The School-to-Prison Pipeline: A Critical Review of the Punitive Paradigm Shift

Drivers of human development: How relationships and context shape learning and development1

“…This disengagement can contribute to poor attendance and grades in core classes, grade repetition, and discipline actions, including suspension, that can, in turn, lead to dropout and school failure (Kendziora, Osher, & Carey, 2014). Exclusionary discipline provides an example of school-created adverse effects: the use of exclusionary discipline contributes to the experience of shame, student disengagement, grade retention, dropout, and arrests (e.g., Mallett, 2015). Exclusionary discipline can negatively affect the learning, engagement, and sense of safety of students who are not suspended (e.g., Perry & Morris, 2014).…”

Developing grit : a case study of a summer camp, which empowers students with learning disabilities through the use of social-emotional learning

“…The "school to prison pipeline" is a phrase that is used to describe the trend that has been overtaking America's schools since the mid-1990's -that is, students entering the criminal justice system at younger and younger ages (Mallett, 2016). This is especially true of students with disabilities, and particularly those with learning disabilities (Mallett, 2014)..…”

“…The cost to incarcerate one prisoner is upwards of $145,000 a year, according to some estimates (Mallett, 2016). The cost to educate one student with a learning disability in a public school is around $11-12,000 a year.…”

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

“…The school-to-prison pipeline (or STPP) describes the phenomenon of the correlation between school decisions, practices, and legal actions to an increase in incarceration rates of former students later in life (McCarter 2016, Mallett 2015, Gonsoulin, Zablocki, Leone 2012, Pesta 2018. These practices escalated in the 1990s, mirroring the changes occurring in the American criminal justice system at large in the same time frame.…”

“…Another prevailing theory is that our method of standardized testing has created a culture in public schools that "teaches to the test" (Mallett 2015). By doing this, the best achieving schools are rewarded with better funding and more resources.…”