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Friday, January 21, 2011

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Texas' school-to-prison pipeline

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Texas' school-to-prison pipeline

Texas' school-to-prison pipeline

"...the single most important predictor [of incarceration] is a history ofdisciplinary referrals at school."

Mainly minority students in Dallas and other urban school districts in Texas are increasingly being charged with Class C misdemeanors for less-serious infractions that used to be handled with a trip to the principal's office, according to a new study.

The report from the nonprofit advocacy group Texas Appleseed, a nonprofit social justice advocacy group, is titled "Texas' School-to-Prison Pipeline."The report examined student disciplinary data on 22 of the largest school districts in the state. It found that most have sharply increased the number of campus police officers - resulting in far more misdemeanor tickets being handed out to students.
"Disrupting class, using profanity, misbehaving on a school bus, student fights and truancy once