• Cognitive-behavioral interventions (CBIs) promote self-regulation, problem-solving, and emotional control, thereby reducing the frequency and intensity of disruptive behaviors (Forness, Freeman, Paparella, Kauffman, & Walker, 2012).
• Check-In/Check-Out (CICO) provides consistent positive reinforcement and feedback to improve behavior and academic engagement (Campbell & Anderson, 2011).
• Self-management strategies—a set of strategies in which the students themselves are trained—can be used to teach students to monitor and regulate their own behavior, which reduces disruptive behaviors and increases academic engagement (Briesch & Chafouleas, 2009).

• Creating Formal Transition Plans. Successful transition programs include individualized transition plans, which involve collaboration among juvenile justice facilities, schools, and community services. These plans serve to provide consistent support and resources across the settings that youth will engage (Mathur & Schoenfeld, 2010). The plans should include specific academic and behavioral interventions designed to support the students as they manage the ongoing challenges of returning to school, and they should include mentoring or counseling to facilitate social and emotional adjustment (Griller Clark, Mathur, & Helding, 2011).
• Anticipating Challenges. Schools should consider potential disciplinary challenges the student may encounter and develop prevention and intervention strategies that the student and educators can employ to alleviate such challenges. (See the behavioral interventions listed above.)
• Strengthening the Individualized Education Program. Finally, the Individualized Education Program (IEP) team should carefully review the IEP plan and ensure that the student is receiving all services and supports necessary to be successful in the public school and make any appropriate changes to the plan.

• Increasing the availability of behavioral health resources and counseling services to address underlying issues that may contribute to behavioral problems (Eklund, Rossen, & Koriakin, 2018).
• Examining the role of law enforcement in disciplinary issues and ensuring that law enforcement, including SROs, only intervene when there is a crime.
• Increasing training for teachers about students with disabilities and ensuring that all educators who work with students with disabilities understand each student’s unique disability-related needs and implement appropriate interventions with fidelity.

 

More than half of the young people who are involved in the juvenile justice system have a disability. Researchers estimate that as many as 70 percent of youth who enter this system “have a mental health, sensory, or learning disability.”1

Perhaps even more concerning is the fact that any one of these students “is more likely to stay engaged” in that system, according to research by the National Center for Learning Disabilities.2 And, not surprisingly, it turns out that any degree of contact with the justice system—even minimal—results in “long-term harm to young people,” wrote the Alliance for Boys and Men of Color.3

How do kids end up getting caught up in this system in the first place? Numerous factors, often in combination, can lead (or push) someone in this direction. For example, children whose parents have been incarcerated are three times more likely than their peers to end up involved in the juvenile justice system.4 Dangerous neighborhoods and peer behavior can also contribute.5 Another common path is the school-to-prison pipeline: a “series of practices and policies that funnel children and adolescents from public schools into our juvenile and criminal systems,” according to the American Bar Association (ABA).

Despite Supreme Court rulings “that children are not to be treated as little adults,” ABA also states that this pipeline has criminalized “childhood and adolescence and has disproportionately affected our most vulnerable populations—youth of color, youth with mental health issues, youth with educational disabilities, and youth who identify as LGBTQ+.”6

The pipeline often starts with punitive discipline practices, according to researchers in sociology and justice studies from Bowling Green: “Youth who experience punitive punishment in schools are increasingly enmeshed within the criminal justice system.”7 These practices include suspensions, expulsions, and detentions, all of which “remove from the learning environment many of the very students who could benefit most from being in school.”

While many researchers call these practices “reactive, exclusionary, and ineffective,”8 they paradoxically tend to increase the severity and incidence of the very behaviors that schools are ostensibly trying to decrease or eliminate.9 Other school practices that strengthen the pipeline include zero tolerance policies; the use of metal detectors, pat-downs and frisks, and police involvement when incidents could be handled within the school.

Arguments in favor of punitive approaches to school discipline typically insist on the need for safety in schools. Yet The Advancement Project found that serious behavioral infractions “were actually declining before zero tolerance policies took hold.”10 What these policies actually reflect, according to research, are the pressures that schools are often under to improve graduation rates and testing scores, which can be artificially achieved by “pushing out low-performing students into GED programs and the juvenile justice system.”11 Other policy studies suggest that the privatization of prisons has created incentives for over-incarcerating people of all ages.12

A Turning Point   One research review refers to punitive school discipline practices as “a turning point both toward increased risk of arrest and increased levels of offending as youth progress through school.” This same study goes on to describe how punitive school discipline also “can contribute to increased turmoil within the family, sever student bonds to their family and school, and place youth at greater risk of dropping out of school.”   —Paul Hemez, John Brent, and Thomas J. Mowen. (2020). “Exploring the School-to-Prison Pipeline: How School Suspensions Influence Incarceration During Young Adulthood.” Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice. 18(3): 235–255. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8277150/

Punitive and exclusionary practices are unjust and disproportionately applied.13 Students of color, students from low-income backgrounds, English learners, students with disabilities, and students who identify as LGBTQ are most often on the receiving end. According to research from the U.S. Department of Education, these patterns start as early as preschool.14

 

Additionally damaging is how these practices “other” students, that is, place them outside of the school community psychologically as well as physically. Decades of research shows that “schools are cultural contexts that have the power and potential to promote students’ cultural assets.” Punitive discipline policies do the opposite; they “other youth in a way that keeps them from creating meaningful academic identities.”15

No one is suggesting that youth who misbehave—regardless of ability, disability, or identity—should be summarily excused from taking responsibility for their behavior; nor that their infractions should be ignored or diminished. But since research has shown for years that punitive discipline practices do not help the very students in most need of their school’s support, what does work? How can schools keep order, and promote learning—while preventing youth from having even the minimal contact with juvenile justice that results in “long-term harm”?

Decades of both experience and research have pointed to several proven approaches to school discipline that help struggling students learn how to behave and, perhaps as important, re-engage constructively with their school community after an occasion of misbehavior. Restorative justice practices, culturally informed teaching, trauma-informed classrooms, and school-wide positive behavioral interventions and supports (SWPBIS) head the list of the most successful ways to address the needs of all students—while keeping struggling students engaged in their classes, out of the juvenile justice system, and on track for a successful launch into adulthood.

A fight takes place in school. But rather than suspending or expelling the students involved, those students sit down to talk—with adults trained in mediation—about what happened, why it happened, what harm was done, and what can be done to repair that harm.

The discovery process in these conversations—which are part of a restorative justice approach to school discipline—are crucial to healing and change for all students. 

 

Perhaps the student who threw the first punch was being bullied. Or perhaps his grandmother had just died. Or her sister was missing.

By looking to the source of the conflict (and often the student’s pain), school staff can find the information they need to offer long-term support—and avoid unhelpful punishment. In this way, restorative justice also helps to create a culture of diversion so that no student becomes involved with the police or the juvenile justice system except as a very last resort and in the wake of outright criminal behavior.

Research by the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges shows that a significant percentage of students are in fact suspended or expelled for trivial or minor offenses (e.g., “being disrespectful” or violating school dress code).16 Restorative justice helps to counter this trend. And as a research-proven approach to fully addressing any harm that a person causes, restorative justice emphasizes the process of healing the relationships that were disrupted. The goal is to guide the person who is responsible for harm to do right by the community, and then for the community to find an authentic way to welcome the individual back as a full and respected member.

