Education Under Arrest: Taking America Out of Its Comfort Zone
We had to shut the cameras down for a moment. The testimony of the two New Orleans sisters, Kenyatta, 15, and Kennisha, 17, was too surreal, too emotional and too raw.
Kenyatta was involved in a fight at school that she didn't start. Because of "zero tolerance" policies adopted at their high school and many others in America, Kenyatta was handcuffed, arrested and expelled. Kennisha, who tried to break up the fight, was also expelled. Both girls are stellar students with high grade point averages.
Kenyatta and Kennisha are two of the faces and stories you'll see and hear in "Education Under Arrest," which premieres tomorrow, Tuesday, March 26, on your local PBS station.
One of every three teens arrested is arrested in school. It's a punitive system based, in large part, on "zero tolerance" policies adopted in the late 1990s after the shocking school shootings in Columbine; a system that's built a highway into prison, but barely a sidewalk out.
We took our cameras to Washington State, Louisiana, California and Missouri to meet and speak