"...the single most important predictor [of incarceration] is a history ofdisciplinary referrals at school."
Mainly minority students in Dallas and other urban school districts in Texas are increasingly being charged with Class C misdemeanors for less-serious infractions that used to be handled with a trip to the principal's office, according to a new study.
The report from the nonprofit advocacy group Texas Appleseed, a nonprofit social justice advocacy group, is titled "Texas' School-to-Prison Pipeline."The report examined student disciplinary data on 22 of the largest school districts in the state. It found that most have sharply increased the number of campus police officers - resulting in far more misdemeanor tickets being handed out to students.
"Disrupting class, using profanity, misbehaving on a school bus, student fights and truancy once meant a trip to the principal's office. Today, such misbehavior results in a Class C misdemeanor ticket and a trip to court for thousands of Texas students and their families each year," the group said in the report, Texas' School-to-Prison Pipeline. (Dallas News)According to the report;
- More than 80 percent of Texas prison inmates are dropouts.
- More than a third of Texas public school students dropped out in 2005-06 [What ever happened to the "Texas Miracle"?-m.k.].
- Among the “risk factors” commonly associated with future involvement in the juvenile justice system, the single most important predictor is a history of disciplinary referrals at school.
- African American students—and to a lesser extent Hispanic students—are significantly over-represented in Texas schools' discretionary disciplinary actions.
Most of this can be attributed to the breakdown of the family structure. If parents know where their kids are and what they are doing, they are more likely to stay out of trouble. All kids do dumb things, but over and over and over is unacceptable. As a 24-year veteran school teacher and counselor, a trip to the office used to scare kids straight. They ain't scared anymore! So letting the law deal with them is the next way we try to get their attention. What happened to "if you get in trouble at school, you're gonna get it worse when you get home!" Gone are those days..... Now, even the "good" kids' parents are siding with their kids and making educating them more difficult. I had a parent, just this year, say "Mr. So-and-So has done something to my child and now my child no longer does his homework." I choked on my tongue as my eyes rolled to the back of my head and I had a near stroke!
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