School-to-prison pipeline

Former judge Mark Ciavarella was sentenced to 28 years in federal prison for his involvement in the Kids for Cash scandal;

NEW FILM...Robert May's documentary Kids For Cash, tells the story of the Zero Tolerance scandal that rocked northeast Pennsylvania, and led to the 2011 conviction of former judge Mark Ciavarella for funneling thousands of children into for-profit prisons in exchange for kickbacks. The Nation's Stuart Klawans reviews it here.

MARCH 13th PRESS BRIEFING...A special press briefing for media around the country to discuss some ground-breaking work regarding the "school-to-prison pipeline" and inequality in school discipline.

For the past three years, a Collaborative of 26 national experts has been quietly working on a massive review of recent research that challenges virtually every notion behind the frequent use of disciplinary policies that remove students from the classroom. Such policies produce huge disparities in the treatment of students by race, gender, disability and sexual orientation and do nothing to improve educational outcomes. The Collaborative will be releasing its findings in the arenas of changing federal, state and local policy; identifying educational approaches that do work, and presenting the state of current research and next steps.

Russ Skiba, Director, The Equity Project at Indiana University
Dan Losen, Director, Center for Civil Rights Remedies, UCLA
Kavitha Mediratta, Children and Youth Program Executive, Atlantic Philanthropies
Karen Webber-Ndour, Executive Director,Office of Student Support and Safety, Baltimore City Public Schools
Ramiro Rubalcaba, Principal, Azuza High School, Azuza Unified School District

1 p.m. EDT, Thursday, March 13, 2014
Telephone call-in. Phone number is 800-747-5150, Access code is 7215631#