Disabling the School-to-Prison Pipeline - (Critical Issues in Disabilities and Education) by Laura Vernikoff (Paperback)

About the Book

Disabling the School-to-Prison Pipeline interrogates how the school-to-prison pipeline operates for young people receiving special education services. Interviews with those directly affected suggest new ways of thinking about the problems facing special education.

Book Synopsis

Young people who have received special education services in the United States are vastly overrepresented in juvenile and adult criminal justice systems relative to their numbers in the general population. Although much existing research blames individual kids for getting arrested, school-level policies and practices affect a variety of student outcomes, including involvement with the justice system. These school-level policies and practices can--and should--be altered by teachers, administrators, and policy makers to reduce the number of young people getting arrested.

Disabling the School-to-Prison Pipeline uses administrative data from New York City public schools and interviews with young people who have received special education services in NYC public schools and been arrested to better understand how schools can help or harm students receiving special education services. Schools cannot fix all problems associated with the criminal justice system in the United States; however, we can certainly expect schools not to make existing problems worse. This book identifies school-level policies and practices that may lead to negative outcomes for students, such as getting arrested, and suggests alternatives.

Review Quotes

[T]his book provides an important and intimate account of the STPP for students with disabilities, capitalizing on personal experiences and incorporating student voices. Using the NYC public school system as an example, Vernikoff clearly establishes that a better understanding of how schools contribute to the STPP will help policy makers and educators engage in continued efforts to block the pipeline and support more equitable educational outcomes for all.

The so-called school-to-prison pipeline has been the focus of numerous articles, books, and opinion papers for the last several decades. Most previous discussions of this phenomenon have concentrated on the question of why so many minority students eventually wind up being incarcerated at much greater levels than majority (white) students. Vernikoff builds on this body of research by looking at the incarceration likelihood of students with disabilities who eventually become entangled with the American judicial system. She posits that there might be risky school practices that increase the probability that students wind up in prisons or jails and that students' actions and behaviors are insufficient to explain the outcomes many special education students experience... Vernikoff uses student interviews and substantial data on multiple school variables to explain what might contribute to the probability that any given student will come into contact with the criminal justice system. The study yields some very surprising results. Recommended. General readers, graduate students, faculty, and professionals.

About the Author

Laura Vernikoff is assistant professor of special education at Touro College Graduate School of Education.