The School-to-Prison Pipeline Is a Persistent Edu-Myth
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder argues that the school-to-prison pipeline narrative is based on a fundamental confusion between correlation and causation.
Key Takeaways
- Correlation isn't causation - Students who are suspended are more likely to be incarcerated later, but suspension didn't cause the incarceration
- The myth persists because it's politically useful - The narrative justifies eliminating discipline regardless of the evidence
- Real factors drive both outcomes - Poverty, family instability, and behavioral patterns explain both suspension and later incarceration — one doesn't cause the other
Transcript
All right, let's talk about the school to prison pipeline because anytime we talk about exclusionary discipline, sending students home for a couple of days because they got in a fight or they assaulted someone or expelling a student or emergency excluding them for a period of time because they assaulted someone, Anytime you talk about that kind of exclusionary discipline, someone will inevitably bring up the school-to-prison pipeline.
People talk about it like it's a foregone conclusion, like it's just universally proven and known that this is something that exists.
And I would love for you to send me any research evidence that actually indicates a causal pipeline between school discipline and incarceration and things like that, crime as an adult and things like that.
The claim here is that getting suspended from school causes a student to then later in life be more likely to be incarcerated.
And I'll just let you think about that for a second and whether this is an issue of correlation or causation, right?
Like every freshman statistics student learns in college that we have to not confuse correlation and causation.
And there are lots of studies out there that demonstrate a very strong correlation between getting in trouble in school and getting in trouble with the criminal justice system.
Obviously, if you are doing crimes at school and in your community, you're probably going to get in trouble at school and with the criminal justice system, and that's pretty obvious.
And time-wise, it's pretty obvious that students go to school before they go to prison, right?
You go to school from the age of five, so everybody who ever goes to prison has gone to school first, So obviously you're going to see a pathway if you're looking for one.
You know, sequentially students do go to school before they go to prison, if they go to prison.
But that does not mean that it is a causal relationship.
It doesn't mean that any particular thing that happens in school causes the student to go to prison.
And especially with the claim that discipline for behavior at school causes incarceration or crime later on in life, I think the more plausible explanation is that behavior causes school discipline and behavior causes arrests and incarceration.
I mean, that's so completely obvious that no one should fall for this.
No one should fall for this idea that there is a school to prison pipeline.
And thankfully, it's an empirically verifiable question.
Like, we can investigate whether school suspension causes incarceration, but we can't do so on a simply correlational basis.
We have to actually look at the behavior and see what evidence is actually there.
And I don't know of a single study that has found a causal relationship between school discipline and incarceration.
If you have one, send it to me.
But until then, I'm calling baloney on this school-to-prison pipeline idea.