50 Years of Disrupting the School to Prison Pipeline
Over and over again, the juvenile legal, criminal legal, and family regulation/child welfare systems pull children out of school and then deny them a quality education. Since its founding in 1975, Juvenile Law Center has fought against these harmful practices.
Across the country, schools push out and criminalize students for routine adolescent misbehavior. Even in its earliest days, Juvenile Law Center filed lawsuits like Rodenboh v. West Chester Area School District, demanding schools provide due process for exclusionary discipline. Years later, when schools across the country instituted increasingly draconian school “safety” policies in the wake of the tragedy at Columbine, Juvenile Law Center worked with partners to launch the “end zero tolerance” campaign to stem the reach of school push-out.
Despite promises of “rehabilitation,” once youth are incarcerated, they face a new host of school problems: the “education” they receive while locked up is often sub-par, unaligned with their home school curricula or standards, and disrupted by lockdowns, solitary confinement or other security concerns. Over the years, Juvenile Law Center has enforced the education rights of incarcerated youth through litigation like Brian B. v. Pennsylvania Department of Education, which we filed in 1996 to demand education for youth in adult jails and prisons and secured rights to special education for youth with disabilities that impact their education. Later, through our lawsuit D.C. v. School District of Philadelphia, the Commonwealth Court struck down a statute that forced Philadelphia students returning from juvenile placements to attend alternative schools for “disruptive students.” More recently, we filed Derrick v. Glen Mills Schools, alleging both brutal abuse and systemic violation of the educational rights of students confined at Glen Mills.
When youth try to re-enroll in school after incarceration, they may face delays, receive little to no academic credit for completed schoolwork, or be pushed into an inferior alternative school. Juvenile Law Center has advocated for administrative and policy reforms to address these barriers. For example, with partners and with support from the MacArthur Foundation, Juvenile Law Center convened over 100 experts across the country and published widely supported recommendations for federal agencies to better support education and reentry for incarcerated youth. With other partners, and support from Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), we published “Credit Overdue: How States Can Mitigate Academic Credit Transfer Problems for Youth in the Juvenile Justice System” to expose and address the persistent problem of justice-involved youth receiving little to no academic credit for all the schoolwork they completed while incarcerated. Together with our partners and youth advocates, we also won vital federal legislative wins: protections in Title I, Part D of the Every Student Succeeds Act to improve educational access inside facilities and upon reentry to the community.
Students in the family regulation system likewise face constant school upheaval, typically low-quality schools located on-site at residential facilities, and difficulties with transferring between schools as they change living placements. With partners at the American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law and Education Law Center, we established the Legal Center for Foster Care and Education and co-convened the National Working Group on Foster Care and Education (NWG). The Legal Center’s seminal Blueprint for Change: Education Success for Children in Foster Care established tools jurisdictions around the country could use to break down structural barriers to school success. (We later replicated this project, publishing the Blueprint for Change: Education Success for Youth in the Juvenile Justice System).
We also educated lawmakers and pushed for changes in federal law and policy to support youth in care. When we heard how caseworkers were unable to support youth on their caseloads because they couldn’t access their school records, we worked with other members of the NWG to push Congress to pass the Uninterrupted Scholars Act to allow targeted information-sharing between schools and foster agencies.
The Legal Center worked for years to tackle the devastating issue of students in foster care changing schools every time their living placements changed. Some youth reported attending over a dozen schools while in care. The Legal Center provided technical assistance across the country, gave advice on federal policy guidance, and educated lawmakers through congressional briefings and other meetings. Eventually, we won explicit school stability protections for all youth in care when Congress replaced “No Child Left Behind” with the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015.
We also advocated for federal policy changes to make it easier for youth with experience in foster care to receive financial aid and support for post-secondary education.
In Pennsylvania, we, our youth advocates, and partners also won important legal protections for youth returning to school after a disruption due to system involvement or experiencing homelessness. And we successfully fought for landmark tuition and fee waivers at certain Pennsylvania colleges for youth with foster care experience.
While tens of thousands of youth remain behind bars or removed from their homes, Juvenile Law Center will continue the fight to ensure youth are treated with dignity and provided the quality education they need to thrive. And we continue the fight to abolish these systems entirely, as we know the best way to support youth’s education and bright futures is by keeping them safely at home and resourcing their communities.
