By Kathryn Hanson and Deborah Stipek
Victor Hugo's 19th century remark, "He who opens a school door closes a prison," still holds true today.
The relationship between education and incarceration was made starkly clear at Stanford's 2014 Cubberley Lecture, where actress Anna Deveare Smith brought to life the difficulties facing disadvantaged youth in American schools through a series of humorous, gritty and brutally honest monologues.
Deveare Smith, acclaimed for her roles on TV shows like The West Wing and Nurse Jackie, is known for bringing academic rigor to her theatrical creations. In portraying the sobering reality of disadvantaged youth caught in the school-to-prison pipeline, Deveare Smith challenged us to do better.
The link between a poor education and incarcaration is borne out in data. Dropouts are 3.5 times more likely to be arrested than high school graduates. Nationally, 68 percent of all males in prison do not have a high school diploma. Only 20 percent of California inmates demonstrate a basic level of literacy, and the average offender reads at an eighth grade level.
Many so-called dropouts who end up in jail are actually push-outs. Under the guise of zero tolerance, initiated after Columbine, students are often asked to leave school as a first response rather than a last resort. Discriminatory practices are common.
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