School To Prison Pipeline Research Paper

The school-to-prison pipeline opens up unwanted doors of hazardous opportunities for students, specifically students of color and with disabilities. African Americans students are 3.5 more likely to be suspended or expelled than their white classmates (Elias 40). While students with disabilities make up 8.6 percent of public schools, they also make up approximately 32 percent of the youth in juvenile detention centers (Elias 40). Why is this epidemic of nonsense, not on national news headlines? The majority of students included in the statistics mentioned above, will also be a part of the 2.2 million African Americans sitting in prison. Presenting students with such an extreme disciplinary action such as the “zero-tolerance” policy comes with

Could you conceptualize how much mental damage is done to the elementary school student? Children are beginning to learn the concepts of all the rules and distinguishing what is appropriate and what is not, yet there are policies set up to where the child has no room for mistakes and to learn from them. There are various ways of disciplining a child that does not involve suspension nor does it involve arresting them. Students are being mentally and emotionally impaired by the school-to-prison pipeline. With all that has been said, this is only the beginning of the long list of problems with the zero-tolerance policy. How early this trend of “suspensions” begin could also affect students. According to an article, nearly 48 percent of African American children are suspended more than once while in preschool (justicepolicy.org). Suspension in preschool for one should not even be a part of their disciplinary action. Secondly, America has totally diminished the whole purpose of the

Also, stripping a young child of their education, especially at this age is detrimental to their future. Adding on, it also has become a problem when the children who are introduced into the school-to-prison pipeline is more likely to drop out. Exposing students to the school-to-prison pipeline slowly blurs out the ideas of a promising future such as fulfilling the goal of graduating. Students who are suspended or arrested through the zero-tolerance policy are twice as likely to drop out of school (justicepolicy.org). This should not be the case; the goal should always be to lower or prevent the rise of dropout rates. With this policy and ones similar to it, America is taking several steps back in which it should be some