SCHOOL TO PRISON...

This is a site to document Project NIA's efforts to end the school to prison pipeline.

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Our new research finds #LGBTQ youth of color & gender nonconforming youth are targeted by peers and administrators for harassment & harsh discipline

Read the full reports and recommendations: http://www.gsanetwork.org/pushout-report

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Freestreet Theater illustrate how youth are pushed out of school at the Pushed Out event (photo by Kelly Hayes, 10/8/14)

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Another view of the Chicago LightBrigade action at the end of Pushed Out (photo by Sean Lewis, 10/8/14)

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At the end of the Pushed Out event, our friends at the Chicago LightBrigade facilitated a light action. Most of the people carrying letters are youth who participated in and attended the event. (photo by Kelly Hayes, 10/8/14)

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Participants take part in a peace circle as part of the Pushed Out event organized by Project NIA as part of National Week of Action Against #Schoolpushout (photo by Kelly Hayes, 10/8/14)

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After a circle where we talked about what a world without high school push out might look like, students act out a conflict between a student and a teacher at ‪#‎NoToPushOut‬. (photo by Kelly Hayes, 10/8/14)

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Kuumba Lynx break down CTA hikes, school push outs, and #chicopwatch. #schoolpushout #woa2014 #projectnia (photo by Irina Zadov, 10/8/14)

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Free Street Theater acts out true stories of being harassed, suspended, and attested in school for wearing a hat, using an inhaler, and spilling milk in the cafeteria #schoolpushout #woa2014 #projectnia (photo by Irina Zadov, 10/8/14)

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by Project NIA

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by Advancement Project

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#NoSchoolPushout: Defining the School-to-Prison Pipeline

Tomorrow kicks of the 5th annual National Week of Action Against School Pushout. This year, my organization will join with youth, parents, teachers and community members in over 40 cities to resist school pushout and policing. Project NIA released a short paper this morning documenting the gains and challenges in the fight to end Chicago’s school to prison pipeline. I hope that those interested in these issues will read the paper authored by my friend, Dr. Michelle VanNatta.

I thought that I would use the occasion of the week of action to offer an introduction to the school-to-prison pipeline for those who might be new to the concept. I’ll also provide some resources for those interested in further study.

Defining the School-to-Prison Pipeline (STPP)

In an article that we wrote earlier this year, Erica Meiners and I defined the STPP in this way:

“Less a pipeline than a nexus or a swamp, the STPP is generally used to refer to interlocking sets of structural and individual relationships in which youth, primarily of color, are funneled from schools and neighborhoods into under- or unemployment and prisons.

While the US public education system has historically diverted non-white communities toward under-education, non-living wage work, participation in a permanent war economy, and/or incarceration, the development of the world’s largest prison nation over the last three decades has strengthened policy, practice, and ideological linkages between schools and prisons. Non-white, non-heterosexual, and/or non-gender conforming students are targeted for surveillance, suspended and expelled at higher rates, and are much more likely to be charged, convicted, and removed from their homes, or otherwise to receive longer sentences.”

Facts and Figures

To help provide some context for the scope and impact(s) of harsh school disciplinary policies, Project NIA created a short quiz to test your knowledge. Thanks to @cronehead and @MuffMacGuff who digitized this quiz. How do you fare?

Critique of the STPP Concept

Dr. Damien Sojoyner (2013) has challenged the concept of the school to prison pipeline. The abstract of his paper titled “Black Radicals Make for Bad Citizens: Undoing the Myth of the School to Prison Pipeline (PDF) summarizes his main argument:

“Over the past ten years, the analytic formation of the school to prison pipeline has come to dominate the lexicon and general common sense with respect to the relationship between schools and prisons in the United States. The concept and theorization that undergirds its meaning and function do not address the root causes that are central to complex dynamics between public education and prisons. This paper argues that in place of the articulation of the school to prison pipeline, what is needed is a nuanced and historicized understanding of the racialized politics pertaining to the centrality of education to Black liberation struggles. The result of such work indicates that the enclosure of public education foregrounds the expansion of the prison system and consequently, schools are not a training ground for prisons, but are the key site at which technologies of control that govern Black oppression are deemed normal and necessary.”

Others have offered other critiques of the STPP concept pointing out, for example, that we need think of the process of educational and societal marginalization as one that in fact begins from the cradle or even the womb.

