Rethinking Discipline to Combat the School-to-Prison Pipeline

Abstract

This article argues that school disciplinary policies that remove students from classrooms do not serve learners' long-term goals, but instead alienate them from structured, social, learning support systems. The author recommends learning environments respond to undesirable behavior with staff to provide counseling, psychological support, or social service referrals, and enforcement officers limited to act only on threats to school and student safety. Such regulation should be driven at the state level to combat disparate handling by individual school districts.