Project Description

Originally Published at Advancement Project. September 3, 2013

What Is The School-To-Prison-Pipeline?

We are facing a crisis. Across the country, students are being suspended, expelled, shuffled off to disciplinary alternative schools, and even arrested for minor misbehavior or trivial actions like being late or violating a dress code. Instead of a trip to a counselor or a call home, students are being handcuffed and escorted from the schoolhouse to the jailhouse and courthouse. Metal detectors, armed guards, police, and barbed wire are common in our schools while libraries and counselors’ offices are left empty.

Rather than having a common sense approach to discipline, too many schools are using overly harsh discipline policies and practices that are ineffective, unfair, and detrimental. Research shows that this zero tolerance approach does not work. It doesn’t make schools safer. Instead, this approach lowers educational outcomes, damages relationships within schools, and diverts funding from providing high quality educational experiences. These systems of discipline and prison-like environments are not preparing young people for success; they are conditioning them for a life of incarceration. All students deserve better; they deserve safe, quality schools.

Who is Caught in the Pipeline?

We are punishing students more often and more harshly based on who they are or what they look like. Across the country students of color, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students, and students with disabilities are disproportionately subjected to harsh discipline. Significantly, research shows that race matters in discipline; racial disparities are not the result of a difference in behavior but instead due to a difference in treatment.

Dismantling the School-to-Prison Pipeline necessitates we create safe, quality schools.
How Do We Do It?

Efforts led by youth and parents working with school districts and other stakeholders across the country show that we can maintain safety, boost school attendance, raise academic achievement, and improve graduation rates while reducing out-of-school suspensions, expulsions, and school-based arrests. How do we do this?
  • Listen to and collaborate with students and parents
  • Foster meaningful relationships between students and adults in schools
  • Collect, analyze, and monitor quantitative and qualitative school discipline and climate data, including by demographic subgroups
  • Explicitly address racial and other disparities in discipline
  • Provide training for teachers on classroom management, implicit bias, and cultural competence
  • Support and fund alternatives that keep students in school and on track academically
  • Fund school-based mental health professionals and counselors.
  • Adopt common sense discipline policies and practices…resist exclusionary practices

What Can You Do?

  • Share this infographic with your friends on Facebook and Twitter – Start the conversation in your community!
  • Tell your stories.
  • Learn about alternatives that support students rather than imprison them.

Download the infographic here! Don’t forget to share it on Twitter and Facebook!

School-To-Prison-Pipeline Infographic
Ending the Schoolhouse to Jailhouse track is a program of Advancement Project. Advancement Project is a next generation, multi-racial civil rights organization. Learn More >>>

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