School to Prison Pipeline

I don't often write about school issues but an article in NEA Today sparked my interest. The piece is entitled "The School to Prison Pipeline." There are many important facets to the story but I want to tackle one that deals with how schools handle problems.

Essentially the author, Ms. Mary Ellen Flannery, researches and concludes that the age old system of school suspensions can most definitely lead to prison. Says Flannery, "A suspension can be life altering. It is the number-one predictor-more than poverty-of whether children will drop out of school, and walk down a road that includes greater likelihood of unemployment, reliance on social-welfare programs and imprisonment."

This is a fairly stark statement and hopefully a wake-up call to those running our schools regarding the serious implications and effects of school suspensions.

For me, I have long thought these were not in the best interests of the students growth and maturation. There has to be other ways of dealing with student misbehavior or worse.

Dick