March 6, 2015 - 08:58
Silvi Shameti
Schools in American Cities
Issue Analysis
It is an often-mentioned fact that, among the democratic countries, the United States has the highest incarceration rate, with 2.2 million people currently in prison. In the United States, 65 million people hold some kind of criminal record, which comes out to more than a quarter of the adult population (Singer). Unfortunately, many people end up on the path to prison as juveniles by way of the “school-to-prison pipeline.” Several factors contribute to this phenomenon, including racism, poverty, learning ability, the sentencing system that has been set up by mandatory minimums, and the fact that schools are adopting disciplinary procedures that have turned the school environment into one that increasingly resembles that of a correctional facility.
Bakari Kitwana writes in “Race War: Policing, Incarceration, and the Containment of Black Youth” that, at the time it was written, “approximately one-third of all black males age 20-29 [were] incarcerated, or on probation, or on parole” (296). An article by a team of Al Jazeera reporters in 2014 found that “an estimated 250,000s youth are tried, sentenced or incarcerated as adults every year in America.” In addition, it was discovered that “nationally, black students are more than three times as likely to be suspended or expelled as their white peers” and that black secondary school students have been getting suspended at a rate 11 times higher than that of their white peers since the 1970s. A student’s chance of graduating changes radically if they experience a suspension in the 9th grade, dropping from 75% to 50%, and therefore making it twice as likely for that student to drop out of school entirely (The Al Jazeera America Tonight Digital Team). But suspensions can begin even earlier than that; in a Washington Post article, Tunette Powell, a black mother of two preschool-aged boys, wrote that her sons had already been suspended 8 times. In an Al Jazeera article describing a school in Wake County, North Carolina, the supervising attorney at Advocates for Children’s Services - a project of Legal Aid of North Carolina - Jason Langberg, found that “40 percent of black students in Wake County schools caught with cell phones were suspended last year, while only 17 percent of white students were suspended for the same offense” and went on to say, “We see differences in disability, race, class. Students doing the exact same things are often treated differently.” Langberg stated that although black students are given suspensions more often and given more harsh suspensions, there is no proof or evidence that black students behave more severely than their white peers (The Al Jazeera America Tonight Digital Team).
It is clear not only from these numbers, but from listening to the experiences of students who are subject to this system, that there has developed both an increase in the amount of school suspensions and a clear racial bias against which students are more likely to receive them. The issue of race, however, also intersects with class and learning ability; many students in urban education experience poverty and attend schools with fewer resources and funding, which leads to environments that are not conducive to promoting individualized attention and lead students to be over-diagnosed with learning disabilities. Because urban education is so racially segregated, with many “minority” students attending school with other minority students, and many white students attending class with other white students, it is typically minority students that receive these unnecessary diagnoses. These diagnoses then follow students throughout the course of their academic career and may cause even more shortfalls in achievement by either not providing the resources necessary to accommodate the learning “disability” or by placing the student in a class not suited to their needs if the “disability” was not properly diagnosed. Urban schools that provide services to minority students are often in neighborhoods that house lower-income families, which means that schools receive less funding from property taxes and therefore less overall funding. Schools with less resources may have over-crowded classrooms, over-worked teachers, and lead to an environment where classroom management becomes a top priority for educators - even more so than learning and curriculum development - so that students who do not immediately display the established “correct” behavior are forced out of classrooms or punished for their incongruencies. In “The Trouble with Black Boys,” Pedro A. Noguera writes, “Consistent with the way we approach crime in society, the assumption is that safety and order can be achieved by removing ‘bad’ individuals and keeping them away from others who are presumed to be ‘good’ and law abiding. Not surprisingly, those most frequently targeted for punishment in school often look—in terms of race, gender, and socioeconomic status—a lot like smaller versions of the adults who are most likely to be targeted for incarceration in society (Singer, 1996)” (114).
