The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan today released a comprehensive report entitled "Reclaiming Michigan’s Throwaway Kids: Students Trapped in the School-to-Prison Pipeline," which documents a trend amongst school districts to enforce severe disciplinary policies and practices that push children permanently out of the classroom without regard for the long-term impact. The school-to-prison pipeline refers to the national trend of criminalizing, rather than educating, our children.
For more information or to view the report please visit our website: ACLU of Michigan
The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan today released a comprehensive report entitled "Reclaiming Michigan’s Throwaway Kids: Students Trapped in the School-to-Prison Pipeline," which documents a trend amongst school districts to enforce severe disciplinary policies and practices that push children permanently out of the classroom without regard for the long-term impact. The school-to-prison pipeline refers to the national trend of criminalizing, rather than educating, our children.
"This report provides critical information for all those committed to improving our public schools in the state – it documents and analyzes data that shows how the frequent use of suspensions and expulsions contributes to our high drop-out rate and how those suspension practices hit black students the hardest, putting them on a high-risk path to incarceration," said Kary L. Moss, ACLU of Michigan’s executive director. "We cannot deal with the corrections budget until we deal with the ‘pipeline’ leading from the educational system to prison."
Information within the report was obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests to school districts across the state, interviews with students, parents, and educators; information obtained while providing advocacy work to students facing discipline; scholarly reports and studies; legal analyses; and information collected while providing aggrieved students with legal representation.
Through its research the ACLU found that disproportionate discipline towards African American students was apparent in the majority of the school districts examined in the study. For instance, in the Ann Arbor School District during the 2006/07 school year, black students accounted for 18 percent of a secondary school student population, but they received 58 percent of suspensions. This trend is reflected in school districts statewide.
"In school district after school district, from one end of the state to another, we found that black kids are consistently suspended in numbers that are considerably disproportionate to their representation in the various student populations," said Mark P. Fancher, ACLU of Michigan Racial Justice Project staff attorney and principal author of the report. "More alarming still are studies we examined that show that the behavior of black kids and white kids is essentially the same, and black kids are still kicked out of school proportionately more often. This is true regardless of socio-economic factors and geography."
For more information or to view the report please visit our website: http://www.aclumich.org