Sharon Higgins, parent activist in Oakland, writes:
sharonrhiggins@yahoo.com
http://charterschoolscandals.blogspot.com/
Comment Mass incarceration is the huge elephant in the room that arrived AFTER Lyndon Johnson was trying to address the harmful effects of poverty in 1965. Its effects must be added to the mix of what public school teachers have to deal with.
Back in 1972, the U.S. had 300,000 people in jails and prisons. In 2008 that number was up to 2.3 million, with an additional 5 million on probation and parole. The astronomical increase was largely due to “drug war” policies.
Get this: the U.S. ranks #1 with imprisonment of its citizens at 715 prisoners per 100,000. To put this in perspective, Russia is #2 at 584, and Belarus is #3 at 554. Finland is #113 at 71. http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_pri_per_cap-crime-prisoners-per-capita
The mass incarceration being carried out in the U.S. has disproportionately affected people of color. In 2004, the Kirwan Institute reported that the number of incarcerated African Americans increased 800% since the 1950s. From a Sentencing Project report: “The rapid growth of incarceration has had profoundly disruptive effects that radiate into other spheres of society.
The persistent removal of persons from the community to prison and their eventual return has a destabilizing effect that has been demonstrated to fray family and community bonds…” In other words, it is damaging to kids. http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/inc_iandc_complex.pdf (865 KB) It is a national disgrace that politicians and ed reformers in our “land of the free” won’t bother to acknowledge our grotesquely ugly mass incarceration problem, not to mention our child poverty rate.
The impact of mass incarceration on children is just one of our many societal ills heaped on public school teachers’ plates. Michelle Alexander and Bryan Stevenson talk about mass incarceration with Bill Moyers here: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04022010/watch.html .
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Just posted a comparison between these two maps in the thread on poverty, but they probably belong here:
Map of what Chicago Public Schools considers “quality schools” (p. 6): http://cps.edu/About_CPS/The_Board_of_Education/Documents/BoardMeeting_October.pdf
Map of Chicago neighborhoods coded for incarceration rate: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3043762/figure/F2/
But, to be fair, if you look at a map of the most resource deprived schools in 1961, before the era of mass incarceration, it matches too:
So, is it really fair to conclude that the cause of all of these—poverty, mass incarceration, “failing” schools, at its root is anything other than racism?
the setup of many schools are practice prisons
no talking, walk in a straight line, don’t look anywhere bu ahead of you
everything is rote,
the only thing adult prisons get that practice prisons don’t is recess
always about money & power. there is a ton of money to be made, both for public and private parties with the incarceration of so many…
http://articles.cnn.com/2012-08-10/us/us_mississippi-juvenile-justice_1_juvenile-detention-detention-center-civil-rights
A deeper analysis of this problem is in a 2009 paper by The Sentencing Project, “Incarcerated Parents and Their Children.” H/t @opffer
http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/publications/inc_incarceratedparents.pdf (426 KB)
Indeed. In fact, the “reformers” willfully ignore a whole host of societal problems that are contributing to less than optimal academic performance, all of which are related. And the reason they do so is because these it’s the policies advocated by these right-wing goons that are causing the problems.
The “War on Drugs”, mass incarceration, growing economic inequality, an education funding system built on local funding (which just exacerbates the problems), and lack of real sex education all work together to create a situation where people are less and less capable of successfully raising families and more likely to have divorce or an unstable home.
As a result, student performance at school suffers due to what’s going on outside the schools. But the problems outside the schools are largely products of the social and economic policies of the very same “school reformers” who are complaining about student performance.