Lack of resources plays role in funneling students with disabilities through school-to-prison pipeline
3rd June 2019 · 0 Comments
By Ryan Whirty
Contributing Writer
As many elementary and secondary schools across the country sag under the weight of increased enrollment and diversification of their student body, several demographics continue to struggle to find social acceptance, educational success and basic fairness and dignity.
Well documented is the tragic “school-to-prison pipeline,” in which students, many of whom are designated as “troubled” and “disruptive,” are simply turned over to law enforcement and funneled into the criminal justice system instead of receiving the patience and understanding they need to stay in school.
Race is often a significant factor in this cynical system of punishment and systemic educational failure, as are language barriers, poverty, sexual orientation and gender identity. Another key demographic, however, is students and young adults with disabilities or other unique, special-needs challenges that block their access to quality education and success.
In 2016, the nonprofit disability organization RespectAbility, released a comprehensive analysis of the school-to-prison pipeline, “Disability and Criminal Justice Reform: Keys to Success,” in which the group reported that nationally, youth with disabilities graduate high school at only a 61-percent rate, compared to 81 percent of students without disabilities, a 20-point gap.
RespectAbility reported that more than 750,000 people incarcerated in America have significant disabilities ranging from hearing or vision loss, mobility issues and cognitive impairments.
The paper’s authors stated that many of those in prison with disabilities ended up incarcerated about sustaining physical and sexual abuse, a lack of specific diagnosis, and the absence of adequate care – all factors that made students “hard to handle” while in school.
“We need to acknowledge and accommodate for the full range and large numbers of people with diverse disabilities who are incarcerated as well,” Janie Jeffers, one of the report’s authors, said in a 2016 press release. “Failure to adequately and appropriately deal with these disability issues expands the cycle of failure, crime and recidivism.”
The RespectAbility press release added that “[o]nce individuals with a disability are in the [criminal justice] system, they face significant problems including access to counsel, a lack of accommodations, complex rules, systematic abuse and solitary confinement. Many are abused behind bars. For example, people who are deaf or blind are put in solitary for years as an “accommodation;” however, evidence shows that this can cause them to have significant mental health problems.”
Then, in January 2018, the American Bar Association issued its own comprehensive study of the broken system, which further reinforced the need for change.
“The school-to-prison pipeline – the metaphor encompassing the various issues in our education system that result in students leaving school and becoming involved in the criminal justice system – is one of our nation’s most formidable challenges,” the ABA report stated. “It arises from low expectations, low academic achievement, incorrect referral or categorization in special education, and overly harsh discipline including suspension, expulsion, referral to law enforcement, arrest, and treatment in the juvenile justice system.”
How much the school-to-prison system impacts youth in New Orleans and Louisiana is unclear. The Orleans Parish School Board declined to make any OPSB representatives available for an interview with The Louisiana Weekly and was unable to provide any statistics or data on special-needs students in New Orleans.
“No school official would be available for an interview regarding this topic since law enforcement determines if an arrest is necessary under these circumstances,” an OPSB spokesperson told The Louisiana Weekly. “Our local police department has trained School Resource Officers (SRO) and crisis resources to address all school-related complaints accordingly.”
However, spokespeople for both the New Orleans Police Department and the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office were unable to offer comment on the subject of the school-to-prison pipeline.
According to Louisiana Department of Education statistics, as of 2014-15, Orleans Parish public schools served about 3,100 students in special education, representing nearly one-quarter of the entire student population in the parish. About seven percent of the Orleans student body was classified as disabled.
When the figures are broken down further, nearly 80 percent of the students labeled as disabled were African American, compared to only 14 percent white. Such numbers reflect clearly how race and ableness frequently intersect in New Orleans public schools.
The issue of the school-to-prison pipeline has been scrutinized before – in 2010, the Southern Poverty Law Center released “Access Denied: New Orleans Students and Parents Identify Barriers to Public Education,” a 20-page paper analyzing the recovery of the Orleans Parish school system five years after the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina.
At the time, the SPLC made its findings starkly clear, especially when concerning students with special needs.
The pledge to rebuild New Orleans public schools hinged on a model in which quality schools would be accessible to all, while providing innovative education practices tailored to meet the long-neglected needs of students,” the report stated. “Unfortunately, these promises remain empty for many New Orleans students.”
With the project, the SPLC presented hard data on the shocking prevalence of expulsions and suspensions with New Orleans schools as compared to the rest of the state, as well as heart-rending individual, first-person testimonies from students and their parents detailing the often-insurmountable challenges special-needs youth face in terms of disproportional, draconian punishment they receive.
Instead of receiving sensitivity and understanding, the report said, many students are treated with handcuffs and physical assault.
