How do Schools
Support Students with Parents in Jail and Students who, Themselves, are Incarcerated?
Dear Colleague,
Prison. . .Jail. . .Juvenile Correction. . . Detention Facilities. . .
Schools.
There has been a great deal of (appropriate) attention- - over the past
few years- - on severing the “school-to-prison pipeline.” However, schools need
to similarly pay attention to the concurrent reality (and impact) of students
who have parents in jail, and students who, themselves, are either in juvenile
correction facilities or even adult jails.
Two weeks ago (April 18, 2016), a KIDS COUNT Policy Report, A Shared
Sentence: The Devastating Toll of
Parental Incarceration on Kids, Families, and Communities was released by
the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
[CLICK HERE for Report]
The Report documents that in 2011-2012 (the year with the most-recent
statistics), there were over 5.1 million children in the United States who had
an incarcerated parent at some point in their lives- - 7% of the total child
population.
This includes 503,000 children in California, 477,000 children in Texas,
312,000 children in Florida, and 61,000 children in my own state of
Arkansas. Percentage-wise, 13% of the
children in Kentucky have had a parent incarcerated- - the highest in the
nation.
According to the Report, children with an incarcerated parent:
* Are typically younger than 10 (More than 15% of children with
parents in federal prison, and 20% with parents in state prison are 4 years old
or younger)
* Often live in low-income families of color (Compared with white
peers, African-American and Latino children are over 7 and 2 times more
likely, respectively, to have an incarcerated parent. Moreover, they typically live with a young
single mother with limited education.)
* Are more likely to live with grandparents, family friends, or in
foster care when their mother is incarcerated
_ _ _ _ _
But, there’s more. . . in fact, another 60,000 more.
According to another report issued just six months ago from The Council
of State Governments Justice Center (November 5, 2015), Locked Out:
Improving Educational and Vocational Outcomes for Incarcerated Youth, there
are more than 60,000 youth who are incarcerated on any day in the United
States.
[CLICK HERE for Report]
These 60,000 incarcerated youth include:
36,000 who are in state, court-ordered juvenile corrections facilities
or centers (typically for 3 to 12 months); 18,000 who are in locally-run
detention facilities (typically for less than 2 months as they wait for court
adjudication); and 6,000 who are incarcerated in adult prisons or jails.
Critically:
* Two-thirds of these are youth of color.
* Most of them are older than their assigned
grade level in school (usually because they haven’t earned enough credits to
advance), or have already dropped out of school.
* Many of them are functioning several grade
levels below their peers in reading, math, and language arts; and 60% of them
have repeated a grade.
* One-third of them are or should be
receiving special education services.
* The
majority have been suspended multiple times and/or expelled from their local
schools.
* Many have pre-existing mental health concerns. In fact, some reports suggest that two-thirds
of incarcerated youth could meet the criteria for a mental disorder- - with
one-third needing ongoing clinical care.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
The
Psychoeducational Impact of Jail
There are clear psychological and educational effects when a student has
a parent in jail, or is incarcerated him or herself.
The former students have little or no control over their home/family
situations, and the adjustment to or the emotionality around the home/family
situation often impacts their attendance, academic engagement, motivation, and
performance. Significantly, students
with incarcerated mothers have an increased risk of dropping out of school.
Without condoning the behaviors that resulted in their incarceration,
the latter students also emotionally react to their incarceration, and these reactions
may similarly affect their behavior and performance in whatever schooling their
jail, center, or program facility provides.
_ _ _ _ _
More specifically, the Casey Report notes that “having a parent
incarcerated is a stressful, traumatic experience of the same magnitude as
abuse, domestic violence, and divorce, with a potentially lasting negative
impact on a child’s well-being.” These
situations increase the probability of physical and mental health issues. This includes increases in depression,
anxiety, withdrawal, and anger.
But additionally, a 2006 report from the Justice Policy Institute- - The
Dangers of Detention: The Impact
of Incarcerating Youth in Detention and Other Secure Facilities- - cites
research indicating that such detentions make mentally ill youth worse, while
increasing the potential for higher levels of depression, self-harm, and
suicide.
[CLICK HERE for Report]
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Needed
Services and Supports
Clearly, students need multi-faceted individual and family-based
services and supports (a) when they have a parent who is incarcerated, (b) when
they themselves are incarcerated, and (c) when they are about to return and
as/after they return to school from an incarceration.
While other agencies and organizations (e.g., social services, the
courts and law enforcement/parole, community mental health) need to braid their
services and supports, the schools must be involved partners in the planning
and implementation process. This is
especially important when students are returning from an incarceration.
And yet, given that some of these returning students have significant
past histories of suspensions and expulsions, it is easy for schools to simply
refuse their re-entry. While this may be
illegal in some situations (e.g., for students with disabilities), it is
important that administrators (and their student support teams) consider
re-entry decisions and programming from a psychoeducational, and even
rehabilitative, perspective.
Indeed, some students are incarcerated because they made one horrible
decision- - sometimes unpredictably and “out of the blue.” Some students have a checkered past, but have
learned from their experiences during incarceration. Other students may still be at-risk for
additional offenses. . . and so, we need to educationally program for those
risks accordingly.
This is not to turn schools into parole boards. But it is to recognize that schools
are educational institutions, that adolescents make (sometimes serious)
mistakes, and that the services and supports that schools (supported by other
community-based agencies) provide to these returning students may determine
their future paths as adults.
These sentiments are echoed in the two reports referenced earlier.
