Evidence vs. Ideology: Can We Break the School-to-Prison Pipeline Without Consequences?

So let's talk about bias and research.

One really nice thing about research is that it gets us out of kind of ideological dead ends.

And if you were to ask me 10 years ago what I think about the school-to-prison pipeline, I probably would have said, yeah, that seems very concerning that There's such a strong correlation between out of school suspension and later legal trouble, you know, being incarcerated, things like that.

Maybe we should do something about it.

Today we have done quite a bit.

We have tried to break the school to prison pipeline by cutting down on out of school suspensions.

And I think that was something that was definitely worth trying.

What's different now compared to 10 years ago though, is we have lots of evidence about whether that actually works.

And what I have been saying in my videos is, If you have evidence that we can, in fact, break the school to prison pipeline by simply not suspending students when they do things that previously we would have suspended them for, then great, we should do that.

But we don't actually have that evidence.

So this question of bias, like if we continue to believe things even in the face of mounting evidence against them, I would say that's not a research-based conclusion.

That is kind of an ideological commitment.

And we all have ideological commitments, and I think those are good starting points.

But at some point, we have to kind of face the facts and say – that ideological commitment didn't do so well when it rubbed up against reality.

And what has happened with discipline reform, I think, is largely that we have tried to remove consequences and seen that the consequence of that, the unintended consequence of removing consequences like out-of-school suspension, is that behavior gets worse in schools.

And in fact, there is evidence that more extreme behavior gets worse when we eliminate consequences like suspension for low-level lower level behaviors like disruption.

So I think there's probably a sweet spot on that.

I don't think we should go to extremes on being very picky.

Like when I was in high school, I remember one of my classmates got detention one day for having a little bit too much of a mustache.

He was probably kind of proud of that.

But my school had a rule that boys had to shave.

And I don't think that kind of stuff probably has a positive impact on students.

I think we can go too far with it.

But I think when it comes to classroom disruption and especially violence, it is not even plausible that removing the consequence would improve outcomes for students.

And I think we just have so much evidence now that despite our very best efforts, despite extremely strong ideological commitments that we can and should break the school-to-prison pipeline, I'm just not seeing that evidence.

So if you're seeing it, please send it to me.

If you have evidence that this is something that can actually be done, let me know.

But I think what's happening according to lots of anecdotal evidence and what limited research we have is that we're simply removing consequences and damaging school culture and safety as a result.

Let me know what you think.