WEBVTT - The School to Prison Pipeline 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:06.000 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:13.560 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:13.600 --> 0:00:16.000 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And 0:00:16.280 --> 0:00:19.079 today we have a topic that some of you listening 0:00:19.800 --> 0:00:22.400 might uh might might have just read the title about 0:00:22.400 --> 0:00:24.400 the school to prison pipeline, and you might be a 0:00:24.400 --> 0:00:27.640 little a little cautious about it. But but trust us, 0:00:28.000 --> 0:00:31.440 this is a fascinating topic and it ties directly into 0:00:31.920 --> 0:00:35.360 our subsequent topic that will publish next week. That's right, 0:00:35.400 --> 0:00:37.800 we are taking a closer look at racial biases and 0:00:37.880 --> 0:00:40.400 how it shapes society. And in order to get into 0:00:40.400 --> 0:00:43.279 the mindset of today's show, let's all sort of do 0:00:43.560 --> 0:00:47.840 a little pretend imagination thing here. Imagine that you're lining 0:00:47.880 --> 0:00:51.360 up with other students and about twenty steps in front 0:00:51.400 --> 0:00:54.160 of you, someone is holding a dollar bill. But it's 0:00:54.160 --> 0:00:56.080 not just any dollar bill. I mean, this is the 0:00:56.120 --> 0:00:59.200 brass ring. This is the thing that's going to to 0:00:59.520 --> 0:01:02.280 determine and who you're going to marry, what sort of 0:01:02.400 --> 0:01:05.520 job you're going to take, um, what sort of overall 0:01:05.600 --> 0:01:09.880 wealth you're going to amass, what your own healthcare um 0:01:10.040 --> 0:01:15.280 access will be, and the level of your well being. Okay, 0:01:15.440 --> 0:01:17.720 it just determines where you're going to be in life. 0:01:17.720 --> 0:01:20.319 This dollar bill, So it's a really important dollar bill. Okay, 0:01:20.319 --> 0:01:23.000 that's why everybody is lining up for it, all these students. Now, 0:01:23.440 --> 0:01:27.560 imagine that before you can step forward, you discover that 0:01:27.600 --> 0:01:31.800 you have been scooted back about five steps because you 0:01:31.920 --> 0:01:35.160 live and say a poor community where you have little 0:01:35.280 --> 0:01:39.840 or no access to educational resources. Now imagine you look 0:01:39.880 --> 0:01:41.920 down and your skin is not white, but it is 0:01:42.160 --> 0:01:46.800 of color. Now you have been scooted back another five 0:01:47.319 --> 0:01:51.800 steps because statistically, the experience you have in school is 0:01:51.840 --> 0:01:54.840 going to be different from the white kid who is 0:01:54.880 --> 0:01:59.160 now ten steps in front of you. So when you 0:01:59.280 --> 0:02:03.160 hear ready set go, who do you think is going 0:02:03.200 --> 0:02:05.920 to get to that dollar bill first, that brass ring, 0:02:06.640 --> 0:02:08.880 It's going to be the white kids. It's the white kid. 0:02:08.960 --> 0:02:12.480 And unfortunately, um, that analogy is the reality of the 0:02:12.720 --> 0:02:17.320 education system today in the United States. And uh, that 0:02:17.480 --> 0:02:23.200 is setting up some some very serious ramifications for what's 0:02:23.240 --> 0:02:26.760 happening with students success. And in some ways you might 0:02:26.800 --> 0:02:29.400 even say that it determines who is going to go 0:02:29.440 --> 0:02:31.680 on to college and who is going to go on 0:02:31.760 --> 0:02:36.000 to say maybe even a life of crime and poverty. Indeed, 0:02:36.040 --> 0:02:38.680 and to and to reference the title of the podcast, 0:02:38.680 --> 0:02:42.799 to prison into directly into the prison system. Uh. And 0:02:43.120 --> 0:02:45.080 in the course of the United States, it goes without saying, 0:02:45.080 --> 0:02:48.480 we have quite a prison system. As of two thousand fourteen, 0:02:48.560 --> 0:02:51.200 US prisons contain an all time high of two point 0:02:51.280 --> 0:02:54.919 four million people that, by the way, exceeds the population's 0:02:55.320 --> 0:03:00.200 entire populations of such countries as Cutter, Nambia, and Iceland. Yeah, 0:03:00.240 --> 0:03:03.640 that's right. The US has close to twenty five percent 0:03:03.800 --> 0:03:07.679 of the world's