Why Do We Have a “School to Prison Pipeline”?

For the most part, we don’t.  A recent report from the Pew Foundation, linked here at Sentencing Law and Policy, shows that the the number of people housed in prisons and jails in the USA is just over one-half of one percent of the population (that is, 1.8 million out of 330 million).  This sliver of one percent is what the “justice reform” crowd ceaselessly and dishonestly refers to as “mass incarceration.”

But to the extent we do have a “school to prison pipeline” in some jurisdictions, the following article reporting on conditions in Baltimore tells us why:    “City student passes 3 classes in four years, ranks near top half of class with 0.13 GPA”

I am not appalled by much that comes out of Baltimore at this point, but this is a doozie by any standard.

A shocking discovery out of a Baltimore City high school, where Project Baltimore has found hundreds of students are failing:  It’s a school where a student who passed three classes in four years, ranks near the top half of his class with a 0.13 grade point average.

Tiffany France thought her son would receive his diploma this coming June. But after four years of high school, France just learned, her 17-year-old must start over. He’s been moved back to ninth grade….

France’s son attends Augusta Fells Savage Institute of Visual Arts in west Baltimore. His transcripts show he’s passed just three classes in four years, earning 2.5 credits, placing him in ninth grade. But France says she didn’t know that until February. She has three children and works three jobs. She thought her oldest son was doing well because even though he failed most of his classes, he was being promoted. His transcripts show he failed Spanish I and Algebra I but was promoted to Spanish II and Algebra II. He also failed English II but was passed on to English III….

As we dig deeper into her son’s records, we can see in his first three years at Augusta Fells, he failed 22 classes and was late or absent 272 days. But in those three years, only one teacher requested a parent conference, which France says never happened. No one from the school told France her son was failing and not going to class.

In his four years at Augusta Fells, France’s son earned a GPA of 0.13. He only passed three classes, but his transcripts show his class rank is 62 out of 120. This means, nearly half his classmates, 58 of them, have a 0.13 grade point average or lower.

Q:  So why is there a “school to prison” pipeline?  A:  Because there never was a school.

Of course that can’t be the whole answer.  The failure of the “educational” system and of parenting was so breathtaking here that it pretty much defies belief.  I would be shocked if Ms. France’s son doesn’t wind up in jail, since he lacked the discipline, and no adult imposed on him the discipline, to learn anything about what the world is like (except perhaps the world of the streets).

This is not an excuse for whatever young Mr. France will wind up doing.  His schooling was next to nothing, yes, but virtually everyone, educated or not, knows by his late teens that lying, stealing and cheating are wrong, and so is violence.  So he will be properly held accountable for his actions, whatever they turn out to be.

That said, society failed here.  At the risk of sounding Puritanical and Very Old Fashioned, probably the pre-eminent source of failure was that Ms. France was  —  you will have guessed this  —  a single mother.  How many times, and at what horrendous cost to children, do we have to learn that not all lifestyles are the same, and that growing up in a household with a married mother and father who give love, impose rules, and cherish education is the key to having kids that flourish rather than founder?

When culture fails, law picks up the pieces.  It has no choice, and that’s the right thing for it to do.  But better still  —  much better  —  the culture needs not to fail.