Executive Summary of OLO Report Number 2016-6
March 1, 2016
Summary: The School-to-Prison Pipeline refers to the increased risk of juvenile delinquency and criminal
justice system involvement among children who have been suspended or expelled from school. Nationally,
the criminalization of minor school-based infractions and the over-representation of youth of color and
students with disabilities are key features of the School-to-Prison Pipeline. This report seeks to improve
the County Council’s understanding of the School-to-Prison Pipeline, particularly in Montgomery County.
Overall, the School-to-Prison Pipeline within the County mirrors national trends in disproportionality by
race, ethnicity, gender, and special education status, but the Pipeline is shrinking. OLO also found that
while many local agency practices align with best practices for stemming for the Pipeline, opportunities
exist for improving local practices that include engaging community stakeholders and improving data
systems to track performance outcomes and to support program improvements...
Are there any data on the Prison-to-School pipeline?
ReplyDeleteThe below-cited OLO Report Number 2016-6, dated for March 1, 2016, is most certainly skewed in many, many ways- too many to detail and insufficient time in this forum.
ReplyDeleteAs a start, the report actually names "over aggressive law enforcement" as a factor contributing to the problem of a school to prison pipeline. Yet one of the recommendations per the "County Practices/Policies that Align with Best Practices" is for the school resource officers to "use their discretion to minimize" student arrests for their involvement in acting on "minor" disciplinary and legal offenses. How dangerously narrow-minded! When those in authority are told to ignore seemingly minor offenses, how long will it take the offending student(s) to engage in increasingly more dangerous or offensive, if not illegal, behavior? Lest we dampen the free will of the offending students, why not put the proverbial handcuffs on the hands of SROs and other law enforcement officers, who should otherwise be using them for the very purpose/in the very instance handcuffs are designed to be used?
The report statement, "Data on key contact points in the school discipline and juvenile justice systems suggest that the School-toPrison Pipeline in Montgomery County is small and shrinking." (Really? An elementary probability and statistics class could create a short-lived warm-up assignment using this statement.) The accepted and common practice that Montgomery County schools underreport data for offensive, violent and illegal student behaviors is widely known and condoned within MCPS. Of course the negative statistics published for any particular school, and thus MCPS as a whole, is minimized. Data input equates to data output. (After all, there is a state and national reputation to uphold.) The above-captioned report statement doesn't comport with the reality of here and now confounding factors in Montgomery County: illegal population growth, increase in gang-related activity, increased abuse of drugs and alcohol, disparity in student educability, non-school related influences, etc... Is there truly a bona fide inverse relationship between these changes in the Montgomery County public school demographics and the "small and shrinking" school discipline and juvenile justice system statistics? Or is there a problem of underreporting and understating the in-school problems that this sanctuary county breeds?
Unfortunately, this OLO report- though two years old, reflects the sanctuary mindset that prevails in Montgomery County, MD; this mindset and its consequence bleeds right into our school system, trickling straight down into published reports like the Summary of OLO Report Number 2016-6. And, how disrespectfully short-minded that this report (and its authors) has the audacity to recommend that our SROs turn a blind eye to "minor" illegal activity and thereby further minimize law enforcement efforts to harness "school to prison pipeline" related activities in our schools. Do they really feel a minimalist approach to a snowballing problem is sensible? Perhaps there are many lessons to be learned, mindsets to redirect, and foundational laws to simply follow here in the great state of Montgomery. As of recent, there are a minimum of 17 compelling reasons to oust the Montgomery County mantra according to the gospel of OLO Report Number 2016-6: a massacre of students in a Florida high school.