When a student questions a classroom order or a school rule, one teacher might praise the student for her critical thinking skills and go on to engage the child and her schoolmates in further discussion about the student’s question—the reasons behind the rule, any school history that shaped the rule, the importance of thinking critically about anything we’re asked to do, and so on. Another teacher may see the same question as disrespectful, disruptive, or defiant. And then, “one of two things may take place,” especially if the student is culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD), according to the National Center on Culturally Responsive Education Systems: “Many CLD students are referred for special education evaluation and consequently diagnosed with Emotional/Behavioral Disorders (EBD) or else become part of a cycle of suspension with greater risk for school expulsion.”17 Students of color, especially boys, and students with disabilities also are disproportionately punished in schools, with punishments often very subjectively applied.18

Educators can correct these kinds of disparities by using culturally responsive discipline policies and practices, which help all school staff respond with an understanding of how behavior is shaped by culture—and address challenges in a way that both supports the students and holds them accountable for their behavior.

 

Specifically, culturally responsive classrooms are led by educators who are knowledgeable about the cultures of the students they teach. The teachers learn as much as they can about the values, practices, and beliefs of those cultures and how each element might influence a child’s behavior, approach to learning, and motivation. The teacher invites the students themselves to help create classroom norms. Students see themselves and their cultures reflected in assignments. At the same time, all students are held to the highest standard, regardless of race, culture, or socio-economic level.

Culturally responsive teaching may be more work, but it reduces student discipline problems, promotes academic success, and prevents the disproportionate representation of culturally and linguistically diverse students in special education.19

 

Children and youth who experience personal or even secondary trauma often cannot learn. To ignore this fact is to ignore human neurology.20

A wide range of experiences can be traumatic for a child—bullying in the lunch room (or on social media), for example, or the death of a family member, a natural disaster, sexual abuse or physical violence in the home. The list is long.21
Signs of trauma can include aggressive or sexualized behavior, poor impulse control, and oppositional behavior, as well as inattention, an inability to solve problems or to focus, and difficulty processing information.22,23 In a school with conventional discipline policies, every one of these signs of trauma can be categorized as “misbehavior” and deserving of punishment.

But when schools and classrooms are trauma informed, punishment is never a first response. Teachers recognize the symptoms of trauma and know how to respond. They also know that behavior, especially challenging or puzzling behavior, is an attempt to communicate; and they develop the ability to listen and reflect, to consider what is behind the behavior, and to invite the child to share in the effort to figure it out.

But teachers are not, and should not be expected to be, therapists. Trauma-informed schools provide backup so that teachers can refer a struggling child to someone more expert. This might be the school counselor, social worker, or assistant principal—all of whom then are trained to respond to behavior that stems from trauma. In a trauma-informed school, “all administrators, staff, students, families, and community members recognize and respond to the potentially negative behavioral, relational, and academic impact of traumatic stress.”24

A trauma-informed classroom involves even more, however, than a knowledgeable and discerning teacher backed up by a trauma-informed personnel and referral protocols. Exposure to trauma can significantly disrupt a person’s ability to self-regulate, both physically and emotionally—two forms of control that contribute to a child’s school success.25 Attending to the social-emotional needs of children by teaching these regulation skills is an important part of a trauma-informed classroom.

Finally, these classrooms are designed so that the learning environment is predictable and students have some agency over how they learn and participate. This kind of environment gives children who have experienced trauma a sense of safety and control over what is going to happen and how they learn—something that trauma often deprives them of. In general, a predictable classroom reflects the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), which benefits all students.

 

Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) treats behavior as a subject to be learned by all students. Within a PBIS structure, school staff do not assume that children know how to behave. Instead, students are given direct instruction on the norms and protocols of school life, activities, and behaviors (e.g., how to wait in line, how to pass by other students in the hallway, how to take turns talking in class). As well as being explicitly taught, these behaviors are positively and consistently reinforced throughout the school campus by all staff, from principals to custodial engineers to teachers and classroom aides.

PBIS is also an ongoing commitment to supporting students, educators, and families by creating a school system that does the following:

 

 

Research from the National Institutes for Health has shown that when an entire school staff is trained in school-wide PBIS (SWPBIS), the approach works: behavioral problems diminish and positive behaviors increase.26 The approach also helps to prevent violent behavior27 and bullying.28

 

The Disability Rights and Defense Fund refers to SWPBIS as one way to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline.29 And while many schools that implement SWPBIS continue to use exclusionary and punitive discipline practices, this co-existence can reflect a lack of commitment to every student more than a failure of PBIS.

When executed with fidelity, PBIS creates a tiered system of support that makes it possible to address the behavioral needs of every student—from the boy who was so excited about making the volleyball team that he forgot that he wasn’t supposed to run in the hall to the girl who physically threatened a classmate for stealing her Percocet.

No school leader would see as easy the task of incorporating into a school system any one of these approaches. But when each—restorative justice practices, trauma-informed classrooms, culturally-responsive teaching, SWPBIS—is used with fidelity within a school culture that values relationships, school becomes the place where children learn, make mistakes, and then learn some more.

Building a Positive School Environment Through Restorative Practices. S. Klevan (October 2021). Learning Policy Institute. https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/wce-positive-school-climate-restorative-practices-brief

 

Helping Traumatized Children Learn. (n.d.).Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative. https://traumasensitiveschools.org/

 

 

1. SOS Project. (n.d.). Youth with undiagnosed or mistreated disabilities. Coalition for Juvenile Justice. https://www.juvjustice.org/our-work/safety-
opportunity-and-success-project/national-standards/section-i-principles-responding-2

2. Snydman, J. (2022). Unlocking Futures: Youth with Learning Disabilities and the Juvenile Justice System. National Center for Learning Disabilities.

3. Choi, A. (2023). Dismantling the School-to-Prison Pipeline in California: Giving Schools More Discretion in Responding to Student Behaviors. Berkeley Journal of Criminal Law. https://www.bjcl.org/blog/dismantling-the-school-to-prison-pipeline-in-california-giving-schools-more-discretion-in-responding-to-student-behaviors

4. Walenciak, Sienna. The Facts About Intergenerational Incarceration. Televerde Foundation. https://www.televerdefoundation.org/the-facts-about-intergenerational-incarceration/

5. Chung, H. L, & Laurence Steinberg, L. (March 2006). “Relations Between Neighborhood Factors, Parenting Behaviors, Peer Deviance, and Delinquency Among Serious Juvenile Offenders.” Developmental Psychology, 42(2): 319–331. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2791995/

6. Blitzman, Jay. (October 12, 2021). Shutting down the school-to-prison pipeline. American Bar Association. https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/empowering-youth-at-risk/shutting-down-the-school-to-prison-pipeline/

7. Hemez, P., Brent, J. J., & Mowen, T. J. (July 2020). Exploring the school-to-prison pipeline: How school suspensions influence incarceration during young adulthood. Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice. 18(3): 235–255. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8277150/

8. Liaupsin, C. J., Jolivette, K., & Scott, T. M. (2004). School wide systems of behavior support: Maximizing student success in schools. In R. B. Rutherford, M. M. Quinn, & S. R. Mathur (Eds.). Handbook of Research in Emotional and Behavioral Disorders (pp. 487–501). New York: Guilford Press).

9. Turnbull, A., Edmonson, H., Griggs, P., Wickham, D., Sailor, W., Freeman, et al. (2002). A blueprint for school wide positive behavior support. Exceptional Children, 68, 377–402.

