Over the past few years the issue of mass incarceration has increasingly become the topic of much debate. Politicians, civil rights advocates, law-enforcement officials, as well as educators, scholars and pundits have all offered their thoughts and insights. Mass incarceration in the United States was even a topic of discussion during the 2016, presidential campaign. Much was discussed and debated regarding the emphasis and impact of legislation and the criminalization of certain acts.
The roots of mass incarceration in the United States can be traced back to the early 1970’s with President Richard Nixon’s declaration of “an all-out global war on the drug menace” and the establishment of the Drug Enforcement Administration in 1973.
President Ronald Reagan declared illicit drugs to be a threat to our national security in 1982, and in 1988, he created the Office of National Drug Control Policy. A primary focus of this office was the coordination of drug-related legislative policy.
The political escalation of the war on drugs and get tough on crime was ramped up by the 1994, “Clinton Crime Bill” (Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act).
Eventually, the get tough on crime policies and practices, which dominated our legislation and fueled mass incarceration filtered into our public schools and spurred the zero-tolerance policies and strict student codes of conduct beginning in the 1990’s and continuing today. The correlation between the two have had a devastating impact on many of the more than 7 million children in this country that have a family member incarcerated, on probation or parole.
These students, as well as others facing life stressors in their homes such as: family dysfunction, parental substance abuse, neglect, verbal and/or physical abuse, family mental health issues and poverty/financial stress; often take on a sense of failure. This sense of failure is compounded for many of them by life stressors in their community such as: crime, violence, drug and alcohol abuse, gangs, teen-pregnancy, high unemployment and other factors.
So it comes to be for many of our most vulnerable and disadvantaged students that they arrive at school with two strikes against them, only to find themselves in public schools with inadequate resources, strict zero-tolerance policies which focus on out of school suspensions, expulsions, alternative education placements, school-based arrests and a disregard for due process rights and the protection of students with special education needs.
Based on the following statistics, a case could be made to support the position that the school-to-prison pipeline is being fed by school administrators and teachers unions in urban districts:
• 40% of students expelled from U.S. schools each year are Black • 70% of students involved in “in-school” arrests or referred to law-enforcement are Black or Latino • 68% of all males in state and federal prisons do not have a high school diploma
Much can and needs to be done to address the high rate of school failure in this country, especially in our urban schools. We must recognize that the economic viability of our communities, and our country as a whole, is only as vibrant as the quality of education our young people receive in our schools. As such, it should be in all of our best interest to strive toward providing a high quality education for all students. Essential to this end must be the presence and commitment of qualified and ethical educational leaders in our schools.
The focus of this book is to provide the reader with information, including a complaint filed by the Education Law Center – PA with the United States Department of Justice, alleging the violation of student’s rights in public schools in the state of Pennsylvania. Further, this book will provide the reader with a case history, including sworn depositions and other legal documents from the federal law suite I filed against my former employer – The Allentown School District - after the superintendent and other administrators engaged in retaliatory actions against me for reporting alleged legal and ethical violations to the Pennsylvania Department of Education which led to sanctions against the district.
It will be up to each individual reader to determine whether any legal and/or ethical violations were committed, and if so, is it possible that the violations lend themselves to school failure, the school-to-prison pipeline and mass incarceration in the United States.
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