detention Conference Opens in Houston | JJIE.org:
...This conference follows on the heels of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice’s Kids Behind Bars national symposium for journalists, where a sense of optimism seemed to prevail that this is an era for positive change for the juvenile justice. That’s the prevailing mode at the JDAI conference also.
However, as Whitmire, a conservative Democrat, pointed out, there is plenty of work to be done. His own focus is on decriminalizing truancy in schools and preventing kids from getting charged for disorderly conduct “for behavior that you and I would have had on our resumes.”
Day Two: John Jay Juvenile Justice Conference | JJIE.org:
"Professor Heitzeg explained that the school-to-prison pipeline is essentially a growing trend that involves tracking kids out of school and into the criminal justice system. There are, she argues, several reasons for this growing trend, including the re-segregation of schools, growing poverty rates, the over representation of kids of color in special education classes, the underrepresentation of kids in advanced classes and zero tolerance policies.
She said that zero tolerance policies being implemented in schools have increased, while at the same time, violence in schools has fallen across the nation.
Zero tolerance policies have resulted in some three million suspensions and 100,000 expulsions per year."
Bart Lubow: Cutting Youth Incarceration Doesn’t Cut Public Safety | JJIE.org:
"Reading from these prepared remarks, he said: “Evidence is mounting from all parts of the country that policy makers, justice system practitioners and whole communities are prepared to eschew the policies of mass incarceration that have been at the center of crime policy for the past four decades. This shift is not restricted to Democratic or Republican states, or to specific sections of the country. It is increasingly embraced by people and organizations of all political persuasions.”
He added: “It is at least a portent of a different future, one that recognizes that mass incarceration has proven a fiscally unsustainable approach to public safety that maintains and exacerbates racial and ethnic disadvantages, disrupts families, undermines communities and disregards new knowledge about how to respond more effectively to crime.”"
'We can't arrest our way out' of youth violence issue, Detroit police chief says | The Detroit News | detroitnews.com:
""We can't arrest our way out of this problem," Detroit Police Chief Ralph Godbee said during testimony at a hearing for U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder's National Task Force on Children Exposed to Violence in Detroit, held at Wayne State University. "We can't be selfish and say we just need more police officers to fight this problem. Of course, we need more officers, but making more arrests isn't the solution. If every tool in your toolbox is a hammer, then everything becomes a nail. There are environmental factors that contribute to these problems." 'via Blog this'
Slideshow of kids in the Juvenile Justice system by Richard Ross
Remarkable photographs on display at the conference in Houston
previous posts
blaming families, juvenile justice edition
policing youth
As the civil rights movement was working to end racial apartheid in the South and gain access to education after WWII, schools were continuing their intense centralization. Spurred by the rapid growth of the military-industrial complex, corporations expanded their reach and grasp globally. And corporate expansion fit well with a highly centralized public school structure that could offer a large market to corporate vendors. Education corporations have since gained become dominate in the entire arc of education in the neoliberal era as more citizens used education services to compensate for the decline of fair wages.
Increasing repression within schools is clearly seen in the movement toward zero tolerance policies in the past 30 years, policies that sync with mass incarceration, so that today we are seeing levels of policing and control within schools that hard to reconcile with the original purpose of schools. The schools were partly an answer to the exploitation of youth in factories but many schools today have become factories themselves with a school-to-prison pipeline for racial minorities.
Schools should be a social service for citizens in a democracy and police are not needed when this social service works with families in a supportive capacity. Changing the power structure of compulsory schooling to allow all families to be partners in the social services they pay for, changing this dynamic would enable communities to begin strengthening our weak social fabric. Authoritarian tactics and racism by a social service that should serve families are, as Alice Walker says, symptoms of the disease. That disease has brought war as a growth industry and expanded police power in mass institutions that are not anchored firmly and democratically to all citizens.
Trayvon Martin Suspensions: Too Harsh?:
Youth protesting Trayvon Martin case in Baltimore, video with activist Glen Ford who advises youth to remain involved in activism for change:
background posts
unequal treatment
blaming families, juvenile justice edition
semi-private clubs called schools
update on williams-bolar
theft of education crimes
school to prison pipeline
Increasing repression within schools is clearly seen in the movement toward zero tolerance policies in the past 30 years, policies that sync with mass incarceration, so that today we are seeing levels of policing and control within schools that hard to reconcile with the original purpose of schools. The schools were partly an answer to the exploitation of youth in factories but many schools today have become factories themselves with a school-to-prison pipeline for racial minorities.