10. Advancement Project. (March 2005). Education on Lockdown: The Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Track. Author, p. 11. https://www.njjn.org/uploads/digital-library/Education-on-Lockdown_Advancement-Project_2005.pdf

11. Villalobos, J. G., & Bohannan, T. L. (2017). The Intersection of Juvenile Courts and Exclusionary School. National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges. https://www.ncjfcj.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/NCJFCJ_SJP_Courts_SchoolDiscipline_Final.pdf

12. Young, S. (2020). Capital and the carceral state: Prison privatization in the United States and United Kingdom. Harvard International Review. https://hir.harvard.edu/us-uk-prison-privatization/

13. Education Policy Innovation Center. (2021). From Exclusionary to Restorative: An Intentional, Trauma-Sensitive Approach to Interrupting Racial Disparities, Reducing Violence, Strengthening Communities, and Accelerating Student Learning, page 13. https://educationminnesota.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/EPIC-student-discipline-report.pdf

14. U. S. Department of Education. (2020). Guiding Principles for Creating Safe, Inclusive, Supportive, and Fair School Climates. https://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/school-discipline/guiding-principles.pdf

15. Yeh, C., Cruz, I., Berero, N., & Suda, J.(2012). School as a context for “othering” youth and promoting cultural assets. February 2012. Teachers College Record 114(2):13. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265848395_School_as_a_Context_for_Othering_Youth_and_Promoting_Cultural_Assets

16. Villalobos, J. G., & Bohannan, T. L. (2017). The Intersection of Juvenile Courts and Exclusionary School. National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges. https://www.ncjfcj.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/NCJFCJ_SJP_Courts_SchoolDiscipline_Final.pdf

17. King, K. A., Harris-Murri, N. J., & Artiles, A. J. (2006). Proactive culturally responsive discipline. Exemplar Brief Series. National Center for Culturally Responsive Educational Systems (NCCRESt). Tempe, AZ: The Equity Alliance.

18. Johnston, E. M, Montalbano, P. D., & Kirkland, D. E. (2017). Culturally Responsive Education: A Primer for Policy and Practice. New York: Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools, New York University. https://docs.steinhardt.nyu.edu/pdfs/metrocenter/atn293/pdf/CRE_Brief_2017_PrintBooklet_170817.pdf

19. King, Harris-Murri, & Artiles, 2006.

20. Suzuki, H., et al. (May 10, 2014). Early life stress and trauma and enhanced limbic activation to emotionally valenced faces in depressed and healthy children. The Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 53 (7):800–13. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24954829/

21. National Child Traumatic Stress Network. (n.d.). Trauma types. https://www.nctsn.org/what-is-child-trauma/trauma-types

22. The National Child Traumatic Stress Network. (n.d.). What is a traumatic event? https://www.nctsn.org/what-is-child-trauma/about-child-trauma

23. Center for Early Childhood Mental Health. (n.d.) Trauma signs and symptoms” https://www.ecmhc.org/tutorials/trauma/mod3_1.html

24. The National Child Traumatic Stress Network. (n.d.). Creating, Supporting, and Sustaining Trauma-Informed Schools: A System Framework. https://www.nctsn.org/sites/default/files/resources/creating_supporting_sustaining_trauma_informed_schools_a_systems_framework.pdf

25. Brickman, S., Fox, M., & Pat-Horenczyk, R. (2022). Self-regulation capacities in children exposed to trauma and political violence. In C. W. Greenbaum, et al. (Eds.), Handbook of Political Violence and Children: Psychosocial Effects, Intervention, and Prevention Policy, pp. 323–343. https://academic.oup.com/book/36915/chapter-abstract/322181566sexual

26. Bradshaw, C. P., Waasdorp, T. E., & Leaf, P. J. (November 2012). Effects of school-wide positive behavioral interventions and supports on child behavior problems. Pediatrics, 130(5): e1136–e1145. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3483890/

27. PBIS Leadership. (2019). Preventing & Responding to Violent Behavior in Schools. PBIS. https://www.pbis.org/resource/preventing-
responding-to-violent-behavior-in-schools

28. PBIS. (n.d.). “Bullying Prevention.” https://www.pbis.org/topics/bullying-prevention

29. Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund. School to Prison Pipeline. DREDF. https://dredf.org/legal-advocacy/school-to-prison-pipeline/

 

 

Any formal or informal effort to prevent a young person from becoming involved in the juve­nile justice system is called “diver­sion.” These approaches do not minimize problem behavior. They hold youth accountable for the wrong they have done but “with­out resort­ing to legal sanc­tions, court over­sight, or the threat of confinement.”[1]

 

According to research by the Annie E Casey Foundation, “at least 60 percent of juvenile cases—and likely a larger percentage—could be safely diverted if formal probation was limited to only youth with serious offenses or those otherwise assessed to be a risk to public safety.”[2] As important are the decades of research showing that “diversion is more effective in reducing recidivism than conventional judicial interventions.”[3]

Diversion efforts are most successful when they are flexible and responsive to each person and situation. The most common approaches to diversion include one or several of the following components:

 

Family involvement is often key to successful diversion efforts. When a school includes a student’s parents, guardian, or other family members in the work of diverting a student from delinquent behavior and toward school engagement and beneficial out-of-school activities, the likelihood of the student leaving behind self-sabotaging or destructive behaviors improves significantly. 

 

Whatever form it takes, the purpose of diversion is to give young people the time they need to mature into adulthood, with­out being thrown off track by the neg­a­tive effects of jus­tice sys­tem involve­ment, “includ­ing a crim­i­nal record that can seri­ous­ly dam­age young people’s future oppor­tu­ni­ties for employ­ment and high­er education.”[5]

 

In simple financial terms, diversion makes sense. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, “it costs an average of  $588 per day  to incarcerate a young person; alternatives like diversion can cost approximately $75 a day.”[6]

 

References:

[1] The Annie E Casey Foundation. (2020). What Is Diversion in Juvenile Justice? https://www.aecf.org/blog/what-is-juvenile-diversion

[2] The Annie E Casey Foundation. (2018). Transforming Juvenile Probation:  A Vision for Getting it Right. https://www.aecf.org/resources/transforming-juvenile-probation

[3] Holly A. Wilson and Hoge, Robert D. (2012). The Effect of Youth Diversion Programs on Recidivism: A Meta-Analytic Review. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 40(5), 497–518. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0093854812451089

[4] Youth.gov. (n.d.). Service-Learning. https://youth.gov/youth-topics/civic-engagement-and-volunteering/service-learning

[5] The Annie E. Casey Foundation. (2019). Kids Deserve Better: Why Juvenile Detention Reform Matters. https://www.aecf.org/blog/kids-deserve-better-why-juvenile-detention-reform-matters

[6] National Council of State Legislatures. (2022). Diversion in the Juvenile Justice System. https://www.ncsl.org/civil-and-criminal-justice/diversion-in-the-juvenile-justice-system

 

 

 

Most adults who look back on their adolescence remember some kind of misbehavior— and even a few embarrassing mistakes. In fact, making mistakes during the pre-teen and teen years is developmentally normal, and at times even appropriate.[1] Most people grow up and grow out of whatever immature tendencies they had in their youth.

 

But for some, that misbehavior leads to involvement in the juvenile justice system. Oftentimes this involvement goes hand in hand with drug or alcohol use.[2]

 

Few would argue against the importance of supporting both the recovery of these young people and their smooth re-entry into their neighborhood public schools, whether they’re transitioning from a recovery program or a court school. Most parents and educators understand the importance of guiding all young people toward not engaging in substance abuse in the first place, and recovery schools provide ideas for what this kind of guidance can look like.

 

 

Since the late 1970s, recovery high schools have focused on creating a social and educational environment to support students with substance use issues to not use drugs or alcohol (i.e., stay “clean and sober”)[3] while earning a high school diploma. These schools are not treatment programs, even though many of their students have been through treatment for addiction. The only requirement for attending a recovery school is the desire to stop “using.”

 

Statistics for Juvenile Drug and Alcohol Use

Drug use went up by 61 percent among eighth graders between 2016 and 2020. Of teenagers in twelfth grade, 62 percent have abused alcohol. Fifty percent of teenagers have misused a drug at least once.

