School to Prison Pipeline Persuasive Speech

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Mariamawit Jembere

Mrs. Metjahic

AP English Language

Dec 08, 2016

School-to-prison pipeline

It is a dispair to know that schools in this era, mostly public schools, have a stronger connection with prison than colleges. It all starts in the classroom in which students- those that struggle with learning, those in poverty and those of color- face a system; a system that weeds them out of the society called “School-to-prison pipeline”. The establishment of the School-to-prison pipeline didn’t only fail to serve its own purpose; it had an equivalent result of trying to put off fire with gasoline. We are not only dragging this children out of the reach of knowledge and their future; we are pulling them into an irreversible state of aggression and madness, that should have been infused by hope and potential. The limitation of the students futures, which is a violations of their liberty interests, are related to the lost in-class learning time; the disproportionate negative effects on students of color, and students with educational disabilities; the increased challenges they face during and after they join the juvenile justice jail system.

Suspensions and expulsions do not address the root cause of misbehavior; instead they are related to higher rates of juvenile incarceration and lower rates of academic achievement. How do we expect a seed to grow, by depriving it water? Based on a research conducted, majority of suspensions are for minor misbehavior-including “disruptive behavior,”

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“insubordination,” or school fights-which can be interpreted in a biased ways or could have been unintentional; students have been expelled for bringing nail clippers or scissors to school. School official are well aware of this contrary result, yet they still don’t bother keeping this students out of school (or on the streets); when they could have put some effort to come up with a more effective solution to deal with this specific problems. Are they doing this on purpose-encouraging dropouts-for reasons such as not wanting to face test-based accountability regimes such as the No Child Left Behind Act ?

Students with disabilities and students of color suffer disproportionately from zero-tolerance policies and are pushed into the school-to-prison pipeline. Students with disabilities are more than twice as likely to receive suspensions than students without disabilities. This results in the student having a stained record and a higher likelihood of entering the school-to-prison pipeline. Many under-resourced schools (public schools which are most likely represented by minorities) are the main pipeline gateways, mainly because they rely on police, that have little to none training in working with youth, rather than teachers and administrators to maintain discipline. This police officers who are meant to keep the peace of the school, form an uncomfortable and uneasy environment for the students; waiting with a firearm and handcuff for a little squabble to occur.

This children-some who are even to small to fit in a handcuff-are dragged to the juvenile detentions. This juveniles-especially those who are girls-face higher risks of rape, assault, and suicide; this is neither recognized nor understood by school officials. Those who survived the months or years in the detention are then expected to join school. This period of reentry is when they need intensive academic and counseling interventions to successfully transition back to

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school. Unfortunately, students rarely receive these services; leading to the next cycle of the same process.