prisoners, even though the U s accounts 0:03:07.720 --> 0:03:12.280 for only five percent of the world's populations. And some 0:03:12.360 --> 0:03:16.440 point to the war on drugs as uh, one of 0:03:16.480 --> 0:03:20.000 the reasons why the US prison population is so high. 0:03:20.080 --> 0:03:24.720 On September and the end of the most recent fiscal 0:03:24.800 --> 0:03:29.639 year for which federal offense data were available, eight thousand, 0:03:29.680 --> 0:03:32.760 two hundred inmates we're talking about fifty one of the 0:03:32.800 --> 0:03:37.800 federal prison population were imprisoned for possession, trafficking, or other 0:03:37.880 --> 0:03:41.680 drug crimes. Yeah. And in fact, in the federal prison system, 0:03:41.720 --> 0:03:44.160 more than half of those sentenced to stints of a 0:03:44.240 --> 0:03:47.840 year or longer are are still there for drug crimes. 0:03:47.840 --> 0:03:51.080 So yeah, now keep in mind that more than fifty 0:03:51.560 --> 0:03:55.760 of the US prisoners are black and Hispanic. And when 0:03:55.760 --> 0:04:01.240 you look again at possession, trafficking other drug crimes, now 0:04:01.320 --> 0:04:06.720 consider that about fourteen million white people report using illicit 0:04:06.800 --> 0:04:12.480 drug as opposed to only two point six million African Americans, 0:04:13.640 --> 0:04:17.520 and so there are five times as many whites using 0:04:17.600 --> 0:04:20.280 drugs as African Americans. Yet African Americans are sent to 0:04:20.320 --> 0:04:24.960 prison for drug offenses at ten times the rate of whites. 0:04:25.600 --> 0:04:27.800 And what you begin to see emerge here is this 0:04:28.080 --> 0:04:35.480 the story of inequality, um, and not just circumstance. Indeed, 0:04:35.520 --> 0:04:37.480 I mean it's it's the same laws are on the books, 0:04:37.480 --> 0:04:41.320 but it's almost like there are two separate books of laws. Um. 0:04:41.320 --> 0:04:43.920 Here are just a couple of more factoids that come, 0:04:44.000 --> 0:04:47.520 figures that come to us from then double a cp um. 0:04:47.640 --> 0:04:51.120 African Americans now constitute nearly one million of that total 0:04:51.120 --> 0:04:55.360 incarcerated population that we mentioned. African Americans are incarcerated at 0:04:55.400 --> 0:04:58.359 nearly six times the rate of whites, and one in 0:04:58.440 --> 0:05:01.719 one hundred African American women are in prison. So what 0:05:01.800 --> 0:05:04.320 if we told you that the cards had been stacked 0:05:04.400 --> 0:05:07.599 against this particular prison population from the get go, and 0:05:07.680 --> 0:05:11.040 a lot of it had to do with education. Well, 0:05:11.080 --> 0:05:13.760 you might look at Brown versus the Board of Education 0:05:13.800 --> 0:05:16.640 and say, how can that be? That's right? Now, just 0:05:16.680 --> 0:05:19.280 to refresh Brown versus Board of Education, we're talking about 0:05:19.279 --> 0:05:22.800 the landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the 0:05:22.839 --> 0:05:27.080 court declared state laws establishing separate separate public schools for 0:05:27.120 --> 0:05:31.320 black and white students to be unconstitutional. Um, of course, 0:05:31.320 --> 0:05:34.000 it would be a number of years before all segregated 0:05:34.000 --> 0:05:39.280 school systems were desegregated. But this was responsible that this 0:05:39.520 --> 0:05:44.200 Brown and Brown two were responsible for getting the process underway. Right. 0:05:44.240 --> 0:05:46.039 This was and this is a moment in time that 0:05:46.080 --> 0:05:48.040 we still look back to and say, this is when 0:05:48.440 --> 0:05:52.600 the playing field at least is supposedly leveling out right. 0:05:52.720 --> 0:05:55.520 Chief Justice Earl Warren had said, quote, in these days, 0:05:55.560 --> 0:05:59.400 it's doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to 0:05:59.440 --> 0:06:01.960 succeed in life if he has denied the opportunities of 0:06:01.960 --> 0:06:05.880 an education. Such an opportunity where the state has undertaken 0:06:05.920 --> 0:06:08.039 to provide it is a right that must be made 0:06:08.080 --> 0:06:11.880 available on equal terms. Now. In a two thousand and 0:06:11.920 --> 0:06:15.880 fourteen interview with The New York Times, Daniel J. Loison, 0:06:15.960 --> 0:06:18.000 who is the director of the Center for Civil Rights 0:06:18.040 --> 0:06:22.239 Remedies at the University of California at Los Angeles Civil 0:06:22.360 --> 0:06:25.680 Rights Project said, quote, we here, we are sixty years 0:06:26.240 --> 0:06:29.359 after Brown versus Board of Education, and the data altogether 0:06:29.480 --> 0:06:35.160 still show a picture of gross inequity and educational opportunity. 