—National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics. Drug Use Among Youth: Facts and Statistics https://drugabusestatistics.org/teen-drug-use/

This single qualification turns out to be central to the success of these schools, as it creates a collective identity and exerts “this other type of peer pressure, a pressure not to use,” says Andy Finch.

 

Finch is a professor of counseling at Vanderbilt University. He is also co-founder of the Association of Recovery Schools, which was created in 2002 to support and inspire recovery schools across the country.[4]

 

At the same time, Finch would like to see less need for these schools. Public schools could help, he says, by effectively educating students about drugs and alcohol and by providing appropriate early identification and interventions when a student starts showing signs of drug or alcohol misuse.

 

 

Fifty percent of 15-year-olds say they have tried alcohol. That number increases to almost 70 percent by the time students are seniors in high school, at which point 50 percent also will have experimented with illegal drugs, and “more than 20 percent will have used a prescription drug for a nonmedical purpose,” according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.[5]

 

Most kids will experiment and come to no harm. But some will flounder. In the face of these facts (see also sidebars), what can schools do to help those who are vulnerable?

 

Finch does not think that schools can solve every issue that students have, especially problems with drugs and alcohol, which, he says, often reflect a set of complicated factors that need specialized treatment. “But our schools have a very central role in the lives of our children. Teachers are with our kids seven, eight hours a day. They have a captive audience.”

 

Deaths from Overdose

An average of 22 adolescents 14 to 18 years of age died in the United States each week in 2022 from drug overdoses, raising the death rate for this group to 5.2 per 100,000. The presence of fentanyl in counterfeit pills is the primary cause.

—UCLA Health. https://www.uclahealth.org/news/release/about-22-high-school-age-adolescents-died-each-week#:~:text=An%20average%20of%2022%20 adolescents,counterfeit%20pills% 2C%20new%20research%20finds

Finch cautions against placing more burdens on teachers. “We shouldn’t be expecting our teachers to be our interventionists or to be doing our screenings,“ he says. But he does recommend training teachers to be aware of the issues and the signs.

 

“Whether it’s learning disabilities, mental health issues, trauma, or substance use issues, there are a lot of things that our teachers need to have an awareness of,” says Finch. Being aware of drug and alcohol use, he says, and knowing what to do when they sense a problem can help start the process of getting a student back on a healthy trajectory—but it’s only a first of several critical steps.

 

“Teachers need somebody in the building” who can respond to their concerns, “someone trained in alcohol and drug awareness issues,” says Finch. This could be a school counselor, a social worker, or an alcohol and drug counselor. Once a teacher senses something out of order, the person with the specialized training can then take over.

 

“The reality,” says Finch, “is that if kids are going to develop a problem—and some are—they’re starting at a young age. Middle school is an appropriate time to start doing things like screening”—something that the trained referral person can conduct. “But a screening is only helpful if you then have the follow-up,” says Finch. “You also need an administration and a school district that value the information” that a screening provides and then are willing to intervene as appropriate. “Committed leadership and a team approach in a school are essential for even these first two steps to happen.” While Finch cautions that a screening is not a diagnosis, it can indicate whether a student is engaging in problematic drug or alcohol use.

 

In support of these efforts, Finch sees value in creating a place in school where students can receive counseling for their use. “For a large number of students, that’s all it would take to bring awareness to a growing alcohol or drug issue and maybe even put them on a path to either not using or, if they are going to use, to do so more responsibly.” 

 

There will always be students “who need a more targeted message. Very few are going to require treatment, but you could do a lot with early intervention for kids who are developing problematic drug and alcohol use.”

 

When students are found with drugs or alcohol in school, Finch would like to see the attitudes and responses that schools take “turned on their heads. Instead of seeing it as an infraction or a challenge, see it as a huge opportunity,” he says. “You now can intervene early.[6] You could also be taking kids off the path of going to jail. ”

 

“All of these things,” he says, “are not lessons from recovery high schools but just lessons from what we know about what works in the field of substance use.”

Healthy-Use Strategies from Andy Finch

Perhaps the healthiest use strategy is to delay the onset of using as long as possible to allow the brain to develop. But if a teenager is going to drink or use drugs, healthy use strategies involve such things as:

Being aware of what one is using (e.g., making sure nothing has been put into a drink or laced with fentanyl).  Knowing how what you’re using might affect you, based on your biology (size, age, sex, etc.) and genetics. Moderating your use.  Using in a safe setting and with supportive peers (to reduce risks of physical and sexual violence, theft, etc.).  Making sure you have overdose protection (such as having Narcan nearby, fentanyl test strips, etc.).  Being mindful of diet (such as having water available to hydrate and not drinking on an empty stomach).  Having designated drivers. Having a way to leave a party or event if you don’t feel safe or want to stop using or not use.

Learn more about “harm reduction” strategies in the article “Developing Harm Reduction in the Context of Youth Substance Use: Insights from a Multi-site Qualitative Analysis of Young People’s Harm Minimization Strategies,” by Emily K. Jenkins, Allie Slemon, & Rebecca J. Haines-Saah, in Harm Reduction Journal 14(53).

 

Regardless of the approach a school takes to addressing issues of drug and alcohol use, Finch advises everyone involved to be realistic about how adolescents recover from addiction. “We now know that addiction is a chronic relapsing condition,” he says. “To expect someone who is 15 to not return to use after deciding to stop is probably unrealistic.”

 

And whatever schools do with students who are found possessing or using drugs or alcohol, “do not,” Finch says, “adopt a punitive strategy.” Punitive responses to behavior—suspension and expulsion, for example, and zero tolerance policies—aren’t beneficial to any student, “but especially around alcohol or drug abuse.” 

 

Other scholars agree. Russell Skiba, director of the Equity Project at Indiana University, writes in The Failure of Zero Tolerance that, “ironically, zero tolerance policies, once promoted as a solution to youth violence, have created a school to prison pipeline.”[7]

 

Finch calls zero-tolerance “one of the most harmful things we’ve had in our school system. To throw a kid out of school for any length of time for an alcohol or drug infraction, you’re basically kicking a kid out of their support system and giving them license to use more alcohol and drugs because they have a lot of down time. It’s a very harmful approach.”

 

Alex Duncan teaches at a recovery high school in Denver, Colorado.[8] (According to the Association of Recovery Schools, at least 11 recovery high school operated in California between 1989 and 2019, but California currently has no school solely designated for students in recovery.) In Duncan’s school—named 5280 for Denver’s altitude—“we shy very far away from anything punitive.” Instead, the school uses restorative justice practices, which Duncan describes as “the most important aspect of what we do.”

 

Through these practices, he says, students are held accountable for their behavior. “We guide them in a way that helps them restore any relationships that were damaged from the harm that they caused.”

 

Duncan sees profound value in living out the principle of accountability—in having honest conversations, taking responsibility, standing in front of the person who was harmed or who did the harming. “Students here have a really high emotional intelligence,” says Duncan, “because we teach them accountability.”

 

Through restorative justice, the school also focuses on “whatever is happening that is causing the student to have this behavior,” says Duncan. With some understanding of the causes, a school can provide the support the students need to recalibrate their thinking, develop healthy habits, and seek experiences that help them heal from their addiction.

 

A companion focus for many recovery schools is trauma. “We have students as young as twelve with substance abuse issues,” says Duncan. “And you don’t have these issues unless you have experienced trauma of some kind.” Part of creating a healthy place for traumatized youth, he says, is providing professional development training for staff on how traumatized students act and how to respond.

 

“We have a high population of queer students,” says Duncan. “That is a vulnerable group that is more susceptible to drug and alcohol use,” as are students who have lived with racism. The school does “a lot of work educating our students and staff on queer topics, and we have affinity groups for anti-racist work.”

