Citation #2: Hewitt, Damon, et al. “Unlawful Discrimination.” School-to-Prison Pipeline: Structuring Legal Reform, New York University Press, 2010, pp 32-35. 

Summary: This chapter starts by talking about a great disparity in suspensions between certain subgroups of the youth. They believe this disparity is in part to schools having to take accountability of student success and thus a need to push out lower-performing students. It then breaks down into a subsection focusing on discrimination for students of color and emphasizes that children of color are more likely to attend under resourced schools and talk about the suspension rate for these children of color rise. It then goes on to list more statistics of the disparity of school suspensions between children of color and white children.  

Reflection: Although a short section it provides important information on who exactly is being affected by the school to prison pipeline and other underlying reasons for students being pushed into the school to prison pipeline. Many if not all of these students don’t have the opportunity to decide where they want to attend to, so when they’re automatically placed into a school that is underfunded they’re mistreated. From the start these students are put into a place where they’re not expected to perform well and when they’re seen as a ‘liability’ to a school that’s barely afloat they are put in a loop that doesn’t end well for them. This and overall discrimination in schools as unfortunately sometimes students are targeted because of biases and straight up racism are also factors in the school to prison pipeline. 

Quotation:  According to the book “Notably, studies suggest that African American children are more likely than their white peers to be suspended, expelled, or arrested for the same kind of conduct at school”(35) This quote summarizes the discrimination and disparity between subgroups in the school to prison pipeline and calls for a bigger discussion to happen on how zero tolerance policies target minority groups