0:06:35.279 --> 0:06:39.000 So the bottom line is still separate and still unequal. 0:06:39.279 --> 0:06:43.240 Even though we sort of dismantled this machine um of segregation, 0:06:43.640 --> 0:06:47.040 we end up rebuilding the machine. And uh and and 0:06:47.240 --> 0:06:50.160 and in the end, the machine does kind of what 0:06:50.200 --> 0:06:53.880 it did before. It's it's heartbreaking stuff. But we're gonna 0:06:53.920 --> 0:06:57.520 we're gonna break down exactly how all of this works. Yeah, 0:06:57.520 --> 0:07:01.960 and today's episode is ultimately about breakdown and failure, failure 0:07:02.000 --> 0:07:04.760 of a society to recognize its systems in place are 0:07:04.800 --> 0:07:09.600 so flawed that it's created this insidious atmosphere that is 0:07:09.720 --> 0:07:13.360 tantamount to a trap for a large segment of the population. 0:07:13.760 --> 0:07:16.400 And again, this is what we're calling the school to 0:07:16.480 --> 0:07:19.720 prison pipeline. And although we won't be able to cover 0:07:19.920 --> 0:07:23.600 this idea in its entirety, because it's really vast and 0:07:23.600 --> 0:07:27.880 it's really complicated, we do intend to discuss aspects of 0:07:27.960 --> 0:07:32.120 this acute inequality and education. And one that has created 0:07:32.160 --> 0:07:38.040 this metaphorical pipeline to crime and poverty. Yeah, and again 0:07:38.080 --> 0:07:40.600 it comes back to just like the basic idea of 0:07:40.640 --> 0:07:43.960 what school should be. Right, But the school is the 0:07:44.040 --> 0:07:46.320 launching pad for the rest of your life. It's it's 0:07:46.360 --> 0:07:49.960 your your education, your forming the tools that you're gonna 0:07:50.000 --> 0:07:53.200 need to succeed and uh and and setting setting the 0:07:53.240 --> 0:07:55.520 baseline for for what you're going to be as an 0:07:55.560 --> 0:07:58.880 adult in society. Yeah, and school is one of those 0:07:58.880 --> 0:08:03.480 things that everybody had as these robust, great utopian ideas 0:08:03.760 --> 0:08:07.280 of what it can be and should be. But when 0:08:07.480 --> 0:08:10.080 the you know, the rubber meets the road, the fact 0:08:10.080 --> 0:08:12.200 of the matter is it's just not living up to 0:08:12.280 --> 0:08:14.800 a lot of ideals. And the reason we know that 0:08:14.920 --> 0:08:18.360 is that we finally have data because last year the 0:08:18.400 --> 0:08:21.920 Department of Education Office for Civil Rights conducted the first 0:08:22.000 --> 0:08:26.840 analysis in fifteen years of the US public schools and 0:08:26.880 --> 0:08:31.920 they found startling inequities. We're talking about nine seven thousand 0:08:32.000 --> 0:08:36.960 schools representing forty nine million students. Now, if you are 0:08:37.160 --> 0:08:40.280 a white kid, if you are a Caucasian kid, you 0:08:40.360 --> 0:08:43.760 are probably going to get these offerings. In fact, seventy 0:08:43.800 --> 0:08:46.960 percent of white kids get these offerings. A full range 0:08:47.000 --> 0:08:54.439 of math and science courses including algebra, biology, calculus, chemistry, geometry, 0:08:54.720 --> 0:08:59.320 and physics. And this really sets those students up for 0:08:59.720 --> 0:09:03.640 a the robust future, right because all of those classes, 0:09:04.080 --> 0:09:07.480 in particular the science classes are going to lend themselves 0:09:07.520 --> 0:09:11.520 to higher scores on s A t um tests and 0:09:11.600 --> 0:09:13.280 it's also going to set them up for a career 0:09:13.360 --> 0:09:18.760 in STEM. Right then the sciences, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Yeah, 0:09:18.760 --> 0:09:22.200 those those key STEM classes that that are so important, 0:09:22.280 --> 0:09:24.959 especially if you're you're looking to enter a pipeline into 0:09:25.040 --> 0:09:30.560 a career, uh in in some sort of STEM discipline. Alright, So, 0:09:30.960 --> 0:09:33.959 like you said, seventy of white students attend to classes 0:09:33.960 --> 0:09:36.440 with this full full range of these math and science courses. 