 

Using restorative justice practice, creating trauma-informed classrooms, providing education about and for vulnerable populations, maintaining personnel who are trained in addressing substance use issues—any school can adopt these prevention and response strategies. Not every school, however, can maintain a singular focus on sobriety in the way that recovery schools can.

 

“When you look at most school settings,” says Finch, “kids are managing their use—drinking, smoking, whatever they’re doing—and seem to be fine.” This typical school setting, however, isn’t going to provide “the safest peer group for the kids who need and want to stop using. The drug and alcohol focus of the [recovery] school seems to be really important. You need to create a milieu in which the students aren’t actively using during the school day, aren’t bringing drugs onto the campus, and are trying to stay sober when they go home.” This milieu, says Finch, ensures that students “actually have people to hang out with”—a feature that is critically important, given the power of the peer group at this age. In a recovery school, says Duncan, “partying no longer means using.”

 

While the economics may not make it possible for every community to have a recovery school set up exclusively for students who want to quit using drugs or alcohol, California’s community school movement [9] may offer an opportunity to provide the kinds of support these students need within a junior high or high school setting. Finch believes that this model could create and contain an effective hybrid recovery school for students dealing with addiction. He imagines “a recovery high school within a larger community school.”

 

The host school, he says, would want to “build some boundaries between the kids who don’t have a substance use disorder and the kids who do. But you could share staff. You could teach the first half of the day in one part of the building and the second half of the day in the other part. You could share a counselor and administrator.” This way, he says, the students in recovery would “have their own space, their own schedule, their own program, without blending.”

 

Community schools, says Finch, could also provide what he calls “a cascade of care.” Through their partnerships with local agencies, these schools could offer outpatient treatment and substance use interventions on site during the school day or after school. This treatment could put students on the path to recovery, says Finch, at which point they could transition into the recovery high school that is part of the school. Then, if a student returns to active use after enrolling in the recovery school, “they could receive services on site from a local agency to get back on track with their recovery.” These multi-levels of care, delivered seamlessly in the same setting, “could substantially impact substance use disorders and start erasing the school-to-prison pipeline.”

 

The California Department of Education has, in addition to community schools, initiated and supported numerous other initiatives to prevent students from developing problems with substance use and to support those who are struggling with substance use issues. The state’s recent commitments—to social and emotional learning, positive behavioral interventions and supports, a whole child model of instruction, and universal design for learning—all can help to prevent addiction and to intervene early when there is a problem.

 

Ultimately, says Duncan, successful outcomes for students in recovery happen in a caring community. The degree to which California’s schools can use the state’s many initiatives to create responsive and caring communities may suggest a reliable formula for the school success of all students, including those in recovery.

 

Daniel, S. (2023). “‘Hard to Get Sober Young’: Inside One of the Country’s Few Recovery High Schools.” KFF Health News. https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/teen-substance-misuse-recovery-schools-5280-high-school-denver/

McCoy, D. P. (2016). “High Schools for Addicts.” The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/05/high-schools-for-addicts/482214/

 

References

 

For students with disabilities, students of color, and students who have experienced trauma, patterns of exclusionary discipline are often set early in their school career.

Anything that pulls a student out of a classroom—from out-of-school suspensions or expulsion, to time-outs and trips to the principal’s office—disrupts learning and can lead to further negative interactions with school. It is the responsibility of adults to break the pattern, and kindness is a good place to start.

Figuring out the reasons behind a child’s disruptive behavior in the classroom is key to identifying an appropriate response. If teachers and administrators see all behavior as communication, they can work with families to mitigate problem behavior and build the protective factors to help students succeed.

Heather Snipes is now a program support specialist for the Supporting Inclusive Practices (SIP) project, which provides statewide technical assistance on inclusive and equitable practices. She started her career, however, in the early childhood classroom. From those teaching days, she remembers a two-year old student in a beginning preschool class who communicated loud and clear—through biting. “She bit me many times, and she bit others many times, and there were so many opportunities for the teachers to say, ‘This isn’t working for me. She’s got to go.’”

But Snipes set aside her adult needs and focused on the child. This required relinquishing some control. She chose to be the student’s companion at nap times, helping the two-year-old regulate her emotions and remain still by rubbing her back. “It really helped build a relationship, and she started to trust me.”

They started to talk. “I’d tell her, ‘You know you bit me earlier today, and it really hurt. We’re not going to do that again,’ and we talked about alternatives.” Eventually Snipes started to recognize when the student was feeling the need to bite, and she intervened with kindness and understanding.

When you lead with kindness, says Snipes, “you really do eliminate the times when you might exclude a child. It’s a lot easier to look at the solution when you are coming at it with a strengths-based approach.”

Students with disabilities—including those with attention deficit disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or documented behavioral or conduct problems—are much more likely to experience exclusionary discipline. In one study, parents of children with autism reported that one out of six had been expelled from a preschool or child-care setting prior to elementary school.

Behavioral problems in the classroom also can be signs of trauma or defense mechanisms learned in response to unsafe environments. Teachers who observe signs of hunger, child abuse, alcohol or other drug abuse, or learning disabilities have a chance to intervene in a positive way.

Monica Borunda, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Glendale who specializes in early developmental trauma, says we need to shift the way we think about students who may be acting out.

“Having someone who is on your side, who takes the time to get to know you, believes in you and cares about you—this is a basic need, just like food, clothing, and shelter. And many kids today are reporting that they do not have an adult like this in their lives,” Borunda says. “If we could have a little more compassion and curiosity when we encounter a challenging kid, then we’re more likely to be able to connect and ask questions.”

Discipline is also applied disproportionally to children of color, often in response to relatively minor infractions. Equipping teachers and administrators with tools to recognize their own vulnerable decision points—moments when they are more likely to be influenced by their unconscious bias—can lead to more thoughtful interventions when problem behavior arises. The opportunity to develop positive behaviors is the foundation for preventing youth crime and violence.

Snipes points out that even “soft” expulsions can be detrimental, though they may be well-intentioned. “You can put a cute label on it and call the parents to say ‘so-and-so is extra tired today,’” and ask the parent to come and get the child. “But in reality, you are suspending the child for the day. The second you exclude a child from a setting, you’re creating an experience in which they feel they don’t belong,” she says, and that normalizes exclusion for the child.

Educators must work to build protective factors rather than punishment if they want to disrupt the patterns that lead some kids from the principal’s office to juvenile hall. Developing positive school climates and early learning environments while improving disciplinary policies and practices starts with an investment in the educator workforce.

Snipes believes that the solution begins with teacher preparation programs, community college classes, and credential programs—anywhere adults are learning how to become educators.

She says these programs need to embed concepts such as Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), a multi-tiered framework for supporting students’ behavioral, academic, social, emotional, and mental health; and Universal Design for Learning (UDL), a teaching approach that works to accommodate the needs and abilities of all learners, eliminates unnecessary hurdles in the learning process, and has been proven to help educators avoid exclusionary discipline.
In a PBIS context, “It makes it a lot easier to do those Tier 2 and Tier 3 supports when teachers have the Tier 1 supports embedded in a strong way,” says Snipes. “It takes work off everyone’s shoulders in the long run.”

Snipes likes the metaphor of the 7/10 split in bowling used by Dr. Shelley Moore. The idea is to design your program to include those on the margin, rather than aiming for the middle. This approach is the heart of UDL.

“Before you even meet your kids you should have certain things in place that are going to support that kid who needs an alternative to ‘criss-cross-applesauce’ sitting during circle time, for example,” Snipes says. “Realizing a child can get just as much from a lesson standing, rocking, or lying down often results in a deeper level of engagement—and lower levels of stress—for everyone.”

