Lizbet Simmons: The Prison School: Educational Inequality and School Discipline in the Age of Mass Incarceration

Excerpt

The Prison School: Educational Inequality and School Discipline in the Age of Mass Incarceration, by Lizbet Simmons, uses a case study of The Prison School in New Orleans, Louisiana as a lens to examine the results of undereducation and overcriminalization in a society where African American boys are being pushed out of school and pulled into the criminal justice system. The author interviews two students, Jamal and Spider, who attended the Prison School, along with the sheriff of the Prison School and locals who had first-hand experience with the school and uses their accounts to gain a better understanding of what is happening in urban schools. Throughout the book, Simmons introduces and explores new perspectives on the punitive approach in urban schools. She coins a new model, the Push/ Pull model, in opposition to the School-to-Prison Pipeline, and blames the punitive discipline approach for aiding in the black prison diaspora. …