0:09:36.559 --> 0:09:39.880 How does that break down for Black and Latino kids. Well, 0:09:40.400 --> 0:09:44.040 according to the to the fifteen year study, slightly more 0:09:44.320 --> 0:09:46.760 than half of all Black students have access to the 0:09:46.760 --> 0:09:49.400 full range of math and science courses. Slightly more than 0:09:49.480 --> 0:09:53.839 two thirds of Latinos have access and uh and then 0:09:53.840 --> 0:09:57.400 if you look to Native American Native Alaskan students, less 0:09:57.400 --> 0:10:00.280 than half of them are able to enroll in the 0:10:00.360 --> 0:10:02.720 in the sort of high level math and science courses 0:10:02.920 --> 0:10:08.480 that again, are available to the white student population. Now, 0:10:08.480 --> 0:10:11.520 the survey found that in terms of access to seasoned 0:10:11.600 --> 0:10:16.280 teachers for kids of colors, that Black, Latino, American, Indian, 0:10:16.440 --> 0:10:19.640 and Native Alaskan students are three times as likely as 0:10:19.679 --> 0:10:23.880 white students to attend schools with higher concentrations of first 0:10:24.200 --> 0:10:28.600 year teachers, and Black students are more than four times 0:10:28.600 --> 0:10:32.200 as likely as white students to attend schools where one 0:10:32.280 --> 0:10:35.960 out of every five teachers does not meet all state 0:10:36.080 --> 0:10:41.240 teaching requirements, and for Latino students there twice as likely. Now, 0:10:41.640 --> 0:10:43.800 one other statistic in here we're gonna throw at you 0:10:43.960 --> 0:10:47.320 is that the teacher salary gap between high schools with 0:10:47.360 --> 0:10:51.400 the highest concentrations of Black and Latino students and those 0:10:51.480 --> 0:10:54.880 with the lowest is more than five thousand dollars a year, 0:10:55.120 --> 0:10:59.640 meaning the incentive is not there for seasons teachers really 0:10:59.720 --> 0:11:02.640 qualified teachers to go to the schools that need the most. 0:11:03.080 --> 0:11:05.280 So the end result here, I mean it's pretty staggerant 0:11:05.280 --> 0:11:08.080 because basically you were talking about a situation where students 0:11:08.080 --> 0:11:11.480 of color simply do not have the same access two 0:11:11.480 --> 0:11:14.600 STEM classes that pave the way for a STEM career 0:11:14.720 --> 0:11:19.079 in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and you typically have new 0:11:19.240 --> 0:11:24.240 inexperienced teachers tackling low income in African American schools, the 0:11:23.920 --> 0:11:27.440 the the the very teaching environments where you ideally would 0:11:27.480 --> 0:11:31.800 want to have an experienced educator, someone with the necessary 0:11:31.840 --> 0:11:37.200 tools to tackle the students and uh and and engage them. Um. 0:11:37.240 --> 0:11:41.120 And this is what Daniel J. Lowson calls a gross 0:11:41.160 --> 0:11:43.920 inequity and educational opportunity. And I think there's there's no 0:11:44.440 --> 0:11:47.920 there's no more succinct way to say it. Um, Like 0:11:47.960 --> 0:11:51.440 the the deck is stacked, and you can get into 0:11:51.440 --> 0:11:55.360 a very long discussion about how that deck comes to 0:11:55.440 --> 0:11:58.200 be so stacked, how much of it is intentional, how 0:11:58.320 --> 0:12:00.680 much of it is accident, how much of it just 0:12:00.760 --> 0:12:04.880 comes of building this current educational machines, current school to 0:12:04.920 --> 0:12:09.040 prison pipeline without really looking at it for fifteen years. Yeah, 0:12:09.120 --> 0:12:11.800 because if you think about it, those first year teachers 0:12:11.840 --> 0:12:15.800 are not just inexperienced, it's it's that they they've lacked 0:12:15.880 --> 0:12:20.280 all of the additional courses that teachers get throughout their career. 