Education Week - August 3, 2016 - 28

COMMENTARY

By John B. King Jr.
he return on investment in
American education to individuals and to society at large
has been growing in both
relative and absolute terms
since 1980.
It is well known that, statistically, people who are welleducated earn substantially more, pay more
in taxes, are less likely to be unemployed, live
longer, are healthier, and are more likely to
vote.
Yet, in spite of that, our society is increasing
spending on locking people up faster than it is
on educating them. Our investments in punishing people for their failures are outpacing
our investments in ensuring their success.
That was the disturbing finding of a firstof-its-kind analysis issued recently by the
U.S. Department of Education. Over the past
three decades, state and local budgets for prisons and jails grew more than twice as fast as
spending on public elementary and secondary
education, when adjusted for inflation. Even
when population changes are factored in, 23
states increased per-capita spending on corrections at more than double the rate of increases
in per-pupil K-12 spending.
Higher education also took a back seat: Between 1990 and 2013, average state and local
funding for each full-time college student fell
by 28 percent, while per-capita spending on
corrections rose by 44 percent.
One of the major drivers of the rise in spending on corrections is that the number of people
behind bars in state and local correctional facilities has more than quadrupled since 1980.
The growth of this population-to more than
2 million in 2014-was due in part to laws requiring lengthy minimum sentences.
The link between incarceration and lack of
education is strong. According to the Bureau of
Justice Statistics, two-thirds of state prison inmates have not completed high school. A study
from the National Bureau of Economic Research also shows young black men between
the ages of 20 and 24 who do not have a high
school diploma or an equivalent credential are
more likely to be behind bars than they are to
have a job.
The Obama administration has taken several actions to reduce the ongoing cost of corrections by addressing recidivism. Last year,
the Education Department announced Second
Chance Pell-a pilot program that will give
access to grants for postsecondary education
and training programs to 12,000 incarcerated
individuals who are eligible to return to their
communities within the next five years.
The department also created a program in
partnership with the U.S. Department of Justice to provide career and technical education
to students who are involved in the juvenilejustice system. Another of the Educa- tion
Department's initiatives calls on col- leges
and universities to rethink asking prospective
students to indicate past arrests on their ad-

| INSIDE |

missions applications, because such questions
deter young people from applying. The administration's My Brother's Keeper initiative encourages communities to provide all children,
but especially young men of color, with the
support they need to avoid getting in trouble
in the first place.
Educators, schools, and states can do far
more than the federal government can, however, to reduce incarceration. Every year,
our schools suspend roughly 2.8 million students-the vast majority of them for noncriminal activities-and refer a quarter of a million
students to police. Students of color, especially
black students and those with disabilities, are
suspended and referred to police at disproportionate rates. These students are more likely
to fall behind academically, drop out of school,
and wind up in prison. The Education Department has assembled a number of resources-
all of which are available online-to help educators rethink their discipline policies so that
schools are not contributing to the problem.
Rethinking discipline may also require reexamining how local resources are spent. New
data released this past spring showed that 1.6
million students attend schools that employ
a sworn police officer but do not have a counselor on staff. That's a prime example of misplaced priorities.
Another strategy schools can pursue is to
identify students who are chronically absent
and re-engage them in school. Almost one in
eight students in the United States missed
three or more weeks of the 2013-14 school
year, which translates into 93 million school
days lost. The reasons for chronic absenteeism
are as varied as the challenges our students
and families face-including health, transportation, and safety-and can be particularly
acute in disadvantaged communities and
areas of concentrated poverty. But whatever
the cause, the consequences are clear: Irregular attendance can be a better predictor than
test scores of whether students will drop out
before graduation. Chronic absenteeism also
has been linked to adult poverty, poor physical
and mental health, and incarceration.
The most important thing states and communities can do for children is to invest in
high-quality preschool programs, provide
them with well-supported teachers, and do
what it takes to make sure they graduate and
succeed after high school. Researchers have
estimated that a 10 percent increase in high
school graduation rates would result in a 9
percent decline in criminal-arrest rates. Even
a 1 percent increase in male graduation rates
would save up to $1.4 billion in the social costs
of crime and incarceration over the course of
the graduates' lives. Although national graduation rates have hit a record high, too many
students still quit before earning a diploma in
many communities.
Whatever strategies states and schools use
to reduce incarceration, the payoff will be
huge. Finding alternatives to jail or prison
for just half the people convicted of nonviolent crimes would save upwards of $15 billion per year-which, as my predecessor Arne

HEALTH EDUCATION HOLDS KEY
TO VIOLENCE PREVENTION

28 | EDUCATION WEEK | August 3, 2016 | www.edweek.org/go/commentary

Darius Frank for Education Week

U.S. Secretary of Education:
Let's Educate, Not Incarcerate

Mass incarceration
does not make us
safer. It denies our
nation the
productivity and
creativity of millions
of our people."

Duncan has pointed out, would be enough to
provide a 50 percent salary increase to every
high school teacher working in our highestneed schools and communities.
I'm not naive. I know that allocating more
dollars does not automatically produce improved student outcomes. But, certainly,
money is not unrelated to quality. It costs
money to build computer labs, buy materials,
and hire counselors. Investing in our teachers
and students is fundamentally important, as
is overhauling our criminal-justice system to
make sure young people have the opportunities they deserve.
The bottom line is that mass incarceration
does not make us safer. It denies our nation
the productivity and creativity of millions of
our people. And it belies our values as a land
of opportunity. We know how to address the
issue. All that we lack is the commitment
to doing so. It is time we came together as a
country to invest in all our people and their
capacity to contribute to society. n
JOHN B. KING JR. is the U.S. secretary of
education.

OUR WORLD IS SHRINKING;
LET'S APPRECIATE IT

LETTERS TO
THE EDITOR

http://www.edweek.org/go/commentary

Education Week - August 3, 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - August 3, 2016