Dissent Fall 2011:Dissent, rev.qxd 9/2/2011 1:44 PM Page 23

RE-IMAGINING EDUCATION REFORM

Criminalizing Kids The Overlooked Reason for Failing Schools

HEATHER ANN THOMPSON that public school children have paid for America’s recent embrace of the world’s most massive and punitive penal state—a vast The nation’s dropout rate reached crisis levels carceral apparatus that has wed our economy, in 2009, and test scores posted by its poorest society, and political structures to the practice public schools were also grim. Only 70 of punishment in unprecedented ways. We percent of first-year students entering must challenge the view that society’s needs America’s high schools were graduating, with can best be met by criminalizing the most a full 1.2 million students dropping out each needy and the spaces in which they live, school year. In 2009, the public school work, and learn. system reported math scores that were the worst in forty years of participation in the National Assessment of Educational Progress Although most Americans are at least vaguely test. So great was the problem of “low aware that this nation has beefed up its law- performing” schools by 2010 that the U.S. and-order apparatuses considerably over the Department of Education set up ten regional last five decades, few grasp what a dramatic advisory committees “to collect information on and destructive political and policy shift has the educational needs across the country” and actually occurred. Before the early 1970s, the President Barack Obama committed $3.5 U.S. incarceration rate was fairly unre- billion to fund schools that were doing partic- markable. Indeed, according to the U.S. ularly poorly. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Politicians and policy makers offer various Statistics, in the thirty-five years prior to 1970 explanations for the dire state of public the prison population in this country only education in America. Some blame self-inter- increased by 52,249. In the subsequent thirty- ested teacher unions for abysmal graduation five years, however, from 1970 to 2005, it rates and test scores. Others argue that deep- increased by a staggering 1,266,437, a far ening poverty rates coupled with increasing larger percentage of the total U.S. population. racial segregation have undermined school While the incarceration rate of the nation as a success. All have missed the proverbial whole rose to historic and even shocking elephant in the classroom, which is the extent levels after the 1960s, as Michelle Alexander to which the nation’s public school system has notes in her pathbreaking study The New Jim been criminalized over the last forty years. Crow, the rate for African Americans in More specifically, they have failed to reckon particular became catastrophic. Eventually one with the devastating effect that this unprece- out of every nine black men aged twenty to dented criminalization of educational spaces thirty-four would be in prison in America. has had on the ability of teachers to teach and The origins of this deeply racialized crisis students to learn. If we are truly serious about are complex, but the political backlash to the fixing our nation’s schools, and if we ever civil rights momentum of the 1960s was a hope to roll back the re-segregation and ever- central cause. As the 1960s unfolded, white deepening poverty of these same institutions, fears of black agitation both implicitly and we must first recognize the enormous price explicitly contributed to a complete overhaul

F A L L 2 0 1 1 DISSENT 23 Dissent Fall 2011:Dissent, rev.qxd 9/2/2011 1:44 PM Page 24

