Washblog

Over at Common Dreams, Jesse Hagopian, a Seattle teacher, has written an article on the school-prison connection. On Washblog, Noemie Maxwell has written a series of articles on the three-strikes law and its injustices to particular individuals--articles that really should be award-winning. Drawing on a recent study by the Pew Center, Hagopian approaches the question of the criminal justice system from the standpoint of a teacher worried about the effects of school closures and teacher layoffs. Here is how he begins his article:

One in thirty one.  

As a public school teacher I am quite familiar with this figure--it's a typical teacher to student ratio in the classroom. But now that proportion has taken on new significance: A report released on March 2nd  by the Pew Center on the States found that one in every thirty-one adults reside in the US corrections system--now totaling some 7.3 million people.  

That means roughly one student per classroom in America will end up in prison, on parole, or on probation.

As New School Foundation board member Lisa Fitzhugh notes in her January 19th Seattle Times op-ed, states like Washington even determine how many prison cells to build based on 4th grade reading scores and graduation rates.  So rest assured, if your 9-year-old stumbles over syntax or has trouble sounding out the word "priorities," the state has readied the necessary cellblock accommodations.  Why flush money down the sinkhole of reading improvement teachers when there are solitary confinement cells to be built?  As the Pew study reports,  

"In the past two decades, state general fund spending on corrections increased by more than 300 percent, outpacing other essential government services from education, to transportation and public assistance. Only Medicaid spending has grown faster. Today, corrections imposes a national taxpayer burden of $68 billion a year."

The rest of the article is here.