Final Podcast

Chrissy Baker, a fourth-year English student at the University of Virginia, discusses the school-to-prison pipeline in her podcast. She explains that this phenomenon pushes at-risk children out of classrooms and into the criminal justice system. She traces the origins of this issue to policies implemented after the War on Drugs, such as zero-tolerance policies, which disproportionately affect minority students. Chrissy highlights real-life examples of injustices faced by students, including unfair suspensions and disciplinary hearings. She emphasizes the negative consequences of these practices, such as increased contact with the juvenile justice system and higher drop-out rates. Chrissy mentions advocates like Mark Warren, who fight for educational reform and equity, and suggests solutions like restorative justice techniques and re-evaluating special education placement. She concludes by urging listeners to raise awareness and take action against the school-to-prison pipeline. Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining me on this podcast. My name is Chrissy Baker, and I'm currently a fourth-year student studying English at the University of Virginia. I'm recording this in the lovely Charlottesville, Virginia, on December 12, 2023. Today, I want to focus your attention on a problem that has been plaguing our minority youth for decades, the school-to-prison pipeline. Before we jump into this, I wanted first to say that although this is something that I'm incredibly passionate about and advocate against, I'm privileged never to have experienced this or been subjected to the injustices of America's public school system. This podcast will analyze the causes, consequences, and possible solutions to this phenomenon. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, or the ACLU, the school-to-prison pipeline refers to the policies and practices that push our nation's school children, especially our most at-risk children, out of classrooms and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems. But how did our country get to the point where we are prioritizing incarceration over education? The effects of racial disparities within discipline began to increase after Reagan's administration and the War on Drugs as he pushed against violence and drugs within schools, as well as on the streets. Subsequent laws passed in the years following, like the Gun-Free Schools Act that required schools to suspend students who brought firearms onto school property for a year, continued to increase the achievement gap, and increasingly had a negative impact on minorities. As schools across the country began to implement zero-tolerance policies in order to receive full federal funding, the racial disparities within discipline continued to rise. By the start of the school year in 1999, all public schools had implemented zero-tolerance policies. These policies were created to stop and prevent violence from happening in schools, yet zero-tolerance policies have negatively impacted the delicate equilibrium between the educational and juvenile justice systems. The increased use of and reliance on approaches such as security technology, school resource officers, and profiling has had an adverse effect, particularly on Black boys and other minority, poor, and non-gender conforming students. Although giving a glimpse of how we have arrived at this point is crucial, you all would better understand the severity of this issue if I gave some examples of real injustices that students have faced. While researching, I was shocked to come across a story of a middle schooler receiving a four-month suspension from my own hometown. An NBC article titled, In States with Few Legal Protections, Students Say They've Been Unfairly Punished at School, Xavier Dixon, a Virginia Beach middle school student, was accused of threatening a classmate with a phenomic weapon outside of his home. The hearing examiner declined to take into account the fact that the weapon was actually a clear plastic toy, and Dixon's lawyer alleged that the examiner had been in a rush and decided not to view a video of the incident, choosing to look at photographs instead. In the same article, another instance of injustice of another Black male student, Corey Jones, Jr., was accused of bringing marijuana to school and forced to spend two months of his senior year in in-school suspension, waiting for his disciplinary hearing. At the time of the accusation, Jones insisted that the drugs weren't his and the police even charged someone else. Yet, according to Jones and his father, the school denied them access to the investigative report that they claimed proved he was guilty and denied them access to a lawyer once the school ordered Jones to spend 45 days at an alternative school. There are countless stories like Xavier and Corey, where our school systems are failing the students who need support from them the most. Students like Xavier and Corey decided they would rather be homeschooled or finish their degree online than return to their friends and their campus and face the unfair discipline that was placed upon them. Unfortunately, this is not an option for everyone, and I think it's important to recognize the greater implications of unfair disciplinary practices on marginalized students. The increased dependence on more severe consequences in response to students' behavior has also resulted in an increase in referrals to the juvenile justice system for infractions that were once handled in school. Statistics show the consequences and negative implications of zero tolerance policies. According to the ACLU, Black students are suspended and expelled three times more than white students, and those students suspended or expelled for a disciplinary violation are also nearly three times more likely to have contact with the juvenile justice system the following year. Suspension and expulsion not only lead to lower academic performance, but also doubles their likelihood that the student will drop out of school. The increase of incrimination of minority students and the racial disparities that lie within our school systems have been noticed not only by parents, students, but also federally during the Obama administration. Mark Warren, a sociologist and advocate, has written many articles and books that serve to educate the greater population on the injustices within our school systems. He is currently fighting for educational reform and equity while giving parents, educators, and communities the tools to create the change that is needed to better protect and support our minority students. In his recent book, Willful Defiance, the Movement to Dismantle the School-to-Prison Pipeline, Mark explores organizational processes in Mississippi, Los Angeles, and Chicago, demonstrating how parents and students of color successfully altered exclusionary discipline policies while addressing the policing practices that funnel students into the juvenile and criminal justice systems. In a journal article titled Developing the School-to-Prison Pipeline, Dewitt Scott outlines a few solutions to factors that contribute to the pipeline, such as schools implementing restorative justice techniques as an alternative to removing students from the educational settings based on behavior. He also highlights that for years, researchers have stated that schools should re-evaluate the process of placing students in a special education as minority students are put on special education tracks not because of intelligence or ability, rather challenges that are identified as soft disability categories that are much more subjective and interpreted differently across states. I want to conclude this podcast by sharing some findings that I discovered while interviewing students at the University of Virginia who all attended public high schools. In almost all of the interviews I conducted, students could not accurately describe what the school-to-prison pipeline is. The lack of awareness and the privilege that many students have is not an excuse that justifies the harmful consequences disparities within school discipline have on our minority students. As a future educator, educational equity is so important to me and I hope that this podcast lights a fire beneath you to educate others and fight back against this incredibly important issue. Thank you for joining me today.