Schools should be a social service for citizens in a democracy and police are not needed when this social service works with families in a supportive capacity. Changing the power structure of compulsory schooling to allow all families to be partners in the social services they pay for, changing this dynamic would enable communities to begin strengthening our weak social fabric. Authoritarian tactics and racism by a social service that should serve families are, as Alice Walker says, symptoms of the disease. That disease has brought war as a growth industry and expanded police power in mass institutions that are not anchored firmly and democratically to all citizens.
Trayvon Martin Suspensions: Too Harsh?:
"In March the U.S. Department of Education released the Civil Rights Data Collection, a self-reported survey of more than 72,000 schools that serve 85 percent of American students. Among the tool's findings is that African-American and Latino students receive harsher school discipline than their white counterparts. Black students are more than three times as likely, for example, to be suspended or expelled, and one in five African-American boys received an out-of-school suspension." via Blog this'
Youth protesting Trayvon Martin case in Baltimore, video with activist Glen Ford who advises youth to remain involved in activism for change:
background posts
unequal treatment
blaming families, juvenile justice edition
semi-private clubs called schools
update on williams-bolar
theft of education crimes
school to prison pipeline
school to prison pipeline
This article in the Education special edition of The Nation briefly discusses the increasing criminalization of behavior within low-income public schools as well as other aspects of school policy in Texas:
Schools as pipelines to anything, either a corporate job or a prison sentence, are a new thing. Schools were never a pipeline to jobs for the majority of our history until quite recently. Communities and families provided most people with support and access to jobs while time in schools, though compulsory, was of a shorter duration and had far less, if any, impact on one's future job, at least for the vast majority of citizens.
Until the 1930s, the majority of vocations within the US were agricultural and truly small businesses. And these jobs did not require an education nor were they in any way linked to the schools. People got jobs from the people in their communities. The 1930s was the first time that most Americans lived in cities and agricultural work grew more mechanized and centralized. This was a primary cause of bread lines as many people could not feed themselves as the social safety net at that time, the family farm, was now only available to a minority of the population. The New Deal was an effort to make a new safety net for the many newly urbanized and industrialized workers.
After WWII, many unionized jobs and small businesses did begin to require a high school degree, now increasingly common as young people spent less time farming. Mandatory education was extended to 12 years after which the majority of people were hired by industries. The high school degree was something many used to distinguish themselves and the building of many public schools during the Great Depression meant it was, theoretically, possible for anyone to get a free education at a public institution. In truth, racial minorities and the poor struggled with basic access and quality. Even for these groups, there were often functioning communities that provided support for the children and youth.
The rise of neoliberal policies in the last 50 years expanded the required length of schooling to now include the BA, for the first time requiring education at a school that is not free to the public, while simultaneously reducing the number and quality of jobs available overall as well as decimating the communities that provided support for the children and youth conscripted into the system. It was easy to manufacture the consent of the many middle and working class citizens who were able to achieve a BA or advanced degree in good economic times. The system made them feel they had earned it through the long years spent on task. Few seem to notice the steep inflation of a decent job requiring 16 long years of education, four years of which are not free for jobs that no longer provided a living wage that a family could live on with dignity.
At the same time, the poor and working class sectors were getting jobs that could no longer provide a living wage and the communities they lived in were collapsing further, straining the ability of children and youth to cope with mass industrial education. The downdraft accelerated and the school to prison pipeline was born as prisons were privatized and began looking for a market. The inherently anti-democratic and authoritarian structure of public schools acculturated several generations of citizens to many mass structures, whether it is the school to prison pipeline, or the school to corporation pipeline carefully preserved by elite schools.
Compulsory attendance has created a mindset where children and youth can be easily exploited by institutions and parents are required by law to place their children into these institutions. Citizens have objected to these attacks on their freedom throughout our history but many were more complacent when a strong economy and strong communities somewhat offset the negative effects on individuals, though it is an open question whether this institutional mindset has not been a factor in the endless wars perpetuated by the military industrial complex.
It is time to get children out of the pipeline altogether and into sustainable, voluntary, community-based social settings where families can choose educational courses like we choose books in a public library. Children and youth need real communities -- not schools that attempt to "be communities" -- and a social experience that does not subject them to mass institutionalization and its supposedly necessary crowd control techniques like grading and truancy issues.
Democracy starts here, with children and young people making choices and spending time in small, social groups that are not authoritarian in structure and purpose. It is a very short journey from a prison-like school to a prison for everyone involved. Stopping that journey means transforming the very first steps so that, right from the start, the path leads somewhere else.
