Tagged: schools

Race & Ethnicity Studies / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

Alternative to the school-to-prison pipeline

In my last post I discussed the role the school-to-prison pipeline plays in increasing the gap in minority education. The consequences of zero tolerance school policies are many including stigmatization, dropping out of school, and/or getting a juvenile record. Some schools have begun to change their responses to deviance in schools by going away from zero tolerance policies and towards restorative justice models. Restorative justice is a proactive approach requiring wholesale cultural change in the punishment orientation of the school...

Class & Stratification / Sociology of Culture

The Problem with "Failing Schools"

Most states define “failing schools” as those with a certain percentage of students scoring below grade level on state tests.  In other words, a failing school is a school with a large percentage of failing students.  However, since no politician would define the problem as “failing children,” the debate centers around “who is failing these students and why is that failure concentrated in certain schools?”