RE-IMAGINING EDUCATION REFORM

of this country’s criminal laws as well as its criminal justice system—either on parole, on state and federal policies governing probation, or in prison—and the over- punishment. In short, the more contested whelming majority of them came from poor urban spaces became in the 1960s, and the inner-city neighborhoods. Indeed, it mattered more they erupted in protest and outrage, the little whether one came from an urban enclave more certain were white voters that crime had of a southern state like Texas, a western state become the nation’s most pressing problem, like California, or a northeastern state like that blacks were responsible for this Pennsylvania; law-and-order rhetoric domi- breakdown of law and order, and that the way nated the political landscape and scarred the to deal with both blacks and crime was to beef social landscape of America’s inner cities. up the carceral state. Indeed, by 2010, states across the country Notably, however, at the very time the were spending as much as a billion dollars a foundation of the carceral state was first being year on their myriad new anti-crime measures, laid, namely when the Johnson administra- leaving few resources to repair the damage tion passed the Law Enforcement Assistance caused to America’s inner cities by this same Act of 1965, which earmarked historically turn to criminalization. new levels of funding for the nation’s criminal justice apparatus, the nation was not experi- encing a crime wave. Indeed, the same states Arguably, nowhere was the cost of criminal- that were clamoring most loudly to bolster the izing urban spaces higher, and its conse- criminal justice system in the mid-1960s were, quences more painfully felt, than in our according to data gathered by the federal as nation’s public school system. Even though well as state governments, experiencing the America’s school-aged children had since time lowest crime rate since 1910. immemorial engaged in fights, been disre- As the 1960s wore on, though, and not spectful to teachers, skipped classes, bullied coincidentally because the federal reporting one another, and engaged in acts of vandalism standards changed and because more money as well as other inappropriate behaviors, in was available to areas that reported high crime the late-1960s school systems began rates, the nation’s crime problem seemed even employing security staffs in order to deal with graver than it was. With whites increasingly such student conduct far more aggressively unnerved by the civil rights unrest continuing and punitively. to engulf the country, all plans to give greater Not coincidentally, the districts most eager resources to police departments, pass more to bring a police presence into city schools stringent laws, and make the punishment for were those that had also experienced an breaking those laws more punitive were upsurge of civil rights activism on the part of enthusiastically embraced. Speaking to a their students. Detroit city schools, for reporter from in 1964, one example, got their greatest influx of police taxi driver bluntly articulated the white view officers on the heels of some particularly that blacks’ civil rights desires directly under- dramatic Black Power protests in its institu- minded public safety: “[W]e have a terrific tions such as those that gripped Northern crime problem here and if you segregate High School in 1969. Atlanta city schools also [blacks], it’s easier to police them.” did not bring a law enforcement presence to As the twentieth century came to a close, its buildings until similarly volatile racial policies born of white fear of urban unrest had experiences in 1969, and, that same year, the led to the wholesale criminalization of urban state of decided it was time to pass spaces of color. Thanks to a revolution in drug specific legislation so that its educational legislation, to the enforcement of particularly facilities could hire school security officers aggressive new law-and-order policies such as and “designate any one or more of such Stop and Frisk, and to a simultaneous school security officers as a campus police overhaul of sentencing guidelines, by 2010 the officer” in order to “aid and supplement law Justice Department reported that more than enforcement agencies of the state and of the seven million Americans were trapped in the city and county.”

24 DISSENT F A L L 2 0 1 1 Dissent Fall 2011:Dissent, rev.qxd 9/2/2011 1:44 PM Page 25

RE-IMAGINING EDUCATION REFORM

Forty years later, many urban schools, ality,” and such laws operated in myriad other including those in which the civil rights urban districts as well. movement had placed so much hope, have Eventually America’s public school come to resemble penal institutions. This students in poor neighborhoods found them- hyper-criminalization of inner-city public selves in legal trouble not only for more schools and students has been fueled by a serious offenses such as bringing a weapon to growing conviction on the part of the nation’s school, but far more often for much lesser politicians and the public alike that inner-city “offenses,” such as truancy. In a number of school kids had become particularly violent. urban school districts, for instance, this age- Whereas the school children of the 1940s old student behavior can now land a student’s disrupted the classroom by running in the file on the desk of the district attorney or even halls, chewing gum, and littering, by the lead that student to be shackled with an elec- 1980s, it would seem, young people were tronic tether otherwise intended for use on more likely to rape and rob. parolees. As a fascinating piece by Barry O’Neil in Ironically, simultaneous to administrators’ the New York Times magazine has pointed out, criminalizing truancy in new ways as the however, evidence that schools were in fact twentieth century wound down—ostensibly witnessing new levels of youth violence was so that kids would spend more time in the always scant at best. Indeed, most alarmist classroom—the criminalization of other claims to that effect, it turns out, actually orig- student behaviors was leading to record rates inated in a “fundamentalist attack on public of expulsion. Of those students expelled or schools” penned by born-again Christian T. arrested for acts such as smoking, talking Cullen Davis of Ft. Worth, Texas. Remarkably, back, having a cell phone in class, or having Davis’s admittedly unscientific list of any sharp object in a backpack, an over- numerous heinous acts committed by today’s whelming number of them hadn’t yet even youth was, by the 1980s, being cited as gospel entered high school. One study of the by everyone from Secretary of Education school system revealed that William Bennett to Harvard president Derek “nearly all of the students expelled in 2008–09 Bok to surgeon general nominee Joycelyn were between the ages of 8 and 14, and the Elders to the right-wing television talk-show most common ages of the expelled students pundit Rush Limbaugh. By the 1990s, it had were 11 and 12.” become a given that the nation’s inner-city Once kicked out of school, young students youth were more violent than ever, and that then find themselves sent to various special these animalistic kids needed new forms of institutions that cities and counties have been surveillance, a new degree of punishment, and forced to set up specifically to teach kids new levels of containment. deemed too disruptive for the traditional Thanks to the soon widespread belief that classroom. According to an NBC affiliate in America’s inner-city public schools now re- Miami, Florida, for example, instead of read- quired military-like tactics to keep them safe, mitting eight-year-old Samuel Burgos to his by 2011 the school district of Philadelphia, for elementary school a full year after expelling instance, boasted “a huge security force con- him for coming to school with a toy gun, sisting of 657 personnel, including 408 School Broward Country School District chose to Police Officers and 249 School Security Offi- assign him to “a correctional school for cers.” As also reported in a January 2011 re- problem children” located in a different city port, “Zero Tolerance in Philadelphia,” the altogether. school district had formed an intimate alliance Older students in America’s urban districts with the city’s juvenile justice system in order routinely risked not only expulsion but arrest to facilitate the monitoring and censuring of as their schools increasingly embraced so- student conduct. In Texas, legislation also called “zero tolerance” policies. By the close of came to mandate that “the juvenile justice the 1990s, according to sociologists John community and the education community Hagen, Carla Shedd, and Monique Payne, not come together to help make safe schools a re- only did every single school in the nation’s