0:12:20.400 --> 0:12:23.480 So if you're a teacher with fifteen years experience, it's 0:12:23.520 --> 0:12:25.920 not just that you've been teaching for fifteen years. You've 0:12:25.960 --> 0:12:31.560 had additional instruction every single year and many different areas, 0:12:31.559 --> 0:12:35.000 and some of those areas may even be sensitivity, right. Um, 0:12:35.600 --> 0:12:41.200 So it's it's really important to note that the students 0:12:41.280 --> 0:12:45.560 again that need these experience really well qualified teachers the 0:12:45.600 --> 0:12:49.959 most are not getting them. And if these students lack 0:12:50.240 --> 0:12:53.600 any sort of additional educational resources anyway, right, may they 0:12:53.640 --> 0:12:56.160 might not have money to go and take extra courses 0:12:56.200 --> 0:12:59.800 to um beef up on s A T questions for instance, 0:13:00.240 --> 0:13:03.800 Then they're really going to fall behind. So this sort 0:13:03.840 --> 0:13:06.440 of data gives you an idea of the disparity in 0:13:06.720 --> 0:13:10.480 quality in terms of education. But what about the outcomes 0:13:11.040 --> 0:13:15.679 of the white kid versus the kid of color inside 0:13:15.760 --> 0:13:20.160 the actual school. Well, it turns out that racial bias 0:13:20.240 --> 0:13:24.920 is certainly at play here. Expulsion and suspension rates for 0:13:25.040 --> 0:13:28.040 black kids are as you guessed it, quite a bit higher. 0:13:28.040 --> 0:13:31.880 A two thousand and intense study of seventy two thousand 0:13:32.080 --> 0:13:35.720 schools kindergarten through high school shows that while black students 0:13:35.800 --> 0:13:40.160 make up only of those enrolled in the school sampled, 0:13:40.679 --> 0:13:44.760 they account for thirty five percent of those suspended once, 0:13:47.120 --> 0:13:50.440 of those suspended more than once, and thirty of all 0:13:50.640 --> 0:13:55.120 expulsions and overall, black students were three and a half 0:13:55.200 --> 0:13:58.400 times more likely to be suspended or expelled than their 0:13:58.480 --> 0:14:03.400 white counterparts. And this was interesting too. Black girls were 0:14:03.440 --> 0:14:07.080 suspended at higher rates than all other girls and most boys. 0:14:07.760 --> 0:14:10.719 And this leads right into the in school arrest rate. 0:14:10.760 --> 0:14:13.600 And this is really interesting because you know, I think 0:14:13.600 --> 0:14:17.600 back on my days in school, and I specifically remember, like, 0:14:17.679 --> 0:14:20.840 one guy committed a murder on school property. So of 0:14:20.880 --> 0:14:22.960 course the police showed up and dealt with it. That's 0:14:22.960 --> 0:14:26.200 pretty cut and dry. There's a murder is when committed 0:14:26.200 --> 0:14:28.200 you bringing, you bringing the police. It's no longer a 0:14:28.280 --> 0:14:33.880 school matter. But but we see this this disturbing national 0:14:33.960 --> 0:14:38.240 trend in which you have you have schools turning to 0:14:38.320 --> 0:14:42.120 police who are then arresting kids for minor infractions. So 0:14:42.120 --> 0:14:46.040 so you end up treating the students more like criminals 0:14:46.080 --> 0:14:49.240 and less like students, even for the little stuff. So 0:14:49.280 --> 0:14:52.400 they're getting the stigma of criminal instead of just mirror, 0:14:52.640 --> 0:14:55.680 you know, misbehavior leveled at them. Uh, in many cases, 0:14:55.680 --> 0:14:57.760 they're being they're they're getting thrown out, they're being sent 0:14:57.800 --> 0:15:01.000 back to places of stress and disadvantage, which again is crazy, 0:15:01.000 --> 0:15:03.640 since the school should be a place of hope, a 0:15:03.680 --> 0:15:07.360 place a springboard, a refuge from uh, those those places 0:15:07.360 --> 0:15:11.200 of disadvantage and uh and the statistics are pretty uh 0:15:11.440 --> 0:15:13.440 pretty depressing when you when you when you shake it 0:15:13.520 --> 0:15:16.120 shake it out along these lines. For instance, seventy of 0:15:16.120 --> 0:15:19.000 students involved in in school arrest are referred to law 0:15:19.120 --> 0:15:22.520 enforcement and referred to law floor enforcement or black or Latino. 0:15:23.040 --> 0:15:26.480 And by the way, sixty of all males in state 0:15:26.600 --> 0:15:29.720 or federal printed prison do not have high school diplomas. 