Pushout

by Monique W. Morris

  A majority of the girls I spoke with perceived the level of the coursework to be below their grade level. Irrespective of age or grade level, girls in the juvenile court school were educated in a single classroom and learned the same material. This was a source of great discontent and anxiety among the girls. Those who felt that the work was beneath their skill level were concerned that they were not learning enough to recover credits and return to school with the necessary information to successfully reintegrate into the classroom.

  “School here’s really frustrating for me,” Destiny said. “The teachers here know that we’re here temporarily, so I feel like they don’t make sure that we’re really learning.”

  Another student said, “[This school] don’t teach you nothing. I’m in high school. They’re teaching middle school stuff.”

  The work in the juvenile court school was described by several young women as “the same,” or repetitive, and the girls felt that their learning was stagnated by the absence of challenging material. However, for the younger participants who felt the work was above their grade level, there was a concern that they had missed critical information that might impact future learning and performance in their district school. For example, Mia said, “You’re teaching tenth grade while I’m still really in the seventh and the eighth . . . so you’re not helping me. You’re teaching me tenth-grade stuff and yeah, I get that stuff because you’re teaching it to me now, but what’s going to happen when I don’t know the other stuff? You know what I’m saying?”

  “I’m Not Retarded, I Just Got a Learning Disability”

  Mecca was a seventeen-year-old foster child who had been committed to juvenile hall five times by the time we spoke in 2013. In our conversation, she admitted that she was afraid to leave juvenile hall because she was uncertain about where she would go or what her future might bring. Though she was often perceived as a “bully” because of her size—she was a larger girl—Mecca believed that she was actually the victim of bullying. For Mecca, “bullying” was part of the hyperpunitive learning environment in confinement. It was a condition that affected her learning because it was coming not just from students, but also from teachers.

  “I don’t want to be in school in jail. . . . School in here is, well, you’re just still locked up. School on the outside, it’s just better. They got more education. Like the teachers, they’ve got more background about them. The things they’re teaching . . . it’s just better,” Mecca said. “I hate school in juvenile hall. I feel like they’re too hard on us. Like, we get stereotyped. I feel like every time I come in here, we’re doing the same thing, and I don’t come in here, back to back.”

  She offered specific observations about what made school in juvenile hall different than district schools, in her experience. “The school in here is different than the school you usually go to. On the outs, you have partner work in school. You can talk. If you’re stuck, you can ask for help. But in here, it’s almost like if you ask for help, they fuss about wanting to help you, and then you just don’t want to ask for help. It’s going to become a big argument and you’re going to get kicked out. In juvenile hall, nobody really wants to sit in their room all day, so you really don’t want to get kicked out of class. And then there’s the bullying.”

  Nationwide, 28 percent of students in grades six through twelve have experienced some form of bullying.42

  “Once, we were doing math in class, and they were teasing me because I didn’t know my multiplication,” Mecca continued. “Instead of trying to help me, they teased me. . . . I had a teacher in here, she called me ‘retarded’ in front of everybody because I asked her for a calculator for my test!”

  “What?” I asked. “How did this happen?”

  “Well,” Mecca said, “a girl asked [the teacher] if she could have a calculator, and the teacher said no, and [told her] that the only reason I had a calculator was because my IEP said I could have one.43 The girl said, ‘Well, how do I get an IEP?’ The teacher said, ‘Oh, you have to be retarded.’ So then I told her, ‘I’m not retarded. I just got a learning disability!’ Then the teacher said, ‘Say another thing, and I’m going to suspend you.’ I was like, ‘How are you going to suspend me for sticking up for myself?’ So . . . it’s not only the kids. Teachers do it too.”

  Just as in district schools—as discussed in previous chapters—Black girls are confronted by teachers who argue with them, avoid answering their questions, and label them as “difficult” for standing up for themselves or others they believe have been treated unfairly. However, while students perceive this relationship to be problematic, they also want to be engaged by their teachers, to be loved by them.

  “Things could be different in here if the teachers would actually teach us,” Mecca said. “It’s not just this unit. It’s all the units. Teachers want to just sit down and give you work when you come in. ‘Oh, do this work, stop talking,’ this and that, and you’re like, ‘Damn, when I finish the work I have nothing to do, and now you’re telling me to stop talking! And now you’re focused on discipline.’ Then I’m getting sent out of class. They need to focus on teaching the kids, that’s what nobody understands. They’re not teaching the kids anything. This place is set up to fail you. Honestly. If this school was set up to bring you up and help you through your community, then okay, they could do that. But they need to change their perception of what’s going on here; because they think they’re doing good, and they’re actually doing wrong.” For Mecca, like for Deja, the effort to recover credits was a hurdle that was exacerbated by the perceived poor quality of instruction, the use of exclusionary discipline, and the inconsistent way in which districts accounted for credits.

