Since the televised murder of George Floyd by four armed police officers, millions of people across the country have taken to the streets to protest police and state violence against the Black community. The first protests reflected outrage and sorrow at yet another modern-day lynching. As the weeks have passed, widespread outrage at police treatment of Black Americans and structural racism has not abated. This is a movement and not just a moment. All over the country, people of color and increasingly more of their white neighbors are calling for real change that will finally bring an end to structural and institutional racism. Police violence does not happen in a vacuum. Change is required not just in our criminal justice system but across all levels of our community, especially in our schools.
Massachusetts is heralded as having the best public school systems in the nation however we rank in the bottom three states in terms of racial and ethnic disparities in educational attainment, as well as in juvenile arrest and incarceration rates. Seventy percent of our children of color are coming out of fourth grade not proficient in reading or math.
For youth involved in the juvenile court system, who are disproportionately children of color, these disparities are even more apparent. Approximately 25,000 children are involved in the child welfare and/or juvenile justice systems in Massachusetts every year. It is estimated that 85% of all juveniles involved with the juvenile court system are functionally illiterate. In addition, 75% of children in foster care are at least one grade level behind. Children in foster care are also twice as likely as their peers to drop out of school, and only 3% of foster children go on to graduate from college. The causal connection between failing to provide children with an effective education and future involvement with the criminal legal system is so well understood that it has a tag line: “The School-to-Prison Pipeline.”
Across the nation, there is growing concern about the high rate of arrest of Black youth in schools. Since police were first introduced to school buildings in Flint, Michigan in 1953, the practice of placing law enforcement in schools has spread. Today, 42 percent of schools have school police, and approximately 90 percent of these police regularly carry a firearm. The presence of law enforcement officers in schools creates an environment of anxiety and distrust rather than one of nurturing and support. Predominately Black schools are much more likely to have an armed police presence, and Black students everywhere are regularly subjected to arrest and restraint. In the 2015-2016 school year, Black students constituted only 15 percent of the student body nationwide but made up 31 percent of law enforcement referrals.
In Massachusetts, the unequal treatment at the hands of school police is worse. Although Black students are 9 percent of the student body statewide, they are 40 percent of the students who are mechanically restrained (e.g. handcuffed.) A recent report found that Black students made up one third of the Boston Public Schools student body, but two-thirds of school-based arrests. Black students are far too often treated as threats and not children; their voices are ignored, and their pain is dismissed as they are kicked out of the school building, physically restrained, and arrested.
Racial inequity is also pervasive in our special education system. Black students are initially under-identified for special education, and, as a result, don’t receive critical educational services needed in the early grades and therefore they fall behind their peers. When identified for special education services, Black students are disproportionately segregated from their peers. In many cases they are moved to classrooms for students with emotional disabilities, where they are warehoused rather than educated. This becomes yet another path into the School-to-Prison Pipeline. In Massachusetts, schools meant to serve students with learning and emotional disabilities consistently have some of the highest rates of arrest within these schools.
Racism within our education system affects communities of color by feeding generations of families into the prison system. The cycle of negative school outcomes leading to negative court outcomes leading to negative life outcomes, across generations, undermines public safety and leaves communities of color impoverished and alienated. Children and youth who are given a meaningful opportunity to succeed in school are overwhelming likely to go to college and/or into the work force rather than into prison or onto the welfare rolls. Strategies designed to assure equitable educational outcomes will inevitably lead to a substantial reduction in the number of people imprisoned and to real pathways out of poverty for families and communities of color.