“New Orleans students are supposed to be learning in one of the most advanced, innovative educational environments in the country,” the SPLC report stated. “When it comes to school safety and security, however, many New Orleans schools employ ineffective discipline practices that were discredited by education policy researchers decades ago. School staff reacts to minor rule violations by forcibly handcuffing children to furniture, brutally slamming them, banishing them from their schools and cutting short their education. Far from keeping New Orleans schools safe, these policies actually reinforce a culture of violence and disengagement from schools and communities.”
Then, in April 2015, the ABA held one of several forums on the school-to-prison system at the Loyola College of Law in New Orleans. The town hall discussion brought together educators, academics, social workers and social-service providers, students, and members of the legal profession and law enforcement from New Orleans, the entire state and nationwide.
One of the forum’s focus was how the demographics of race, ethnicity, poverty and special-needs youth frequently overlap when factored into a public-education system that emphasizes discipline, punishment and relegation to substandard academic course work over comprehensive, compassionate approaches to educating such at-risk youth.
“Although some may believe that arresting students may ‘scare them straight,’ on the contrary, an arrest usually does not achieve the desired reformative effect, and the negative consequences that often occur instead are quite severe,” Jason Nance, a University of Florida law professor who has extensively studied the issue and one of the ABA panelists, wrote in his research, as quoted by The Louisiana Weekly.
“Empirical studies demonstrate that arresting a student substantially reduces the odds that the student will graduate from high school, especially if that student appears in court. It also lowers the student’s performance on standardized tests, decreases future employment opportunities, and increases the likelihood of future involvement in the criminal justice system.”
Nance added that the pipeline “does not impact all racial groups equally. Abundant empirical evidence demonstrates that students of color are affected disproportionately throughout every stage of the Pipeline. For example, minority students are disciplined more often and more severely than white students for committing similar offenses, and have higher arrest and conviction rates when they are referred to the justice system.”
On a state level, officials say they strive to make inclusion of all demographics, including race and mental or physical ableness, when setting statewide standards for education. They say their departments provide guidelines, suggestions, services and funding programs to support and strengthen the education of special-needs and other at-risk youth.
Louisiana Department of Education press secretary Sydni Dunn said that while the state DOE collects information on incidents that lead to school-based arrests, the department has never specifically tallied data on arrests involving special-needs students, although such information could be available through a comprehensive public records request.
Dunn noted, however, that the LDOE has issued several statewide bulletins and policy statements providing detail on policies regarding students with disabilities. These bulletins include procedures for managing complaints, pupil progression, handbooks for student appraisal and for students with exceptionalities, and for the implementation of the Children with Exceptionalities Act.
Dunn added that the “Department’s initiatives deliberately address the needs of students with disabilities within a larger academic or behavioral framework.”
That included sponsoring the first Behavioral Intervention Summit in January of this year; the event gathered more than 1,400 educators from across the state for a day-long professional development program designed, according to a DOE press release, “to introduce attendees to national experts, engage them in conversations about social-emotional learning and behavioral challenges, and equip them with the tools and resources needed to build a multi-tiered system of support at both traditional public schools and alternative sites.”
Dunn pointed to several other steps taken by the DOE to address the challenges of educating special-needs students fairly and adequately.
“The Department also made available a tool kit including a behavioral intervention vendor guide, a portfolio of evidence-based interventions for use within multi-tiered systems of support, a vetted portfolio of evidence-based social-emotional learning curricula, and opportunities for ongoing face-to-face professional learning.”
Finally, Dunn noted that the 2019 Teacher Leader Summit will be held in New Orleans next month, a gathering she said will provide an “opportunity for face-to-face learning for educators.”
The Louisiana Department of Health, meanwhile, also provides services and programs aimed at providing special-needs youth and their loved ones with assistance in achieving their health outcomes.
Although the DOH services don’t specifically address special-needs students’ educational and classroom needs, Julie Foster Hagan, assistant secretary of the DOH’s Office for Citizens Developmental Disabilities, said the programs the department does have for helping students and their families hopefully positively impact the educational success of youth with disabilities.
For example, Medicaid-eligible students can receive services through early and periodic screening, diagnostic and treatment (EPSDT), which “provides appropriate and medically necessary services needed to correct and improve an individual’s health conditions,” Hagan said.
Hagan added that the Department’s Office for Citizens with Developmental Disabilities also provides qualifying disabled students with other services, such as help achieving identified goals at home and in the community; stipends for families of exceptional-needs students to help the students continue living at home; and funding for a variety of activities to assist special-needs youth in maintaining community living.
Hagan said hopefully these DOH programs can help special-needs students achieve holistic, overall success and happiness, including educationally.
It is very important to the Department of Health that all individuals with special needs are supported to be successful in life and to meet their health outcomes,” Hagan said.
This article originally published in the June 3, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