  For the girls who participated in this project, the student-teacher relationship is a tremendous obstacle to their rehabilitation and full engagement with school. Many teachers are struggling to provide a meaningful educational experience for girls in the criminal legal system who are experiencing multiple risk factors that affect their well-being. Even if the desire to connect with their female students is present, some teachers may be shutting down communication or rejecting the notion that they should teach more than the curriculum because they have not been adequately equipped to handle the downpour once it’s invited. These girls’ narratives illustrate us that it’s crucial for the learning environment to be a place where openness and respect can flourish in order for children to trust that education is their pathway to success. Each girl I spoke with signaled in her own way that she wants to be treated as a human being who is capable of thinking on her own. Her ideas are not lost, her consciousness does not subside, and her hopes may not be quashed simply because she is in juvenile hall.

  The experiences of Faith, Mecca, and others in juvenile court school reveal how girls’ behaviors are sometimes triggered by the words and actions of the adults around them. To be labeled as “disrespectful” or called “retarded” is problematic because it reinforces a stigma and trauma that these girls have spent their lives rejecting, and it also suggests that often there is no space for interrogating how those with authority instigate or intensify conflict. Not only has rejecting girls’ voices failed to teach them what they need in order to learn and reach critical milestones, it does little if anything to restore their faith in educational systems and the power of knowledge. Shutting down girls’ voices reinforces their deeply negative associations with school and with other authority figures who have shut down their voices, their spirits, and their bodies for years. If a girl doesn’t understand the material, why can’t she ask a question? Why must she stay silent and work alone, especially if that is inconsistent with her best learning style?

  For a majority of detained girls, juvenile court school did not serve to repair their already problematic relationships with school. At best it was a missed opportunity. Each girl, in her own way, found the schoolwork to be repetitive and unrelated to her interests and goals. Each girl, in her own way, found most of her instructors to be punitive
and impatient. A U.S. Department of Education study found that 43 percent of incarcerated youth who received remedial education services in detention did not return to school after being released, and that 16 percent of these youth enrolled in school after their confinement but then dropped out after only five months.44 Other studies have discovered similar trends, all leading to the conclusion that detention facilities can be, and often are, harmful places. Most of the girls I spoke with had experienced school suspensions, expulsions, or both prior to their confinement in juvenile hall, but what they had not expected—what was in fact counterintuitive given the stated objective of the juvenile court school to prevent dropping out—was for their suspension, removal, and general exclusion from the classroom to increase in the juvenile court school. Indeed, these girls had learned negative behaviors that fueled a number of mistakes. Though they were cast as the “bad” girls, what was evident from their comments about school was that these girls want to learn. Their complaints, frustrations, and hurt—and sometimes their exact words—reflected their awareness of how important an education is to their ability to succeed. They were also painfully aware of the conditions in juvenile detention that prevented them from trying to put their academic lives back on track.

  Histories of victimization and addiction, poor student-teacher relationships, being subject to zero tolerance and harsh discipline along with uninspired and poorly executed curriculum, and the school credit mismatch—independently and together, all these factors function to push Black girls in juvenile court schools further away from all schooling. While few would disagree that the ultimate goal is to prevent more girls from going to correctional facilities at all, more often than not juvenile court schools exacerbate the problems more than they contribute to the solutions. They should be serving as an important rehabilitative structure for detained girls. The schools inside juvenile hall represent the first chance for girls to reenter their home communities successfully and on a different track. They are in a position to shift the girls’ perception of what school is, especially for girls whose educational lives have been largely defined by truancy, avoidance, or bullying.

  These girls are not a “submerged tenth,” but rather our forgotten daughters. They are those among us who have suffered tremendous obstacles and personal traumas. They are the ones we adults have harmed and failed the most. They are the ones who have unsuccessfully attempted to improve life’s conditions—often harming themselves and others in the process—but they are also the ones with the greatest opportunity for improvement. Education is likely to be their best chance to shape a better life—their best chance to rebound from their conviction histories and emerge as productive, engaged citizens capable of charting new paths toward redemption.

  What happens today in juvenile court schools is a matter of equity. They are structurally inferior, and they are failing to interrupt school-related dropout and pushout. The moral and legal obligation to improve the quality of education for all youth extends even to young people who are in trouble with the law.

  For more than half a century, education has been constitutionally acknowledged as the primary tool for restructuring social hierarchies and elevating the conditions of historically oppressed peoples. Prior to that, this understanding engendered fear and shaped the poor quality of education afforded Black girls under the wardship of the court for some two hundred years. The education their modern-day counterparts receive raises the question of whether we want to restructure the social hierarchies or whether we want to leave the status quo intact.

