Farewell to summer, hello to a new school year—new classes, new teachers, and new opportunities to make bring mom or dad to court with you, when you’ve been ticketed or fined for something like making noise in class.
Across Texas these days, school police officers can issue a child a criminal citation (a ticket), as punishment for acting out, instead of or in addition to more conventional consequences like suspension. The Texas Tribune recently examined the rise of school-based ticketing, even for elementary school students. In the 2006-07 school year, Dallas ISD’s police department issued criminal citations to 92 10-year-olds while Alief ISD issued 163 tickets to elementary school students. These kids were given a criminal consequence for reasons like getting in fights, cursing in the presence of a teacher, or other "disorderly” conduct. Ticketing has increased alongside the number of school district police departments. In 1989, only seven school districts in Texas housed campus police departments; today more than 160 do.
There are other signs that something is going very wrong with school discipline in our state. Consider our out-of-control expulsion rates, even for children who committed no violent or criminal offense. According to a recent Texas Appleseed report, Texas educates about 9% of all school-aged children in the U.S. but is responsible for about 12% of expulsions. African-American and special education students are significantly overrepresented in discretionary expulsions.
School-based citations and discretionary expulsions contribute to the "school-to-prison pipeline,” what happens when school discipline problems lead to juvenile justice involvement and more kids dropping out of school. (Over 80% of Texas’s adult prison inmates are school dropouts.)
Families, school districts, and the state can all do their part to keep that from happening. Studies have shown that schools with more parental involvement have lower rates of disciplinary problems as well as fewer incidents of violence, so, of course, parents play a role. At the same time, school districts need to reconsider ticketing and to begin providing training for school personnel in more effective discipline practices, like Positive Behavioral Supports. Together, we can dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline and ensure our schools create instead a better pipeline, one to better choices when youth act out—a pipeline to future success.
News and Reports Weekly Round-Up
Child and Maternal Health
8.18.10 School Nutrition: Healthier Ingredients, More Education for 2010-11 (Christian Science Monitor)
8.17.10 The Foundations of Lifelong Health are Built in Early Childhood (Harvard University Center on the Developing Child)
8.16.10 Obesity Rates Falling in Some Kids, but Not All (Web MD Health News)
More Health News...
Child Protection
8.20.10 An Interview with DFPS Commissioner Heiligenstein (Texas Tribune)
8.20.10 Perry: Toughen Penalties for Human Traffickers (Associated Press)
8.19.10 Webinar Aug. 25: When One Size Doesn’t Fit All: Practice and Policy Implications for Subgroups of Transitioning Foster Youth (Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago)
More Protection News...
Family Financial Security Headlines
8.20.10 Number of Houston’s Homeless Kids Nearly Doubles (Houston Chronicle)
8.17.10 Food Stamp Fund Too Important to Be Compromised (Austin American-Statesman op-ed)
More Financial Security News...
Juvenile Justice Headlines
8.18.10 Is Texas’s Gang-Free Zone Violating Civil Liberties? (ABC News)
8.17.10 The Real Costs and Benefits of Change: Reform During Difficult Fiscal Times (National Juvenile Justice Network)
More Juvenile Justice News…
Child Mental Wellbeing Headlines
8.14.10 Childhood Stress Leads to Adult Ill Health, Study Says (BBC News)
More Mental Health News...
More About Kids
8.18.10 Who’s Minding the Kids? Child Care Arrangements (U.S. Census Bureau)
