Education Week - December 9, 2015 - 12

Quality of Schooling
Falls Short for Many
Incarcerated Juveniles

LOCKED UP, LEFT OUT
For tens of thousands of youths
in state juvenile correctional
facilities, the quality of schooling
and vocational opportunities
available to them is not equal to
what their peers in public schools
receive, advocates argue.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Youth Committed
to State Custody
by Facility Type

34%

n State
n Local
n Private

41%

54%

Privately run
facilities

Locally run
facilities

Locally
run facilities

Incarcerated Youth, 2013

Incarcerated Youth, 1997

35,659

75,406

States' collection
of student
outcome data for
incarcerated youth
after they are
released

State-run
facilities

20%

12%

More than
40 percent of
incarcerated youths
are in privately run
facilities, but most
states don't know
what data they track
in those facilities.

39%

Privately run
facilities

State-run
facilities

States do not
collect the same
outcome data
in privately run
facilities

20%

States collect
the same
outcome data
in privately run
facilities

20%

60%
Unsure what outcome data
are collected in privately
run facilities

20

NUMBER OF STATES

17

15

13

12

do not hold schools inside juvenile correctional facilities-
which can be run by the states,
private companies, or nonprofit
organizations-accountable for
providing students with curricula
aligned with a state's college- and
career-readiness standards. And
many do not have rigorous oversight of educational programs at
those facilities as they do for regular public schools.
While the number of juveniles in
state custody has dropped in the
past decade and a half, from more
than 75,000 in 1997 to just under
36,000 in 2013, the proportion of juveniles in privately run and locally
run facilities grew from 46 percent
to 61 percent. That trend makes it
harder to ensure that all students
have access to programs of the same
quality. (The council's survey did not
include all facilities where juveniles
are locked up, including those in
adult prisons.)
And students are not just shortchanged educationally when they
are incarcerated, the report says.
A number of states do not provide
transition services to help juveniles re-enter the community, leaving it up to students, their parents,
schools, and communities to figure
out what to do once they are released, according to the report.
"There is no subset of youth in
more acute need of educational
services than incarcerated youth,"
Michael Thompson, the director of
the Council of State Governments
Justice Center, said in a conference
call with reporters when the report
was released.
He added: "If there is any hope
of getting their lives back on track,
they are going to need a better education."
The report comes as criminal-justice reform has become a bipartisan
issue in statehouses and in Congress. There's also more scrutiny of
the so-called school-to-prison pipeline. That pipeline, advocates say,
begins with zero-tolerance disciplinary policies for minor infractions,
which disproportionately ensnare
African-American and Latino students in the criminal-justice system.

Complaints in Maryland

Enrollment in
public schools

GED or
equivalent
earned

High School
diploma
earned

Enrollment in
job training
program

Enrollment in
postsecondary
institutions

SOURCE: Council of State Governments Justice Center

12 | EDUCATION WEEK | December 9, 2015 | www.edweek.org

Efforts are also underway to expand educational and vocational
opportunities for those in juvenile
facilities and smooth their re-entry
into the community. Last December,
the U.S. Department of Education
released a new set of guidance for
improving education services for incarcerated youths, and in July, the
Obama administration announced
the Second Chance Pell Pilot program, which would help incarcerated students apply for Pell Grants
for postsecondary education and

training. These programs all aim to
reduce recidivism and equip incarcerated individuals with tools to find
jobs when they are released.
The council's findings underscore
what Barbara Dezmon, the education
chair of the Maryland State Conference of the NAACP, and Grace Reusing, a public defender in Maryland
who represents juvenile defendants,
said they have seen in their state.
In November, the Maryland chapter of the NAACP filed a complaint
with civil rights officials in the U.S.
departments of Education and Justice, requesting that both agencies
investigate the "poor provision" of
education services for incarcerated
juveniles in Maryland.
The complaint, which the NAACP
declined to make public, asks federal officials to look into such areas
as the state's failure to maintain
and transfer the academic records of
incarcerated students; the absence
of qualified special education teachers in math and English; the ability
of students to take part in statewide
assessments; and a failure to properly manage individualized education programs, or IEPs, for special
education students.

State's Response
A spokesman for the Maryland
Department of Education, which
oversees education programs at the
state's 14 juvenile-detention facilities, said officials had not seen the
complaint as of early December, so
he could not comment on it.
Dezmon of the NAACP said the
complaint is based, in part, on some
of the legal actions that Reusing, the
public defender, previously brought
against the state. In some of those
cases, the state acknowledged violations. In 2013, for example, Reusing filed a complaint on behalf
of seven students with disabilities
and all students in Maryland's juvenile facilities, alleging a number of
violations, including that the state
did not abide by certain provisions
of the Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act.
Among the charges were allegations that the state did not provide
special education students with instruction that would enable them to
be involved in, or make progress in,
the general education curriculum,
and not ensuring that proper procedures were followed in reviewing
and assessing students' IEPs.
In its response, the Maryland
superintendent's office acknowledged that the state education
department had not "consistently"
ensured before 2014 that students
in all its facilities had access to
courses that would enable them to
make progress in the general curriculum. On the IEP charge, the
response said there was documentation that its facilities had not
been "consistently provided with
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