Intervene early and plan carefully to present a welcoming environment for all students from the start, says Snipes, because exclusion begets exclusion.

In a 2015 study of incarcerated youth in Los Angeles, adolescents contrasted the path through school with the path to jail, reporting that the path to jail felt easier.

Elizabeth Vermilyea, deputy director of Child Parent Institute (CPI) in Santa Rosa, believes educators must increase the pathways for students to succeed in school. “It can be circuitous, it can be challenging, but there’s always a way through.” CPI operates a nonpublic school serving students from grades 5–12, all of whom are referred through the Individualized Education Program (IEP) process.

Vermilyea encourages teachers and staff to treat students “like human beings who matter to us, especially when they are in distress or acting out.”

She says that exclusion can take several forms: physical, emotional, or attentional—and each one looks different. But they all convey that adults are not going to help, which can lead to further dysregulation for the student. “When we take time to be real with students, they can tell we’re sincere,” she says. “It makes a huge difference.”

Vermilyea cautions against zero tolerance policies “because if you get caught, you are out and your life is over. Ruined.” Instead, she encourages connecting with the student and with the rest of the school team. “When kids see that the team is connected and mutually supportive and attached to each other, then they feel safer. And when they feel safer, they act out less.”

She points out that a lot of youth are responding directly to the failure of adults to protect them. This might include problems at home that have led to involvement with the child welfare system, which is then correlated with justice involvement, and is also disproportionally applied to children who are Black, Native American, and low income.

And lastly, she urges educators to not let fear guide their actions. One of the things schools struggle with is seeing liability before they see a child, and she thinks this overly cautious approach only leads to more liability.

Recognizing the signs of stress and trauma in students is key. From her experience as a therapist, Borunda says that educators should pay attention to any extremes in behavior, from aggression and bullying, to withdrawal, isolation, or lack of eye contact. She says other signs can be excessive absences without explanation, or continual tardiness, or stealing. She urges educators to be curious about what may be going on behind the scenes. In interactions with struggling students, she counsels adults to “be a nice, decent human without judgment. You can say ‘I’ve noticed you’ve been late every day since the school year started. I’m wondering what’s going on.’”

 

She encourages educators to be most kind to the ones who might seem most difficult to connect with, just as Snipes was with her two-year-old student. “That’s probably the kid who needs a warm, nurturing adult the most,” Borunda says.

A trauma-informed approach, Vermilyea says, considers the whole child and sees their vulnerabilities as strengths. “The student who is unsheltered, or who has been in a car all night driving around avoiding a domestic violence scene at home, is without their basic needs.” She points to Bruce Perry’s neurosequential model[1] and urges educators to use it to help students succeed “at every level.”

We also know that no single factor can explain why an individual may experience negative outcomes such as delinquency. That makes it all the more important for everyone, from educators to community members, to intervene and support kids as much as possible.

Teachers may not always know when they have made the difference for a child, but Snipes got that opportunity with the two-year-old who had bit her.

Recently, she got a call from that same child who is now 17 and who wanted to share her location with Snipes through her smartphone. She told Snipes “We’re basically family—you’ve known me since I was two.’”

Snipes had been the trusted adult that the child needed. And it all began with kindness.

American Psychological Association (2012). Resilience guide for parents and teachers. https://www.apa.org/topics/resilience/guide-parents-teachers

Glenn, Jonathan (2019). Resilience Matters: Examining the School to Prison Pipeline through the Lens of School-based Problem Behaviors. Justice Policy Journal. https://www.cjcj.org/media/import/documents/resilience_matters_school_to_prison_pipeline_school_based_behavior_problems.pdf

 

1. Learn more about Bruce Perry’s neurosequential model of therapeutics at https://www.bdperry.com.

 

 

 

By Nell Bernstein, former Soros Justice Media Fellow, winner of a White House Champion of Change award, and author of Burning Down the House: The End of Juvenile Prison and All Alone in the World: Children of the Incarcerated.

 

One of the first things MJ Hart does when they meet a student making the difficult journey from juvenile hall to a college campus is ask if the student has been tested for learning disabilities.

Hart, who uses the pronouns “they” and “them,” isn’t making assumptions. Instead, they are drawing from personal experience. They spent their adolescence in and out of juvenile detention—bouncing between court schools and community schools—while nobody noticed their dyslexia and dysgraphia. Though signs of learning disabilities were there, Hart was never evaluated for the IEP one teacher had recommended. After they were sent to juvenile hall, “my IEP was never processed, and I was forgotten in the system,” they said.

Years later, Hart enrolled at Foothill College in Los Altos, where, by chance, they got a job working at the front desk of the Disability Resource Center coordinating screening tests. One day they left a hand-written note on the door of the person who administered the tests. Seeing something in the note, the administrator approached Hart the next day and asked whether they had a learning disability. When Hart said they didn’t know, the administrator suggested they get screened. Only then, said Hart, “did I become aware of my diverse abilities and begin receiving the support I needed and deserved. This experience was crucial in developing my confidence and shifting my consciousness around mental health and equity in support services and education.”

Once they got the supports and accommodations they needed, Hart began to flourish academically. They transferred to UC Santa Cruz and graduated in 2020. The educational needs that weren’t addressed during their years in detention, however, made that journey harder than necessary. Now Hart wants to make sure nothing similar happens to the young people coming up behind them. As the project coordinator for the Pathways to Education project at the Youth Law Center in San Francisco, Hart supports a statewide leadership cohort of formerly incarcerated college students who are attending college with the support of the Rising Scholars Network, a consortium of community colleges across California dedicated to opening opportunities and supporting academic achievement for students who have experienced the juvenile and/or criminal justice systems.

The goal, Hart said, is for every young person who has contact with the juvenile justice system to have the chance to make the transition to college in an environment where their unique educational needs are not only recognized but met. That’s a lot more likely now, thanks to this Rising Scholars Network, which is currently rolling out at community colleges across California.

In 2022, Governor Gavin Newsom allocated $15 million in the state budget for as many as 45 community colleges to participate in the network, which links juvenile halls with community colleges to support students making the transition. An initiative of the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, the Rising Scholars Network now includes 400 practitioners from 75 community colleges.

 

Based on the award-winning Project Change—a decade-long collaboration between the San Mateo County Community College District and that county’s Youth Services Center, which houses detained youth—the Rising Scholars model includes dual-enrollment classes that allow incarcerated teenagers to obtain college and high school credit simultaneously. It also offers a robust network of support to those students who go on to enroll in community college in person.

The statewide expansion of the Rising Scholars model is “a huge, historic move for California,” said Katie Bliss, higher education coordinator for the state at the Youth Law Center. Bliss spent time in the San Mateo juvenile hall as a teenager, then went on to launch Project Change in 2015 while teaching English at the College of San Mateo.

“For too long, young people who are impacted by the juvenile justice system—which includes many young people with disabilities—have not been viewed as college material,” Bliss said, and no clear academic pathway was available to them.
When she was in juvenile hall in the early 2000s, “you had to fight just to get your high school diploma. It’s powerful to see that turning around. There isn’t any other state in the country that has invested this kind of funding in higher education for this population.”

Students with disabilities have long been over-represented in juvenile detention centers. According to a 2023 report from the Youth Law Center, students with disabilities comprise nearly 30 percent of those enrolled in court schools, more than twice the number in the general California public school population. And youth in court schools are well behind their peers in terms of educational attainment. During the 2021–2022 school year, nearly 62 percent of students at even the best performing juvenile court school failed to meet the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress English language arts/literacy (CAASPP ELA) standard, and more than 86 percent failed to meet the CAASPP mathematics standard.