This summer, the ACLU of Texas is working to counter widespread misinformation and ignorance with its “Youth Rights in Texas” conference on July 31st. With Ed Burns, co-creator of HBO’s “The Wire,”, in attendance, the event promises to discuss alternatives to the harsh disciplinary measures that marginalize inner-city students.A post at Grits for Breakfast shows the declining number of criminalized youth, many victims of the schools to prison pipeline:
“So much of school today has been criminalized,” says Dotty Griffith of the ACLU of Texas. “Throwing a spit-wad on a bus can get you a Class C misdemeanor. Minor infractions are now cast into the criminal justice system. Well once someone gets into that, it’s hard to get out of.” Constitutionally, the ACLU is concerned about the manner in which these punishments are meted out. And with good reason: A report by Texas Appleseed, a nonprofit based out of Austin, shows that minority and special education students are most likely to be put in some form of in-school suspension or alternative schooling facility, and that these methods of punishment are pipelines to dropping out. The report also demonstrates that where a child attends school, rather than the offense itself, is a greater predictor of the degree of punishment she will receive.
The number of juveniles sent to youth prisons from Texas' largest counties dramatically declined after 2007 - when the Legislature implemented reforms at the Texas Youth Commission in the wake of a sex abuse scandal - demonstrating the remarkable extent to which state and local decisionmaking drives incarceration policy as much or more than crime rates.Mass institutions called schools, with no real feedback mechanism or design for parent and citizen control are now an industry that manipulates and coerces our children and youth in ways we have never yet endured in the US. The school to prison pipeline is one example of how this massive and now extended institutionalization of our children in compulsory public schools can abuse children and families who have no ability to get out of the system that feeds upon them. Class and race discrimination only intensify the problem and determine the early victims.
Schools as pipelines to anything, either a corporate job or a prison sentence, are a new thing. Schools were never a pipeline to jobs for the majority of our history until quite recently. Communities and families provided most people with support and access to jobs while time in schools, though compulsory, was of a shorter duration and had far less, if any, impact on one's future job, at least for the vast majority of citizens.
Until the 1930s, the majority of vocations within the US were agricultural and truly small businesses. And these jobs did not require an education nor were they in any way linked to the schools. People got jobs from the people in their communities. The 1930s was the first time that most Americans lived in cities and agricultural work grew more mechanized and centralized. This was a primary cause of bread lines as many people could not feed themselves as the social safety net at that time, the family farm, was now only available to a minority of the population. The New Deal was an effort to make a new safety net for the many newly urbanized and industrialized workers.
After WWII, many unionized jobs and small businesses did begin to require a high school degree, now increasingly common as young people spent less time farming. Mandatory education was extended to 12 years after which the majority of people were hired by industries. The high school degree was something many used to distinguish themselves and the building of many public schools during the Great Depression meant it was, theoretically, possible for anyone to get a free education at a public institution. In truth, racial minorities and the poor struggled with basic access and quality. Even for these groups, there were often functioning communities that provided support for the children and youth.
The rise of neoliberal policies in the last 50 years expanded the required length of schooling to now include the BA, for the first time requiring education at a school that is not free to the public, while simultaneously reducing the number and quality of jobs available overall as well as decimating the communities that provided support for the children and youth conscripted into the system. It was easy to manufacture the consent of the many middle and working class citizens who were able to achieve a BA or advanced degree in good economic times. The system made them feel they had earned it through the long years spent on task. Few seem to notice the steep inflation of a decent job requiring 16 long years of education, four years of which are not free for jobs that no longer provided a living wage that a family could live on with dignity.
At the same time, the poor and working class sectors were getting jobs that could no longer provide a living wage and the communities they lived in were collapsing further, straining the ability of children and youth to cope with mass industrial education. The downdraft accelerated and the school to prison pipeline was born as prisons were privatized and began looking for a market. The inherently anti-democratic and authoritarian structure of public schools acculturated several generations of citizens to many mass structures, whether it is the school to prison pipeline, or the school to corporation pipeline carefully preserved by elite schools.
Compulsory attendance has created a mindset where children and youth can be easily exploited by institutions and parents are required by law to place their children into these institutions. Citizens have objected to these attacks on their freedom throughout our history but many were more complacent when a strong economy and strong communities somewhat offset the negative effects on individuals, though it is an open question whether this institutional mindset has not been a factor in the endless wars perpetuated by the military industrial complex.
It is time to get children out of the pipeline altogether and into sustainable, voluntary, community-based social settings where families can choose educational courses like we choose books in a public library. Children and youth need real communities -- not schools that attempt to "be communities" -- and a social experience that does not subject them to mass institutionalization and its supposedly necessary crowd control techniques like grading and truancy issues.
Democracy starts here, with children and young people making choices and spending time in small, social groups that are not authoritarian in structure and purpose. It is a very short journey from a prison-like school to a prison for everyone involved. Stopping that journey means transforming the very first steps so that, right from the start, the path leads somewhere else.
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