When Secretary of Education Arne Duncan headed the Chicago Public School system, he asked staffers there what time of day the most kids were being arrested.
He was looking to curb the number of students who were going to jail, and assumed an early intervention program would be needed after school let out, the time he assumed most students were running into trouble. ā
He was stunned to learn, however, that the majority of arrests were occurring during the school day, in the schools themselves.
"Those calls to the police, to put kids in jail? We were making them," Duncan is expected to say in a speech Wednesday at the National Press Club. "We were responsible. We had met the enemy, and it was us."
Today, schools refer a quarter of a million students to the police each year, according to the U.S. Department of Education, a majority of which are boys of color and students with disabilities.
In a major speech aimed at curbing the school-to-prison pipeline, Duncan is slated to urge states and local school districts to find paths other than incarceration for people convicted of nonviolent crimes, something that the department says could save upwards of $15 billion each year. Then, using that savings, increase the pay for teachers working in the country's highest-need schools.
[For more of this story, written by Lauren Camera, go to http://www.usnews.com/news/art...l-to-prison-pipeline]
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