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Arresting Development: Addressing the School Discipline Crisis in Florida

Arresting Development: Addressing the School Discipline Crisis in Florida reveals the findings of these public hearings, which were held in five cities and covered six school districts: Pinellas/Hillsborough (St. Petersburg, FL), Duval (Jacksonville, FL), Palm Beach (West Palm Beach, FL), Broward (Fort Lauderdale, FL), and Miami-Dade (Miami, FL). This report is intended to document the compelling and informative discussions that occurred among the hundreds of hearing participants—parents, students, teachers, school administrators and juvenile justice personnel—and to serve as a catalyst for both statewide and local reform of Florida’s school discipline crisis.

Use the following links to download the report in its entirety or in sections (*Note: If you are having difficulty downloading the report in entirety, please download it in sections.):




Summary of the Education on Lockdown Report

Education on Lockdown: The Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Track

On March 24, 2005, Advancement Project released Education on Lockdown: The Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Track , a follow-up report to Derailed: The Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Track. The colloborative report further investigates the nationwide trend towards using zero tolerance polices in schools as a "take no prisoners" approach to dealing with the most trivial acts of student misconduct. The report also examines how students of color are disproportionately affected by these policies. Three school systems, Chicago Public Schools, Denver Public Schools, and Palm Beach County Public Schools, are profiled as an example of how the national trends are being enacted at local levels. The report dissects the schoolhouse to jailhouse track by examining:
  • How zero tolerance, a policy originally designed to address the most serious misconduct, morphed into "take no prisoners" approach to school discipline issues and created a direct track into the juvenile and criminal justice systems;
  • The expanding role of law enforcement measures in schools; and
  • The disparate impact of these practices on students of color.
Use the following links to download the report in its entirety or in sections (*Note: If you are having difficulty downloading the report in entirety, please download it in sections.):


Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Action Kit

The Schoolhouse to Jailhouse action kit is aimed at helping advocates organize campaigns against the over use of zero tolerance school discipline and the growing reliance on police and juvenile courts as disciplinarians.

This action kit provides guidance on how to dissect the schoolhouse to jailhouse track by: Collecting information and data about school discipline policies and practices and Analyzing and organizing the data.


Derailed: The Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Track

On May 14, 2003, Advancement Project released, Derailed: The Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Track is a first-of-its-kind report that looks at how zero-tolerance policies are derailing students from an academic track in schools to a future in the juvenile justice system.

According to the report, in the mid 1980s, a spike in juvenile crime rates gave birth to the "superpredator" theory which held that America was under assault by a generation of brutally amoral young people, and that only the abandonment of "soft" educational and rehabilitative approaches, in favor of strict and unrelenting discipline--a zero tolerance approach-- could end the plague.

In school district after school district, an inflexible and unthinking zero tolerance approach to an exaggerated juvenile crime problem is derailing the educational process," said Judith Browne, Advancement Project senior attorney. "The educational system is starting to look more like the criminal justice system. Acts once handled by a principal or a parent are now being handled by prosecutors and the police.

OPPORTUNITIES SUSPENDED:
The Devastating Consequences of Zero-Tolerance and School Discipline

This Advancement Project report written in collaboration with the Civil Right’s Project at Harvard University, examines the devastating consequences of zero tolerance policies and school discipline. The report illustrates that Zero Tolerance is unfair, is contrary to the developmental needs of children and denies children educational opportunities. The report was released in June 2000.