F A L L 2 0 1 1 DISSENT 25 Dissent Fall 2011:Dissent, rev.qxd 9/2/2011 1:44 PM Page 26

RE-IMAGINING EDUCATION REFORM

third largest urban center, Chicago, have I was a real criminal. . . [after that] I was police officers patrolling the hallways, but it making up every excuse not to go to school.” had also passed a loitering law “which Not going to school, either because students permitted police to arrest anyone whom they hoped to avoid the embarrassment of being suspected of being a gang member for congre- searched, or because they had been expelled gating with no apparent legal purpose.” That for having a pack of cigarettes or arrested for particular “zero tolerance” policy “resulted in doodling on a desk or texting in a math class, more than 42,000 arrests.” It also led to a clearly affected their ability to do well formal agreement between the Chicago public academically. Policy makers and politicians schools and the Chicago Police Department in alike, however, have completely ignored this which “the city police department [would] reality when they propose remedies for release to each school’s administrators on a America’s “dropout crisis” or its ever- daily basis the names of youth arrested off widening “achievement gap.” They not only campus,” which, in turn, could be “used to have missed the fact that literally tens of thou- justify school suspension and expulsion deci- sands of children across the nation have sions.” landed in jail cells instead of classrooms, but By the new millennium, organizations such they also have failed to see the high price that as the American Civil Liberties Union and the even those kids who managed to don a gradu- Education Law Project were reporting that ation gown rather than a prison jumpsuit have urban school districts such as Philadelphia’s paid for the hypercriminalization of city had a student arrest rate that “was between schools. As one student put it to criminologist three and 25 times higher than most of the Paul Hirschfield, “You’re not expected to leave other districts” in that state and, in this and this school and go to college. You’re not other states such as Florida, the overwhelming expected to do anything.” number of public school kids who were arrested had engaged in acts that even tough- on-crime prosecutors had to classify as a To be sure, a real barrier to any politicians, misdemeanor. policy makers, and even many parents being Clearly, not every child in America’s inner- willing to reckon with the steep costs of crimi- city public schools got expelled or arrested. nalizing our nation’s public schools remains All of them, however, no matter how well- the belief that school districts must work hard behaved they were or how successfully they to “keep schools safe.” Even the nation’s managed to dodge notice by school adminis- poorest inner-city parents, those who have trators or police—suffered the daily humilia- made it crystal clear that they don’t want tions, and hostile learning environments, that armed police officers in city schools and that the post-1960s criminalization ensured. No they object strongly to district-level measures student could escape the surveillance cameras that criminalize their children, fret mightily and digital security systems, and all lived in about the issue of school safety. Although the fear of being patted down, wanded, and even existence of metal detectors provides such strip searched at the whim of school police parents some level of relief that guns won’t be personnel. Without question such capricious in their child’s classroom, the price paid for and degrading treatment sapped student self- this peace of mind—that their kids feel under esteem. As one Philadelphia kid put it to a siege and themselves risk arrest for the most team studying zero tolerance policies in his benign of acts—is indeed dear. School admin- school, “It makes it seem as though they istrators must begin to find ways to keep expect us to be negative. I feel violated.” schools safe without turning them into Another explained further, “I have to go prisons. through the [metal] detector every day, Just as we all need to reassess the roots of making me feel like they don’t trust me.” Still poor school performance, so must we rethink another remarked on the treatment he endured our views on school violence in America. Not coming into his school for the first time, “I had only do our assumptions about a newly to take off my shoes and they searched me like violent youth rest on a most dubious and

