Address Bad Ed Policy and School-to-prison Pipeline
Can we tackle the school-to-prison pipeline without also addressing bad education policy?
According to a recent news report, the Obama Administration wants the nation’s schools to abandon “…overly zealous discipline policies” that are more likely to send students to court than to the principal’s office. The report notes that the students most vulnerable to this are not white, and not female.
In response, I would like the Obama Administration to also abandon its “overly zealous” emphasis on high stakes testing, narrowed curriculums, and loveless learning environments for our nation’s children, through the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), and its more emphatic companion, Race to the Top (RTTT).
What’s more, I would love for Obama Administration officials, such as Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, to admit that there is a clear and troublingconnection between zero tolerance discipline policies and current national education policies, especially for non-white, non-female students.
The Advancement Project, which describes itself as an “action tank” focused on pushing for a “just democracy for those left behind in America,” published a policy paper in 2010 called “Test, Punish, and Push Out: How ‘Zero Tolerance’ and High Stakes Testing Funnel Youth into the School-to-