Students with disabilities are often overlooked once they become involved with the youth justice system, Bliss said. When young people bounce back and forth between court and community schools, IEPs can get lost in the shuffle. Even if the paperwork does make it to a detention facility, such accommodations as additional materials or extended time for testing are difficult to provide inside these often understaffed facilities. For this and numerous other reasons, many justice-involved youth do not graduate from high school.

Rising Scholars aims to change this. Inside juvenile detention centers, the program offers dual-enrollment classes that allow students to catch up on high school credits while also getting a head start on college. Liaisons from the community colleges coordinate with county offices of education to track down students’ IEPs, coordinate multidisciplinary team meetings, and work with teachers to ensure students’ needs are met. Once students make the transition to a community college campus, retention specialists help them connect with existing resources, such as campus Disability Resource Centers, and track down new ones according to individual student needs.

SB 178, the legislation that undergirds the Rising Scholars expansion, requires that every community college receiving funding has partnerships in place with other agencies to support justice-involved students with disabilities. These partnerships ensure that a young person with an IEP in juvenile hall in a participating county is offered college as part of a transition plan. A community college representative also participates in multidisciplinary team meetings for the young person. The goal is that every student gets the message that college is an option—and gets the support they need to make it to graduation.

Roger Viet Chung is the lead faculty for the Rising Scholars Initiative at Laney College in Oakland, where he is a professor in the Ethnic Studies Department. Young people who attend high school while they are incarcerated can be “motivated, brilliant people,” he said, but “they’re not necessarily going to be college prepared.” Many have never had the opportunity to take an elective, or the “A through G ” classes that are necessary to attend a University of California school. Some have never been assigned homework before.

Dual enrollment can make a real difference, Chung said, but making it work is difficult in detention settings where there are only small blocks of time available for youth to do schoolwork. Despite the obstacles, many high school students inside the juvenile justice facility in Alameda County are enrolled in college classes.

Making this happen has meant getting creative. Inside the Butler Academic Center in Alameda County’s Juvenile Justice Center, Laney College offers such courses as English and Statistics, but also a one-unit Sports Fitness class that meets in the evening. Physical education is a common credit deficiency among young people who are incarcerated, according to Chung. Another class Laney offers in Alameda County is Media 155, a three-unit sound engineering class. Chung and his colleagues worked with the county probation department to create a music studio inside the juvenile detention center, where students put their new skills to use on the spot creating new music and editing videos.

As with every Rising Scholars program, the dual-enrollment program in Alameda County offers more than academics. Faculty members attend court dates with students to ensure that judges and probation officers are aware of their accomplishments. “We think that we’ve built a pretty thoughtful model around making college work in a variety of ways,” Chung said, ”—working with youth towards their freedom, working with youth towards loving themselves, and then working towards a degree or an occupation.”

Yefry Samael completed his Associate Arts degree at Cabrillo College last spring and is on his way to Cal State Monterey Bay in the fall, where he will major in collaborative health and human services, with a concentration in public administration and nonprofit management. Getting there has been a long journey for Samael, 27, who spent time in juvenile hall and county jail before making his way to college. The Rising Scholars program, he said, “has been instrumental throughout this whole process,” helping with not only testing and other educational needs but “in regards to life.”

The challenges that formerly incarcerated students face are often material as well as educational. While the Rising Scholars program has given Samael opportunities for leadership and personal development, the program has also given him book vouchers, gas cards, even Target gift cards to buy diapers for his baby. When he was struggling with housing insecurity, the Nourishment and Essential Supports Team at Cabrillo College stepped in with an emergency housing grant, which made it possible for him to stay in school. He also sees a mentor and a therapist for support with anxiety and is in the process of arranging for testing for ADHD and other possible learning issues.

Being incarcerated as a teenager “of course you lose your freedom, but you also lose your opportunity for a good education,” said Samael, who founded a Rising Scholars club at Cabrillo College to help others deal with self-sabotaging feelings such as imposter syndrome. If he had been offered the kind of supports Rising Scholars provides earlier, said Samael, who was valedictorian of his high school class when he was incarcerated, “I would have a PhD by now.”

Kelly Nadler works for the Community College Chancellor’s Office where she coordinates the Rising Scholars Network, which serves more than 17,000 incarcerated, formerly incarcerated, and justice-involved students each semester. Since SB 178 was passed, the Chancellor’s Office has awarded 44 of the possible 45 grants to community colleges, each of which now partners with a local juvenile detention center to offer dual-enrollment classes and a pathway to full-time college enrollment. The initiative, Nadler said, “places the dreams and needs of young people at the center of what we do.”

While the program is still getting up and running on many campuses, the state funding will allow each participating college to bring on a full-time coordinator. These coordinators will visit juvenile halls and help young people start seeing themselves in a new light—making concrete plans to make college a reality. This personal attention is essential for students who have often had “disjointed educational experiences,” Nadler said. “Many of them are way behind in high school credit completion. They may have attended multiple high schools and even middle schools. There’s a high rate of students who have been pushed out of high school and have internalized that they are not school material. They’re not smart enough. They’re bad kids.”

Young people with disabilities are especially susceptible to this messaging, Nadler said. For Black and brown students, ADHD is often treated as a disciplinary issue rather than a disability. Some participating colleges are tackling stigma and negative expectations by hiring credible messengers—successful college or masters-level students who have been incarcerated themselves and can help younger teens “build a sense of identity around being a college student” even before they leave juvenile hall.

Once justice-involved youth step onto a college campus and start getting the support they need in order to succeed, their sense of themselves and their potential is transformed, Nadler said. “I can’t tell you how many young people have told me ‘When I got my first A, it changed my life. All of a sudden, I felt so capable.’

“Our detained students have just as strong a right to education as any young person in California,” said Nadler. “Every young person in California is college material.”

 

 

 

 

I became a voting member of the California Advisory Commission on Special Education in 2023. I knew immediately the responsibility that I and other commissioners had to advise the governor, state legislators, the California Department of Education, and the California State Board of Education on the education of students with disabilities across the state. But one group stood out to me as needing a voice more than others: students with disabilities who are incarcerated.
I talked with two experts, Megan Stanton-Trehan and Jim Anderson, to get their advice on what needs to be done to improve and unite the systems of care for these students.

Stanton-Trehan is senior attorney for Disability Rights California. She advocates for system-involved youth in special education and school discipline proceedings. Working on behalf of the students, she has experienced first-hand how difficult it can be for each student’s needs to be met.

Anderson is the director of the Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE) Special Education Local Plan Area (SELPA), which includes Juvenile Courts Schools served by LACOE. He has worked for more than 30 years in education as a special education teacher, school psychologist, assistant principal, principal and regional director. In his current role as SELPA director, he is directly involved in making and strengthening programs and policies and overseeing regional practices for supporting students with disabilities who are involved in juvenile detention facilities. Working within the system, he knows that it is imperfect and evolving.

These experts provide valuable insight from inside and outside the educational and juvenile justice systems. Here is what they had to say.

Anderson says that when students come into juvenile hall, they have with them only what they were carrying at the time of their arrest. “So, we go through a pretty detailed process to identify whether or not they are a student with an IEP [Individualized Education Program] or a student with a[n unidentified] disability.” Staff at the detention facility try to conduct assessments as soon as possible and begin services as quickly as they can, as required by the Child Find mandate of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

Stanton-Trehan says that she has a lot of clients with disabilities who come into detention facilities without an IEP. When they are assessed, they have “all these needs that a school has never met before.” Instead of having addressed the student’s needs, the school might have seen a behavioral problem and responded to it through disciplinary measures.

“And [in the justice facility] sometimes it’s easier to just be like, ‘Oh, well, they’re going to leave soon, so why not just let the next place handle it?’”

First consideration: Make assessment for and identification of a disability a top priority in all schools.