26 DISSENT F A L L 2 0 1 1 Dissent Fall 2011:Dissent, rev.qxd 9/2/2011 1:44 PM Page 27

RE-IMAGINING EDUCATION REFORM

nonscientific evidentiary foundation, but so kids are “being criminalized more than their does our belief that public schools are now peers across the state for the same behaviors.” more violent than ever before. To be sure, the Notwithstanding the paucity of evidence to phenomenon of bullying has always been, indicate that today’s youth in general, and and remains, a problem in our nation’s urban youth of color in particular, should be schools—both public and private. Notably, policed to a historically and internationally however, the sort of “violence” and the types unprecedented extent, the fact that juvenile of “crimes” that the post–1970 criminalization arrest rates have soared in recent years has of public school students allegedly sought to only fueled the political call for even greater address was already on the decline when the criminalization of our nation’s public schools. most draconian policies, such as zero We as a nation, must work hard to resist tolerance, were implemented around the equating rising youth arrest rates with out-of- country, as were violence rates in society as a control youth violence and, instead, focus our whole. According to national statistics attention on the very clear connections that provided by the Curry School of Education at exist between the criminalization of public the University of Virginia, school violence is school kids and their poor academic today at a record low. So, the fact that juvenile performance. As a research report done by the expulsions and arrest rates have continued to American Psychological Association skyrocket does not indicate at all that schools concluded clearly in 2007, there is “a negative are less safe than they were decades ago. Even relationship between the use of school though school districts have become more, not suspension and expulsion and school-wide less, punitive each subsequent year of the academic achievement.” Other research shows 2000s, the data are clear: our nation’s inner- similar findings. Ultimately, these kids’ city kids are not “super predators” nor are they notable academic underachievement does not wild animals who should be tamed with stem from the fact that their teachers want tasers and long terms behind bars. decent pay and job security; it results from Not only are urban schoolchildren less being treated day in and day out as the worst prone to violence today than they were in the of the worst in society and being forced to early twentieth century, but they also do not learn not what analogies they might need to engage in more lawless behaviors than their know for the SAT, but what rules of conduct counterparts in other seemingly safer districts. might land them in jail. And while policy Indeed, when one compares data from the na- measures to fund and desegregate our nation’s tion’s poorest inner-city schools with other schools would certainly help these kids schools in the state, one finds that, although perform better than they do, unless this nation inner-city kids are far more criminalized, their is willing also to decriminalize the spaces levels of violence are in fact no higher. For ex- where inner-city kids go to learn—five days a ample, when researchers compared “School week, nine months a year, every single year of Safety Incident” data from the Philadelphia their lives from the age of five to eighteen— public schools in the 2008-2009 school year these spaces will remain deeply impoverished with like data from the rest of the state of and intensely segregated bastions of despair. Pennsylvania, they found, “The rest of the state had more than five times as many inci- Heather Ann Thompson is Associate Professor of History in dents as Philadelphia… [and yet] in Philadel- the Department of African American Studies and the phia, students were arrested for these inci- Department of History at . She is dents nearly twice as often as they were in the completing a major history of the Attica Prison uprising of rest of Pennsylvania.” Studies such as this one 1971 for Pantheon Books. Readers may contact Thompson at reveal that official ideas about violence and [email protected] safety are highly subjective and that inner-city

F A L L 2 0 1 1 DISSENT 27