As the number of students suspended and expelled from school per year rises—more 3 million in 2010, double the amount of suspensions in the 1970s²⁹—so to has the amount of research into the causes of such exclusion and consequences such exclusion has for students. One noticeable consequence is an expansion of the school-to-prison pipeline, the term used to describe how so many students—mostly low-income, minority students—from urban schools end up in prison. Are We Criminalizing Adolescence, by Jay D. Blitzman, and The School-to-Prison Pipeline: Time to Shut it Down, by Mary Ellen Flannery are two articles aimed at changing the minds of practitioners in the education field i.e., teachers, administrators, and other educators.

Flannery’s piece is aimed directly at teachers and administrators. She begins with James Duran, a veteran dean of discipline at a school in Denver. Duran admits that he was suspending upwards of 300 students a year, often without thinking too much about the impact the suspensions were having. “Looking back, it was a big cop-out. Basically it just gave kids permission not to be in school.”³⁰ The suspended kids, set free in their communities and on to the streets, were automatically now more likely to drop out of school, and begin a journey down a road that ends in a prison cell.³¹ After increased pressure and awareness generated by grassroots organizations, and by authors such as Michelle Alexander, the school-to-prison pipeline and the zero tolerance policies that fuel it—by setting up suspensions as the first response to a discipline incident—are under attack. In Colorado, a law passed in 2013 was passed that restricted the use of suspensions and expulsions.³² The law change encouraged administrators to re-examine their own approaches to handling discipline; it pushed them to find more restorative responses and to expand teacher training on cultural awareness and diversity.³³ The law change and accompanying dialogue has made a serious impact. This year, James Duran suspended only one student.

Blitzman’s article picks up on this legal thread and is aimed at lawyers and other members of the juvenile justice community. Blitzman connect these professionals and their goals of reducing juvenile justice to education, “to attack the cradle-to-prison pipeline, we have to soberly address access to public education.”³⁴  Like many others mentioned on this website, Blitzman sees a direct connection between a growth in zero-tolerance policies and increases in school referrals to juvenile justice programs.³⁵ He advocates for the abolition of such policies, specifically because zero tolerance “becomes intolerance when educators and jurists sanction in a way that is not proportionate.”³⁶ Blitzman is referring to the clear racism on display via the statistics about who gets suspended or expelled and for what reasons.

Flannery’s article is designed to convince teachers and administrators to eliminate zero-tolerance policies, re-examine their own behaviors and biases, and take an active role in dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline. Through her use of Duran, she is able to personalize an otherwise very impersonal and systematic issue. Blitzman attempts to widen the scope of who can and should be involved in combatting the school-to-prison pipeline. This is very important as Flannery’s story of James Duran proves that a change in the law can lead to 299 students from one school alone not being suspended and escaping the pipeline—that’s real change.