Some students are lost to the school-to-prison pipeline. Sadly, over half of our black young men who attend urban high schools do not earn a diploma. Of these dropouts, nearly 60 percent will go to prison at some point. Students who are at risk of dropping out of high school or turning to crime need more than a good report card. They need alternative suggestions on living a life that rises above their current circumstances. For a young person to truly have a shot at an honest life, there needs to be a strong belief in the value of an education and its impact on good citizenship. That belief system has to come from direct conversations about making smart choices with trusted adults and peers in addition to meaningful conversations in the classrooms. Victor Hugo's 19th century remark, "He who opens a school door closes a prison," still holds true today.
The relationship between education and incarceration was made starkly clear at Stanford's 2014 Cubberley Lecture, where actress Anna Deveare Smith brought to life the difficulties facing disadvantaged youth in American schools.
The link between a poor education and incarceration is borne out in data. Dropouts are 3.5 times more likely to be arrested than high school graduates. Nationally, 68 percent of all males in prison do not have a high school diploma. Only 20 percent of California inmates demonstrate a basic level of literacy, and the average offender reads at an eighth grade level.
Many so-called dropouts who end up in jail are actually push-outs. Under the guide of zero tolerance, initiated after Columbine, students are often asked to leave school as a first response rather than a last resort. Discriminatory practices are common.
In 2011-2012, black youth represented 16 percent of the juvenile population, but 34 percent of the students expelled from U.S. schools. Black students are three times more likely than whites to be suspended. The majority of teens in the juvenile justice system engaged in non-violent crimes such as truancy or disruptive behavior.
For most youth, jail is the beginning of the end of any hope for a productive life. An estimated two-thirds to three-fourths of incarcerated teens ultimately withdraw or drop out of high school.
Our failure to invest in education is costly for individuals and taxpayers. According to Scott Graves of the California Budget Project, California spent more than $62,000 on each prison inmate in 2014-15--almost 7 times the $9,200 it spent for each K-12 student. Over the past two decades, California spending per prisoner has increased nearly three times faster than spending per K-12 student.
The 2 million people in American prisons, 50% are African Americans. America has 1/20th of the world's population but - of the world's prisoners.
Why pay almost seven times the amount for juvenile detention as we do to educate our youth? We know what it takes to educate students well, and the cost is substantially lower than the cost of prison.
We are still wrestling with the achievement gap.
The U.S. Department of Education released student performance data in its National Assessment for Educational Progress report. The data is compiled every two years and it assesses reading and math achievements for fourth and eighth graders. This particular report also outlines differences between students based on racial and socioeconomic demographics. The data points to the places in the U.S. that still struggle with inequality in student opportunity and performance, otherwise known as the achievement gap. The achievement gap will likely always exi
