Enhancing Educators' Capacity to Stop the School‐to‐Prison Pipeline

Abstract

In this article, we, a group of experts from three federally funded educational technical assistance centers housed at the American Institutes for Research, describe four ways teachers and school leaders can affect children's trajectory into and through the pipeline to prison. We then detail the competencies necessary to promote the kinds of positive interactions with children, youth, and their families that will help block the pipeline. We also describe promising approaches to enhancing those competencies and capacities among educators throughout their career continuum. Examples of successful research‐based initiatives for each approach are included. Keypoints Teachers and school administrators can affect children's trajectory into and through the pipeline to prison in at least four ways: (1) through their relationships, (2) through their attitudes and social emotional competence, (3) by contributing to the conditions for learning, and (4) through their responses to student behavior. Educator competencies to block the pipeline to prison include the ability to establish supportive and productive relationships with students and their families and the ability to model social emotional competence and integrate social emotion learning strategies/activities/programs into the academic curriculum throughout the school year, among others. Enhancing educator competencies to block the pipeline requires a holistic approach, from improving preparation to ongoing professional learning.

How Schools Encourage Incarceration: The School-to-Prison Pipeline and How It Fails Our Children

“…School, teacher-student relationships, and high expectations from educators usually have a positive impact on students, and keep them from feeling unsafe or engaging in undesired behavior (Coggshall et al 2013).…”

“…The qualitative studies serve to give a human element to the numbers, often by choosing a handful of students or teachers and interviewing them on their experience with the STPP and their opinions on how it happens and how to stop it. Oftentimes some of the most interesting results come from qualitative studies, such as the majority of teachers thinking that these harsh punishments were actually for the betterment of their own teaching efficacy (Coggshall et al 2013). These studies were generally conducted by either state or nationwide surveys, or by using data already collected by State or Federal governments.…”

“…There was not a study or data set that showed White students at disciplinary rates rivaling their Black counterparts, or proportionate to their population makeup of their schools, even when they were shown to misbehave at the same or non-significantly different rates. Common reasoning for why this is happening has been described as teachers and staff lack of knowledge of their implicit bias (Barnes, Motz, 2018) lack of sufficient teacher training and readiness (Coggshall et al 2013), labeling theory (Pesta, 2018), and perception of that punishment (Pesta, 2018).…”

“…While most articles had broad suggestions for room for improvement, such as implicit bias awareness, empathy-based training, and a removal of zero tolerance styled policies (Coggshall et al 2013, Barnes, Motz 2018, Mallett 2015, Mallett 2017, Pesta 2018, other articles focused almost exclusively on the specific moves forward that teachers, staff, administrators, and policymakers could do (Coggshall et al 2013). Mallet (2015) brings up the use of No Child Left Behind (2001) and similar movements, creating the push for standardized testing.…”

“…On top of suggesting that educators have more support for their students, a better relationship and managing healthy expectations with their students, keeping the students physically and emotionally safe, and disciplining them with a less punitive, deterrence-based approach, the authors acknowledge that there are serious challenges to these methods. Lack of funding, overcrowded classrooms, early burnout, and lack of capability from the school itself all serve to impede sweeping change in schooling, which, in order to "work effectively with at-risk children and adolescents cannot be done in piecemeal" (Coggshall, et al 2013).…”