Schools are increasingly developing policies and procedures that are pushing them towards looking more and more like correctional facilities by introducing security guards - sometimes armed with weapons like batons or a taser - metal detectors, and “zero tolerance” or “three strikes” policies. Even though these procedures don’t actually ensure student attendance inside the classrooms, they certainly may make students feel as though they are constantly on the precipice of getting into some kind of trouble that could lead to a suspension, expulsion, or even an arrest. In a larger context, sentencing laws like mandatory minimums, in which “anyone convicted of selling more than two ounces of cocaine, heroin, or other controlled substances - or possessing more than four ounces - be sentenced to a minimum of fifteen years in prison” (in New York, for example), make it very easy to put even a juvenile in jail for a very long time, without considering the circumstances that led the person to come into contact with that kind of material. This is also true of “zero tolerance” policies, in which schools may suspend or expel students based on an infraction of the school disciplinary code without taking into account the context of the incident or other extenuating circumstances. Oftentimes the students who receive these punishments are those most in need of extra attention, care, and compassion, but unfortunately end up falling through the cracks in the system. Noguera writes, “Throughout the United States schools most frequently punish the students who have the greatest academic, social, economic, and emotional needs (Johnson, Boyden, &. Pittz, 2001)” (113).
Noguera also writes that students who “act out” could be doing so as part of a self-fulfilling prophecy, in which students who identify with a certain race, ethnic background, socioeconomic class, etc., are seen by teachers as dangerous, threatening, or low-achieving and therefore begin to adhere to those expectations. Students in these school environments may also feel as though their future isn’t headed towards a productive place; they may not feel as though school is giving them the resources to go on to college or to find a job with which to support themselves. If students don’t feel as though school is going to improve their economic situation, serve as a tool to help bring them out of poverty, or even challenge them intellectually, they become not only disengaged from the environment but rightfully angry with it and may choose to reject the institution as a whole.
Although the school-to-prison pipeline is a situation rooted in several deep societal issues that come together to create this phenomenon, there are still educators and students that are working to fight against it. There are several different strategies that teachers can take in order to provide their students with a path that offers opportunities for intellectual and economic success. One of the most important things teachers can do is recognize their student as a human being - which may sound basic and patronizing, but it is important to remember that students do not come into a classroom as a blank slate, and may not automatically buy into the way the educational system has been laid out for them. Students’ identities are made up of so many different components; their racial or ethnic background, the neighborhood they live in, the way they’ve been brought up, what they’ve learned from interacting with the world, their own personal interests and self-perception, etc. Because of this, teachers need to maintain culturally relevant methods of pedagogy and curriculum. Having culturally relevant curriculum in classrooms not only engages students in a way that is meaningfully but can also affirm their own culture and allow them to explore it in more depth. Students that can attach meaning to their education are more likely to want to engage with it and may be less likely to stop schooling early. This includes having open channels of discussion around issues that students may be dealing with outside of the classroom, and recognizing that school, while a large part of their lives, is still only one part of it.
In addition to this, teachers must recognize the potential of their students and not fall back on stereotypes or use any one part of their identity to define them as a whole. Students are aware of what teachers think of their capabilities, and a teacher that allows students to slip by is actually doing more harm than good. Educators have the job of guiding students to find their own motivation for participating fully in school.
Teachers should also be consistently examining their own beliefs and practices to make sure they are doing all they can in order to provide students with the tools they need. Being an educator does place one in the middle of a large institution that has existed for centuries and will (maybe?) continue to exist, but one has to find their own power and agency within the institution in order to fulfill one’s responsibilities as an educator (and, I think, the process of working out what one’s responsibilities are is also an ongoing process). By being a resource to students, and involving one fully in what that means, educators can be effective in helping to stem the flow of the school-to-prison pipeline.
References:
"The School-to-prison Pipeline: By the Numbers | Al Jazeera America." The School-to-prison Pipeline: By the Numbers | Al Jazeera America. Al Jazeera America, 23 Jan. 2014. Web. 06 Mar. 2015. <http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/america-tonight/america-tonight-blog/2014/1/23/school-to-prisonpipelineblackstudents.html>.
"Why Many Inner City Schools Function Like Prisons." Singer, Alan. The Huffington Post, 16 Oct. 2014. Web. 06 Mar. 2015. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-singer/why-many-inner-city-schoo_b_5993626.html>.
"The School-to-Prison Pipeline Can Start Even Before Kindergarten, Mother Points Out." Klein, Rebecca. The Huffington Post, 28 Jul. 2014. Web. 06 Mar. 2015. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/28/racist-preschool-suspensions_n_5627160.html>.
Nogeura, Pedro A. "The Trouble With Black Boys: And Other Reflections on Race, Equity, and the Future of Public Education."
Kitwana, Bakari. “Race War: Policing, Incarceration, and the Containment of Black Youth."