  Thurgood Marshall wrote in his opinion for Procunier v. Martinez (1974), “When the prison gates slam behind an inmate, he does not lose his human quality; his mind does not become closed to ideas; his intellect does not cease to feed on a free and open interchange of opinions; his yearning for self-respect does not end; nor is his quest for self-realization concluded.”

  Though these girls are in confinement, their minds are alive. They are interested in and capable of more than mindless busywork. They all can learn, many of them want to do so, and like anyone whose life has veered off track, they are eager for a second chance. If we can improve the accountability and performance of these schools, alongside their district counterparts, we will inevitably move toward a more comprehensive approach to reducing the impact of policies and practices that criminalize and push girls out of school. We will, in essence, begin the process of maintaining these girls’ human quality—an essential component of their successful rehabilitation and reengagement as productive members of our communities. To Black girls in trouble with the law, the juvenile court school has never been a beacon of academic hope. It’s time for a paradigm shift. As long as there are juvenile detention facilities, the schools inside must uplift the potential of each student, not her deficits.

  As potential places for developing the whole person, schools, whether in facilities or communities, can and should be transformative environments that help girls make better decisions in their lives. A school with professionals devoted to developing, not unraveling, Black girls’ academic well-being and their mental health would provide a foundation for cultivating new ways to respond to their emotional, physical, and sexual trauma so they don’t repeat mistakes (in relationships with friends, teachers, family, and sexual partners) that spiral them further into poverty, crime, addiction, violence, or worse. Chapter 5 explores how we can begin to do this.

  5

  REPAIRING RELATIONSHIPS, REBUILDING CONNECTIONS

  If you’re more confident, then you’ve got more hope.

  —Leila, eighteen years old, Chicago

  Heaven had the kind of piercing, attentive stare that responded to your every word. If only she’d been able to focus on school the same way. When we met, it was her first time in juvenile hall—but she hadn’t been to school in five months. She was seventeen years old and was supposed to be in twelfth grade, but as a runaway, she had been more concerned with surviving than with attending school. It was still her intention to join a Job Corps program and then complete her high school diploma, but getting that diploma would prove more of a challenge than she thought.

  “I don’t want a GED,” she said. “I feel like it shows that you can’t complete something, or you can’t finish something, so it’s going to be very hard to get a job or a career. [They’ll] say, ‘Well, you couldn’t complete high school . . . so why should we accept you here?’ So that’s why I really want my high school diploma because the GED still shows that you didn’t complete high school . . . I still want to get my high school diploma.”

  Heaven had been running away from home for years, staying with friends, other family members, and mainly her boyfriend, who was two years older than she was and renting his own apartment. She claimed to have never liked school and said, “It’s boring . . . and I feel like . . . I don’t know, it’s too many hours. The work schedule and school . . . certain classes you’re not going to use them in real life.”

  Like the majority of her counterparts, she knew that school was an important part of her life, even though she did not enjoy going.

  “I’m willing to push through that to start my future,” Heaven said. “You can’t get nothing without [an education]. . . . That’s one thing they can’t take from you . . . your knowledge. . . . I’m very smart, and I know, like, through all the schools, I didn’t pass because I didn’t stay long enough to complete them, not because I didn’t know [how to do the work].”

  Heaven’s favorite subjects were English and history, and she felt confident about her ability to learn.

  “My teachers always told me that I was smart and capable. . . . They always said that when I came, I always did my work and it was good, but I was the type of student that didn’t always come [to school]. Or I came to school and didn’t go to class. . . . Sometimes I would come, like, in the morning and then I’ll leave for the rest of the day. Or I’ll come and then I’ll leave . . . I’ll probably leave at lunch and not come back. . . . It really didn’
t matter. Certain periods, like if I really didn’t like the period, I wouldn’t go to that period. I’d go to the next one.”

  Heaven had many distractions.

  “Which periods did you cut most?” I asked.

  “Math and physiology. I loved physiology class because I loved learning about the human body, but I didn’t like the teacher, and so that’s why I never went to that class. . . . Every time I went to that class, I either cussed her out or something. I got a referral, which made me have to sit in one room for a long time.”

  For Heaven, positive encouragement from her teachers was an important dynamic for her continued learning. But those relationships were not there, so she looked for reinforcements elsewhere.

  She lamented her disconnection from school and thought about the distractions that kept her from engaging, including a preoccupation with looking good at school—the “fashion show,” she called it—and getting high with her friends.

  “I regret my whole high school years, to be honest, because I was capable of completing high school as a normal high school student,” Heaven said. “But I chose to do other things, which led my life in a different way. I’m still going to get to the roses and the flowers at the end of the path, I just took the rockier path than the straight and narrow. . . . If I would be able to go back, I would not take it for granted. I’m learning [that] love and school are the only things you get for free when you’re young, and I took it for granted. And now, if I don’t get into a program that will help me get my high school diploma for free, I will have to pay, ’cause I took it for granted when I had the chance of getting it for free.”