0:15:29.800 --> 0:15:34.320 So yeah, you just have this disturbing trend where the 0:15:34.920 --> 0:15:38.480 student is just treated as a de facto criminal, uh, 0:15:38.560 --> 0:15:41.520 you know, almost right off the bat, which is heartbreaking 0:15:41.560 --> 0:15:43.800 when you think that if that student doesn't have a 0:15:43.840 --> 0:15:46.320 safe haven at home, and they don't have a safe 0:15:46.320 --> 0:15:49.200 haven at school, then they truly are set up for this. 0:15:49.600 --> 0:15:51.120 And by the way, just to throw some more stats 0:15:51.120 --> 0:15:54.400 at this from the l a c P. Nationwide, African 0:15:54.440 --> 0:15:59.400 Americans represent of juvenile arrest, of youth who are detained, 0:15:59.560 --> 0:16:03.160 forty ex percent of the youth who are judicially way 0:16:03.240 --> 0:16:05.520 to criminal court, and fifty eight percent of the youth 0:16:05.600 --> 0:16:09.800 admitted to state prisons. And we see another disturbing trend 0:16:09.920 --> 0:16:15.400 with foster care. Again, another um area where Ideally, there 0:16:15.440 --> 0:16:17.120 should be a lot of hope. This should be about 0:16:18.280 --> 0:16:22.880 children getting a leg up on society, on their lives, 0:16:23.400 --> 0:16:26.880 but instead we see some very disturbing trends. Black and 0:16:26.920 --> 0:16:29.440 Latinos make up fifty percent of children in the foster 0:16:29.520 --> 0:16:34.720 care system, of foster care youths entering the juvenile justice system, 0:16:34.800 --> 0:16:39.880 our placement related behavior cases of young people leaving foster 0:16:39.960 --> 0:16:43.040 care will be incarcerated within a few years of turning 0:16:43.040 --> 0:16:46.800 eighteen and fifty percent of young people leaving foster care 0:16:46.960 --> 0:16:50.920 will be unemployed within a few years of turning eighteen um. 0:16:50.960 --> 0:16:55.240 And then an even more startling figure here, uh, this 0:16:55.320 --> 0:16:59.640 comes from Community Coalition of South l a nonprofit um 0:17:00.040 --> 0:17:05.080 dartling inmates in California State Prison our former foster care youth. 0:17:05.200 --> 0:17:08.040 So you see that direct funnel from the foster care 0:17:08.119 --> 0:17:13.000 system into criminal and into the prison system. And again 0:17:13.040 --> 0:17:15.439 it's telling this story that this is one of the 0:17:15.520 --> 0:17:19.200 least supported segments of society. Right, So, if you have 0:17:19.440 --> 0:17:23.240 marginalized communities of color and you have foster care kids, 0:17:23.840 --> 0:17:26.719 they are not getting the support, the safe haven that 0:17:26.800 --> 0:17:33.439 they need. And this kind of stigmatization actually begins shockingly early. 0:17:33.960 --> 0:17:37.439 In fact, in preschool because one of the things that 0:17:37.480 --> 0:17:41.439 the survey found from the Department of Education uh that 0:17:41.600 --> 0:17:46.840 while black children make up of preschool enrollment, close to 0:17:47.119 --> 0:17:50.600 half of all preschool children who are suspended more than 0:17:50.640 --> 0:17:55.280 once are African American and Latitia Smith Evans of the 0:17:55.400 --> 0:17:57.080 u c l A And an interview with The New 0:17:57.119 --> 0:18:00.359 York Times said about this quote, it's incredible to think 0:18:00.480 --> 0:18:04.159 about or fathom what pre case students could be doing 0:18:04.240 --> 0:18:09.199 to get suspended from schools. Yeah, indeed, it just boggles 0:18:09.240 --> 0:18:12.439 the mind. I mean, I've I've been watching preschooler and 0:18:12.480 --> 0:18:14.720 younger age kid kids and there's what are they doing 0:18:14.760 --> 0:18:18.680 that requires drastically different disciplinary action? Yeah, there are four 0:18:18.720 --> 0:18:22.639 and five year olds all right. There is no you know, 0:18:22.800 --> 0:18:25.119 magic silver bullet here that we can point to that 0:18:25.160 --> 0:18:27.159 says it is the reason for why the system is 0:18:27.160 --> 0:18:29.880 the way it is. But one of the contributing factors 0:18:30.040 --> 0:18:34.480 is something called zero tolerance. Now, this is a policy 0:18:34.520 --> 0:18:37.760 that was put into place after the nineteen nine Columbine 0:18:37.920 --> 0:18:43.040 High School massacres. It's a basically a bunch of policies 0:18:43.080 --> 0:18:47.800 that escalated infractions among the student body, and it was 0:18:47.920 --> 0:18:51.879 never intended to be misused, but certainly this is what 0:18:51.960 --> 0:18:56.159 has happened over the years. According to Amanda Marcatti, writing 0:18:56.200 --> 0:19:00.000 for Slate magazine, quote, students, especially students of color, are 0:19:00.080 --> 0:19:05.880 hit with outrageous and disproportionate disciplinary measures in the school system, 0:19:05.920 --> 0:19:08.760 and this is what is contributing to those higher rates 0:19:09.040 --> 0:19:14.280 of in school arrests, expulsions, and suspensions. Yeah, I mean, 0:19:14.280 --> 0:19:16.800 in this you're just you're seeing a situation where, out 0:19:16.840 --> 0:19:20.160 of a time of fear and and in particular cases 0:19:20.200 --> 0:19:24.000 a time of need for advanced, more powerful tools to 0:19:24.080 --> 0:19:28.639 deal with with threats, um, you end up having the 0:19:28.640 --> 0:19:32.639 tool chest opened, uh for abuse. You you know, you 0:19:32.680 --> 0:19:35.320 see this pretty much in any area of life, right 0:19:35.320 --> 0:19:39.440 when you end up giving um law enforcement or government 0:19:39.480 --> 0:19:42.359 or any kind of power more power to deal with 0:19:42.400 --> 0:19:46.040 a scenario than what happens when they want to use 0:19:46.080 --> 0:19:51.280 those powers just across the board. Yeah, absolute power absolutely corrupts. 0:19:51.280 --> 0:19:54.520 And we discussed this a bit too in our episode 0:19:54.600 --> 0:19:59.320 on the Panopticon, which has definitely some other, uh similar 0:19:59.359 --> 0:20:04.080 threads lowing through it. Indeed, now another another theory as 0:20:04.119 --> 0:20:09.639 to what's going on here comes down to standardized test um. 0:20:09.760 --> 0:20:13.360 Some critics blame the educators. The accusation accusation here being 0:20:13.560 --> 0:20:16.719 that they push out students who score lower un standardized 0:20:16.720 --> 0:20:20.320 test in order to improve the school's overall test scores. 0:20:20.600 --> 0:20:22.760 And if there's a if there's an educator in your life, 0:20:23.040 --> 0:20:27.560 then you've probably you've probably heard plenty about what standardized 0:20:27.600 --> 0:20:31.560 tests bring to the teaching scenario, what the various pros 0:20:31.600 --> 0:20:34.080 and cons are and uh. And here the argument is 0:20:34.119 --> 0:20:36.840 that the you know, the the cart ends up pulling 0:20:36.840 --> 0:20:39.840 the horse. Uh. Instead of the test being this measuring 0:20:39.840 --> 0:20:42.720 stick stick for what the students are doing and being 0:20:42.760 --> 0:20:46.119 about uh, you know, gauging the students, helping the students, 0:20:46.160 --> 0:20:48.600 it ends up being a situation where you're you're calling 0:20:48.640 --> 0:20:51.600 the herd with the with the whole mindset being based 0:20:51.640 --> 0:20:55.240 around the performance of the test. So you end up 0:20:56.040 --> 0:21:01.320 racially calling the student population in order to achieve higher 0:21:01.359 --> 0:21:04.440 test scores for that school. Everything is just completely backwards, right, 0:21:04.520 --> 0:21:08.200 because the school would like to purge those test scores, right, 0:21:08.280 --> 0:21:11.240 And in that way, the students are purged from the 0:21:11.280 --> 0:21:15.320 student body just so that they can rise their numbers 0:21:15.480 --> 0:21:21.760 and look all clean and squeaky. Unfortunately, now, another factor 0:21:21.800 --> 0:21:25.359 in play is something called implicit bias. In the current 0:21:25.480 --> 0:21:29.479 institutes paper on this, they define implicit biases the mental 0:21:29.560 --> 0:21:32.960 process that causes us to have negative feelings and attitudes 0:21:33.000 --> 0:21:37.760 about people based on characteristics like race, ethnicity, age, and appearance. 0:21:38.320 --> 0:21:41.879 Because this cognitive process functions in our unconscious mind, we 0:21:41.920 --> 0:21:46.000 are typically not consciously aware of the negative racial biases 0:21:46.000 --> 0:21:50.080 that we developed over the course of our lifetimes. So, 0:21:50.280 --> 0:21:54.760 of course, in a perfect world administration, school administrations, and 0:21:55.040 --> 0:21:59.880 students and teachers would all understand this and be aware 0:22:00.040 --> 0:22:03.760 of this implicit bias and be able to bring this 0:22:03.800 --> 0:22:06.680 awareness to the classroom and the way that they behave 0:22:06.960 --> 0:22:12.560 and they doll out disciplinary measures. But this doesn't exactly happen. 