Available for download only.
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Obstacles to Opportunity: Alexandria, Virginia Students Speak Out
The student group Alexandria United Teens (a project of Tenants and Workers United), Advancement Project, and Professor Tony Roshan Samara of George Mason University wrote Obstacles to Opportunity: Alexandria, Virginia Students Speak Out. The report reveals an unsettling conclusion: Alexandria City Public Schools (ACPS) has effectively created a two–track school system — one for a small number of predominantly White students who are actively prepared from an early age for college and successful careers; and the other for the majority of students of color who are not expected to excel and encounter substantial obstacles to achieving their goals. In an effort to gain a better understanding of the dynamics causing ACPS’s low graduation rates — and even lower rate of students who graduate prepared for college — a survey was developed and distributed to students at T.C. Williams High School (the only high school in ACPS). This report presents the results of the survey and other research completed over the last year.
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Available for download only.
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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.):
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Summary of the Education on Lockdown Report
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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.):
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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.
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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. |