Stanton-Trehan says that the juvenile justice system has to do a better job providing accommodations for students with disabilities. “I had a client that had access to headphones as an accommodation to address distractions. If he needed to focus, he was going to wear his headphones and listen to his music to focus.” In juvenile detention “he was told, ‘No, you can’t have that because everyone else is going to want it, too.’ Then when he tried to advocate for it, it escalated, and then you have a probation officer in the classroom, and it just becomes a challenge.”

She says the classroom in the juvenile justice facility may not always feel like a school setting, even though it is one. In Los Angeles County there are probation officers in all the classrooms, which can feel threatening. Sometimes students do not feel like they are in a safe space. And they don’t always get the services they need, such as counseling, occupational therapy, or speech therapy.

Second consideration: Ensure necessary services and accommodations.

As an educator, Anderson says that one of the biggest challenges he sees is the continuous turnover of students. Juvenile detention facilities have new students coming in every day, and at the same time they have other students leaving. He says that the average stay for youth in a juvenile hall school setting in Los Angeles is 7 to 21 days.

This pattern means that relational dynamics in classrooms are changing every single day, and teachers are writing IEPs continuously. They might write three times the number that a teacher in a public school classroom would write because of the continuous movement of students into the system—and because of the higher rates of disabilities for students in juvenile justice facilities. Furthermore, they might have to write all these IEPs on a short timeline.

If a student already has an IEP before entering detention, it can take a while for that information to be processed in the system and reach the facility. Staff at the juvenile justice facility can request the IEP, but they have to start educating the student immediately without knowing what accommodations and supports the student needs.

Anderson says, “in Los Angeles, we’ve built a system around trying to get records in a more timely way—the Educational Passport System—so that as our students move in and between different systems, we can pull down records to make sure we have them as timely as possible.”

Third consideration: Adopt some version of the Educational Passport System everywhere.

Stanton-Trehan has seen challenges in helping students in juvenile facilities access higher education opportunities with the needed accommodations after they finish their high school coursework.

A transition IEP is critically important for a student inside a juvenile justice facility. These plans help staff in a facility know what accommodations the student needs in order to access—and succeed in—college classes, both inside and outside the facility.

Fourth consideration: Ensure transition services at every level.

Anderson says that his office is committed to providing support, guidance, and technical assistance including reports to sites to help them manage the needs of the students and the IEP compliance timelines. Staff at the detention facility hold IEP meetings in accordance with the legal requirements. “We’re all involved in working to pay attention to the student’s needs, but the first line would be the special education teacher.” With a focus on inclusive practices and co-teaching, the court schools general education teacher and special education teacher work together to identify and meet the student’s needs.

He says that the same laws apply to all school districts in the nation under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and this includes reaching out to include the parents. “I was in an IEP meeting here last month where I greeted the parent at the entrance to the juvenile hall. I walked the parent to the IEP team. That was a pleasure and a privilege.”

Los Angeles has many foster youth with IEPs in its juvenile justice facilities. The facilities work with the students’ court-appointed guardians and attorneys. These professionals represent a lot of people involved in the system in a complex way in a short timeline, but this collaboration is vital for the success of the student.

Fifth consideration: Improve communication and collaborations among educators, family members, guardians, agencies, and attorneys.

Stanton-Trehan recommends that educators and staff help incarcerated youth to remain connected to their community. They should be able to see their family and should be offered resources to help them with re-entry into the community later.

She describes what one of her clients recently experienced: The client was in the foster care system and a counselor worked with him before he was detained in a juvenile hall. That counselor is continuing to work with him while he is detained and sees him every single day. When he leaves the facility, the counselor will be able to help him transition back into his community. Stanton-Trehan admits that this additional level of assistance represents more expense. “But without [the counselor], I feel like he wouldn’t have felt comfortable enough to be successful in the [juvenile justice] environment,” she says.

Sixth consideration: Keep kids connected with their families and communities.

Anderson says that educators in juvenile facilities in Los Angeles receive training on how to recognize when a student’s emotions are escalating and how to respond to keep everybody safe.

They also receive training on writing IEPs and IEP goals, and how to track progress on those goals. He says that some of this training is delivered by the SELPA and some is provided by other entities, including California’s System of Support technical assistance providers.

Stanton-Trehan recommends investing in educators who “look like our young people and come from the same background” when possible—and providing adequate training and resources to everyone working with the youth.

 

California has made some strong investments in teachers through such efforts as the Golden State Teacher Grant1, but even more investment is needed.

Seventh consideration: Invest more in educators.

Anderson says that in Los Angeles, county mental health is involved in the juvenile court school settings. They offer trainings to professionals, along with services to support the students.

He points out that in serving students in these facilities, “if their amygdala isn’t saying fight or flight, if they feel safe and comfortable, that emotional safety goes a long way toward the physical safety of everybody in those settings.”
Anderson says, “Our trainings address the social emotional needs of students, focusing on themes of discovery, empowerment, and resilience, which they can carry with them when they leave detention.”

Eighth consideration: Make mental health services a priority.

As a representative of an imperfect system, Anderson acknowledges that his job is not easy. But he believes that within every single human being there is a light. Sometimes that light has been muted, covered, or shines less brightly and it may not be readily apparent. He thinks that “every single individual interaction that we have with each other as human beings is an opportunity to help that individual find that light again within themselves.”

And it goes both ways: “Every time we connect, we have the opportunity to help each other discover the light that we have inside of each of us.”

 

 

 

1. For more information about the Golden State Teacher Grant Program (GSTG), go to https://www.csac.ca.gov/golden-state-teacher-grant-gstg-program

 

Bridgette Ealy was an exceptional program support specialist. She passed away in 2022. In her honor, the Supporting Inclusive Practices (SIP) project has established the Bridgette Ealy Heart of Inclusion award.

According to Kevin Schaefer, SIP’s director of inclusive practices, the award “centers the attention on individuals and organizations that are not only committed to improving inclusive opportunities for students with disabilities but also to taking action every day to strengthen cultures, policies, and practices that ensure access, equity, and belonging for ALL students. It is through this vision that Bridgette’s legacy lives on.”

Three school districts were given the Bridgette Ealy Heart of Inclusion award this year: Moorpark Unified School District, Marysville Unified School District, and Kern High School District. They were honored at SIP’s spring institute.

Moorpark Unified School District has been steadfast in its pursuit of equitable outcomes and inclusive opportunities for all students. The district is building and expanding co-teaching and other inclusive practices in its schools. The work is driven by purposeful, intentional, and coherent leadership throughout the organization.

Over the past several years, Marysville Joint Unified School District has embraced a mission to build a system that not only includes all of its youngest learners but truly instills a sense of community and belonging in everyone who walks through the doors of its schools. The district has a leadership team that believes deeply in the work and prioritizes addressing district culture, policies, and practices to make true change happen.

Educators at Kern Valley High School District, California’s largest 9–12th grade school district, have worked tirelessly to break down barriers and change mindsets about inclusion. This commitment is demonstrated through their work to continuously implement co-teaching practices in classrooms and more recently to implement a student-driven action research project that seeks to re-imagine what true inclusion looks like from the student’s viewpoint.

SIP also celebrates DJ B Diamond (Theresa Burnett) and her manager dad, Mark Burnett, who received the 2024 SIP Spring Institute Challenge Coin. DJ B Diamond is a person with Down syndrome who shares her love of music at all types of events, including SIP’s Driving Inclusion Forward Conference. Supported by her loving family, she brings the magic of music to life.

The SIP project is based at the Riverside and El Dorado County Offices of Education and is the parent project of The Special EDge newsletter. SIP provides statewide technical assistance to educational communities in their pursuit of inclusive and equitable systems.