Enhancing Educators' Capacity to Stop the School‐to‐Prison Pipeline

• Date: 01 July 2013
• Author: Greta Colombi,Jane G. Coggshall,David Osher
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12040
• Published date: 01 July 2013

ENHANCING EDUCATORS’ CAPACITY TO STOP THE

SCHOOL-TO-PRISON PIPELINE

Jane G. Coggshall, David Osher, and Greta Colombi

In this article, we, a group of experts from three federally funded educational technical assistance centers housed at the

American Institutes for Research, describe four ways teachers and school leaders can affect children’s trajectory into and

through the pipeline to prison. We then detail the competencies necessary to promote the kinds of positive interactions with

children, youth, and their families that will help block the pipeline. We also describe promising approaches to enhancing those

competencies and capacities among educators throughout their career continuum. Examples of successful research-based

initiatives for each approach are included.

Keypoints:

Teachers and school administrators can affect children’s trajectory into and through the pipeline to prison in at least four

ways: (1) through their relationships, (2) through their attitudes and social emotional competence, (3) bycontributing to the

conditions for learning, and (4) through their responses to student behavior.

• Educator competencies to block the pipeline to prison include the ability to establish supportive and productive

relationships with students and their families and the ability to model social emotional competence and integrate social

emotion learning strategies/activities/programs into the academic curriculum throughout the school year, among others.

• Enhancing educator competencies to block the pipeline requires a holistic approach, from improving preparation to

ongoing professional learning.

Keywords: Conditions For Learning;Educator Quality;Professional Development;Safe and Supportive Schools;Social

Emotional Competence;and Social Emotional Learning.

Teachers, principals and other school-based personnel play a vital role in stopping the school-to-

prison pipeline. Through their interactions with children, youth and their families, educators can

ameliorate (or exacerbate) the impact of factors—such as poverty, discrimination, trauma and lack

of appropriate health care, among others—that can lead to learning and behavioral problems, delin-

quency, arrest, incarceration and recidivism (Osher, Quinn, Poirer, & Rutherford, 2003; Osher,

Woodruff, & Sims, 2002). When educators have the competencies and capacity—the knowledge,

skills, beliefs, values, attitudes, experiences and supports—to effectively address the diverse aca-

demic, social and emotional learning needs of all students and to build positive conditions for

learning, they not only can begin to redress the overrepresentation of students of color in the

pipeline to prison but also put more students on paths to successful futures. Ensuring that educators

have this capacity is critically important and requires focused attention on each aspect of the

educators’ career continuum—recruitment, preparation, induction and ongoing professional learn-

ing and development.

In this paper, we—a group of experts from three federally funded educational technical assistance

centers housed at American Institutes for Research (AIR)1—describe educators’ role in the school-

to-prison pipeline and detail the competencies necessary to promote the kinds of positive interactions

with children, youth and their families that will help block the pipeline. We then describe promising

approaches to enhancing those competencies and capacities among educators throughout their career

continuum. Examples of successful research-based initiatives for each approach are included.

Corresponderce: jmcconnochie@air.org; dosher@air.org; gcolombi@air.org

FAMILY COURT REVIEW,Vol. 51 No. 3, July 2013 435–444

© 2013 Association of Familyand Conciliation Cour ts