Activism and Advocacy

The past decade has found increasing numbers of policy makers, advocates, academics, educators, parents, students, and organizers focusing explicitly on the relationships between education and imprisonment. A lot of organizing has happened around the issue of school pushout. The Dignity in Schools Campaign (organizers of the National Week of Action) brings together over 75 organizations across the country who are working to transform school discipline policies.

Just this week, advocates and organizers in California presided over Governor Jerry Brown’s signing of a bill to limit “school administrators’ use of an offense called “willful defiance” to suspend students in California schools.” This was the result of a long-term organizing campaign. Earlier, I referenced our newly released paper that documents some of the gains made by Chicago and Illinois organizers in the fight to interrupt the STPP.

Here are some organizations and projects advocating and organizing to end the STPP.

Teaching Youth About STPP: Curriculum Resources

We at Project NIA have developed several resources that can be used by educators and organizers to discuss the STPP with young people in particular. These resources have also been used by many people to lead discussions with adults as well. Others have also developed useful tools for teaching about the STPP.

Curriculum: Suspension Stories

Curriculum: NYCLU School-to-Prison Pipeline Workshop

Comic: School to Prison Pipeline by Rachel Marie-Crane Williams

One page comic with discussion questions: Sent Down the Drain

Find many other audio, video, etc… resources at Suspension Stories

Further Study 

Disrupting the School-to-Prison Pipeline Edited by Bahena, Cooc, Currie-Rubin, Kuttner and Ng (2012)

From Education to Incarceration: Dismantling the School-to-Prison Pipeline Edited by Nocella, Parmar and Stovall (2014)

Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys by Victor Rios (2011)

There is a list of other reading here and here.

Over the course of this next week, I will be posting information about the specific components that make up the STPP. Stay tuned!

Source: US Prison Culture

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Project NIA Releases A New White Paper About Chicago Organizing Against STPP

Project NIA releases white paper on gains and ongoing challenges in organizing to interrupt school-to-prison pipeline (STPP) & organizes a youth-led event on October 8 about the STPP

CHICAGO October 3, 2014: For the third time in five years, Project NIA is participating in the Dignity in Schools Campaign’s National Week of Action on School Pushout (October 4-11). As an organization dedicated to juvenile justice, Project NIA works diligently to interrupt school pushout, which is often described as the "school-to-prison pipeline."

In 2014, the advocacy and organizing of Project NIA and other local groups, including COFI, VOYCE, and Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law (CLC), have achieved major victories in the fight to break this pipeline.  The wins include:

1. An agreement from Chicago Public Schools to regularly provide and publish data about expulsions and suspensions

2. The passage of SB 2793, requiring all Illinois schools to collect and publish information about school discipline and to create plans for improvements when needed

3. Significant enhanced focus on restorative practices in the Chicago Public Schools Student Code of Conduct, along with increased clarity and specificity in the policy

Today, Project NIA is releasing a white paper that documents these gains and as well as some ongoing challenges in creating positive futures for Chicago’s children. Paper can be accessed here. 

Mariame Kaba, Project NIA’s founding director, said: “We and our colleagues across the city are encouraged by the progress that has been made in the past few months to increase school discipline data transparency and to revise formal policies that focused on punishment over learning. There is still much more work to do and more resources to be allocated for that work. These recent victories are just the beginning.”

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Test Your Knowledge of Chicago' School-to-Prison Pipeline

You may have already tested your national knowledge of the STPP with this quiz. We are focused on ending the STPP in our city so we've created a Chicago-specific quiz. There are 10 questions so you'll breeze through the quiz and hopefully learn something in the process.

Click HERE to take the quiz.

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Test Your Knowledge of the School-to-Prison Pipeline

Thanks to our friends @cronehead and @MuffMacGuff who digitized this quiz, you can test your knowledge about harsh school disciplinary policies and the pipeline.

Click HERE to take the quiz. Share the quiz with others.

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Welcome!

Project NIA is joining youth, parents, teachers and community members in over 40 cities across the U.S. during the National Week of Action Against School Pushout (October 4-11) "to raise awareness about the harsh school discipline policies that are pushing young people out of school, and to call on policymakers to implement more positive, effective approaches that use discipline as a teaching moment."

We will use this site to share resources and information about our work to push back against harsh disciplinary policies and policing in schools.