0:22:12.920 --> 0:22:16.119 For example, a two thousand and three study found that 0:22:16.160 --> 0:22:21.080 students who displayed quote a black walking style were perceived 0:22:21.080 --> 0:22:26.000 by their teachers as lower in academic achievement, highly aggressive, 0:22:26.119 --> 0:22:29.240 and more likely to be in need of special education services. 0:22:29.800 --> 0:22:32.680 In addition, a two thousand and seven meta analysis of 0:22:32.760 --> 0:22:38.000 research founds statistically significant evidence that teachers hold lower expectations 0:22:38.480 --> 0:22:42.440 either implicitly or explicitly, or both for African American and 0:22:42.520 --> 0:22:47.159 Latino children compared to European American children. And this is 0:22:47.200 --> 0:22:52.640 something that we touched upon when we talked about, um, 0:22:52.680 --> 0:22:55.359 how we behave toward one another, and the sort of 0:22:55.400 --> 0:23:00.800 expectations that we communicate, uh, even non verbally, and how 0:23:01.000 --> 0:23:04.520 that child will absorb that and then actually it will 0:23:04.560 --> 0:23:08.600 become a self fulfilling prophecy. Yeah, I mean it's the 0:23:08.600 --> 0:23:11.600 basis of stigma. You end up attaching stigma and up 0:23:11.640 --> 0:23:16.600 attaching titles and expectations of these students and then they 0:23:15.920 --> 0:23:19.840 they they match the form. So the cumulative effect here 0:23:19.920 --> 0:23:24.760 is is pretty devastating. Um, you have this disproportionate give, 0:23:24.840 --> 0:23:29.040 this disproportionate disciplinary action in place, and so the students 0:23:29.040 --> 0:23:31.440 that are affected, they end up falling behind in their classes, 0:23:31.640 --> 0:23:33.760 you know, in the in some of the better scenarios, 0:23:33.880 --> 0:23:36.960 right Uh, and then the worst scenarios, they're suspended, they're 0:23:36.960 --> 0:23:39.760 shuffled off to separate classes, etcetera. And this leads to 0:23:39.880 --> 0:23:43.560 higher dropout rates, uh, you know, and uh and also 0:23:43.600 --> 0:23:46.920 those the subsequent higher unemployment and imprison rates imprisonment rates 0:23:46.920 --> 0:23:50.280 that we've already discussed. So this leaves black and Latino 0:23:50.400 --> 0:23:54.320 students two times less likely to graduate high school than 0:23:54.359 --> 0:23:58.800 their white peers. So again you see the pipeline in 0:23:58.880 --> 0:24:01.600 place here where uh, these kids end up falling through 0:24:01.640 --> 0:24:05.040 the cracks and uh, and then are far more likely 0:24:05.119 --> 0:24:08.119 to wind up in the in the prison system. And 0:24:08.200 --> 0:24:10.520 just to bring this down to an individual level too, 0:24:10.600 --> 0:24:14.080 I'm sure everybody out there has had that teacher that 0:24:14.560 --> 0:24:19.359 nurtured them, that that really fostered their abilities, who saw 0:24:19.480 --> 0:24:24.080 something in them, and then you know, you acted accordingly, right, 0:24:24.160 --> 0:24:27.439 you rose to the occasion. UM, on the opposite end 0:24:27.440 --> 0:24:29.399 of the spectrum, I'm sure everybody also has had that 0:24:29.440 --> 0:24:32.520 one teacher that they thought had it out for them 0:24:32.840 --> 0:24:36.720 that they kind of maybe shied away from, maybe even 0:24:36.720 --> 0:24:39.960 in class, your body language change and you try to 0:24:40.000 --> 0:24:43.119 make yourself invisible because you felt like that teacher didn't 0:24:43.160 --> 0:24:46.200 have a lot of confidence. And you now imagine that 0:24:46.200 --> 0:24:50.679 that was the majority of your experience and how that 0:24:50.680 --> 0:24:54.920 would call your perception of the world and your own abilities. Yeah, 0:24:54.960 --> 0:24:57.000 you end up with a situation where the again, the 0:24:57.080 --> 0:25:01.320 deck is stacked from the start. Now, this, uh, this 0:25:01.400 --> 0:25:07.480 sort of school to prison pipeline doesn't exist solely in 0:25:06.280 --> 0:25:12.520