Education Justice News

In October, a North Carolina appellate court found in King v. Beaufort County Board of Ed. that the state is not required to provide an alternative education program to students given long-term suspensions while they are out of school. The plaintiff is appealing this decision. An amicus brief signed onto by more than 25 organizations, including the Education Law Center, questions the legality of depriving students of an education in a state that has declared it to be a fundamental right, and further provides a harsh critique of policies that exclude students from school and deprive them of education.

As noted in the brief, exclusionary school discipline practices "undermine students' educational opportunities, put them at greater risk for involvement with the juvenile or criminal justice systems, and yet fail to demonstrate improvements in school safety or the quality of the learning environment. Moreover, these harsh punishments are often meted out for relatively minor misbehaviors that do not threaten the safety of the school community." Furthermore, "exclusionary discipline practices disproportionately burden students of color", as well as low-income students and those with disabilities, thereby "exacerbat[ing] racial inequalities in educational achievement."

The brief goes on to state that "there are no data showing that the use of these practices reduces the likelihood of future student disruption ... Instead, disciplinary removal appears to produce negative effects on future student behavior." Finally, many of the behaviors that subject students to the possibility of being suspended, such as name calling and insulting language, can be effectively addressed though disciplinary and behavioral strategies "that actually improve school safety and school climate by helping students learn from their mistakes and develop alternative behaviors, rather than excluding them from school."

Exclusionary school discipline policies, along with policing practices, high-stakes testing, segregated education, lack of educational opportunities for students in juvenile detention, and other problematic policies, together create what has been dubbed the "School to Prison Pipeline," whereby students are pushed out of school and into the criminal justice system. Advocates around the country are adopting a variety of approaches to stem this tide, which has been described as one of the most important civil rights challenges facing our nation today.

For example, Advancement Project has helped a number of school districts, including Denver, CO, and Baltimore, MD, rewrite their discipline policies to focus on prevention measures and effective interventions designed to keep students within the learning environment and to limit their time spent outside of class. Advancement Project also partnered with the Florida State Conference NAACP and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund to organize a series of public hearings throughout the state of Florida to discuss the school discipline crisis. They then issued a report that served as a catalyst for change throughout the state.

Advancement Project just released a new report, Test, Punish, and Push Out: How "Zero Tolerance" and High Stakes Testing Funnel Youth into the School to Prison Pipeline. The report examines how punitive discipline and testing policies and practices have combined to turn many schools into hostile and alienating environments that drive youth out of school and toward the juvenile and criminal justice system. More information about Advancement Project's "Ending the Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Track" initiative is available here.

The ACLU Racial Justice Project, ACLU of Southern California, and other groups recently filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles County Probation Department and top county education officials. The suit alleges that these entities have failed to provide youth in the county's largest juvenile probation facility with basic and appropriate education. The ACLU and other groups have also pressed for legislative reform, such as improvements to the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act to ensure that youth are not incarcerated for "status offenses," such as truancy or running away from home. The ACLU has created a School to Prison Pipeline Game to educate the public about the trajectory that often lands students in jail.

The NYCLU and the ACLU recently filed a lawsuit alleging that police officers and school safety officers (SSOs) serving in the NYPD's School Safety Division have repeatedly violated students' civil rights through wrongful arrests and the excessive use of force. Addressing this same concern from another angle, the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and a number of other organizations are urging New York City to adopt the Student Safety Act. The act seeks to create transparency and accountability in police behavior in schools by requiring both the Department of Education and the New York City Police Department to provide publicly available reports on suspensions, expulsions, arrests, and any incidents involving students and school safety agents, and to disaggregate the data based on a number of student characteristics.

A number of organizations also provide direct representation to students who are suspended or expelled. The Student Rights Project of the Education Law Center provides representation in discipline cases before the NJ Commissioner of Education and NJ State Board of Education, in court, and occasionally, before a local boards of education, and also runs seminars and workshops to educate the public about school discipline. In 2007, students at NYU School of Law started the Suspension Representation Project, an advocacy group which has since been expanded to three additional New York City area law schools. The Project trains law students to represent public school students in superintendent's suspension hearings.

These examples merely scratch the surface of the work that is being done to break the school-to-prison pipeline and ensure that students are given the opportunity to learn and thrive.