Specifically. . . Of the
three broad recommendations in the Casey Report, the first one is most
relevant to schools: Ensure children
are supported while parents are incarcerated and after they return.
This Report’s most important suggestions in this area were:
* Make sure that “right-to-know” policies permit communication between
and among prisons, and child welfare, health, education, and employment and training
agencies and programs so that all are aware of students and families in need of
support.
* Ensure that early education centers, schools, child welfare agencies,
community-based health centers, and other local and faith-based organizations
offer and coordinate programs and mentoring opportunities that
facilitate and address affected students’ physical, social, emotional, and
behavioral needs, growth, and well-being. . . on individual, group, and family
levels.
* Ensure that the agencies and
support groups noted above provide targeted and continued services, supports,
and needed training to children and families during parental incarcerations and
immediately before and after the absent parent returns.
_ _ _ _ _
Based on a Spring 2015 survey completed by the administrators overseeing
every state’s Juvenile Correction Agency and focusing on the 36,000
incarcerated youth in state custody, the Council of State Governments
Justice Center (CSGJC) “Locked Out” Report identified three major
findings.
FINDING 1. Most incarcerated
youth do not have access to the same educational and vocational services as
their peers in the community, and they do not attend schools that have the same
rigorous curriculum and student performance standards as traditional public
schools.
Recommendations
1.1 Require all facility schools to
provide incarcerated youth with access to the same educational and vocational
services that are available in the community.
1.2 Hold all facility schools
accountable for student performance and meeting college- and career-readiness
standards that are aligned with state requirements for traditional public
schools.
1.3
Require all facility schools to receive nationally-recognized accreditation for
their education programs.
_ _ _ _ _
FINDING 2. Most states
do not collect, track, and report student outcome data for incarcerated youth
in all facility schools.
Recommendations
2.1 Track data on a minimum set of
key student outcome indicators for incarcerated youth (i.e., high school credit
accumulation, math and reading proficiency, attendance, school discipline, and
high school graduation), and develop the infrastructure needed to collect and
analyze these data.
2.2 Establish formal processes for
reviewing student outcome data for incarcerated youth and use these data to
evaluate and improve school performance
_ _ _ _ _
FINDING 3. The policies and practices in most states make
it especially challenging for youth released from incarceration to make an
effective transition to community-based educational or vocational settings.
Recommendations
3.1 Designate a single agency to be
responsible for ensuring youths’ successful transition to a community-based
educational or vocational setting after release from incarceration.
3.2 Require juvenile justice and
education agencies to track and report on a minimum set of post-release student
outcomes including high school credit accumulation, math and reading
proficiency, attendance, school discipline, and high school graduation or the
equivalent, securing and maintaining employment, and enlistments in military
service.
_ _ _ _ _
While the CSGJC Report unfortunately did not address the mental
health and social, emotional, and behavioral needs of incarcerated youth, it
did a nice job of outlining the “effective practice” components needed when
students transition from their juvenile justice facilities back to their home
schools.
Specifically, the Report recommended that state policymakers require that
juvenile justice and education agencies engage in the following practices:
* Juvenile justice and education agencies should work together to
develop a written educational transition plan for incarcerated youth at least
30 days prior to release, and establish timelines for how and when credits and
student records will be transferred.
* At a minimum, a parent/guardian, classroom teacher, and school
counselor should be involved in the development of a youth’s transition plan.
* Youth should be re-enrolled in an educational or vocational setting
prior to release from a facility, and attend the school or program immediately
upon release.
* Youth should be re-enrolled in their home school, and automatic
placements in alternative education programs should be restricted.
_ _ _ _ _
Many of these recommendations complement the five principles delineated
by the U.S.
Department of Education and Department of Justice in their December, 2014 Correctional
Education Guidance Package that focused on helping states and local
agencies strengthen the quality of the education services they provided to
their incarcerated youth.
[CLICK HERE for Link]
These five principles noted the need for:
* A facility-wide climate that promotes education and "provides the
conditions for learning" through family engagement, protection from harm,
effective policies, and student supports.
* Necessary funding to support educational opportunities for
all youths that are comparable to their peers "who are not
system-involved."
* Recruitment of staff with skills relevant to juvenile justice settings
and valid credentials in focus areas (like limited English proficiency).
Teaching staff should also have access to quality professional development and
should be assessed through teacher evaluations.
* Holding students accountable to the same outcomes as any other student
by providing rigorous and relevant curricula aligned with state academic
and career and technical education standards that utilize
instructional methods, tools, materials and practices that promote
college and career-readiness.
* Processes and procedures that plan for students' eventual release and
coordination between schools and agencies.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Recommendations
are Fine. . . but Some Incarcerated Youth are Not Getting these
Services
While all of the recommended services, supports, policies, and
procedures discussed above are relevant, appropriate, and important,
verification and authentication also is needed.
This is because sometimes the “talk” does not come close to representing
the “walk.”
A Personal State-level Example:
Last year, as part of my work as the Director of the Arkansas Department
of Education’s federal State Personnel Development Grant, I was asked to visit
and review the educational and mental health services of a number of our
state’s Division of Youth Services (DYS) Juvenile Treatment Centers.
After visiting three of the state’s seven centers, I shared my
impressions in a report.
My ultimate recommendation was for DYS to contract with a nationally-
experienced firm to conduct a more extensive, independent audit and assessment
of the state’s Juvenile Treatment Centers.
This recommendation was based on my concerns about the quality of
educational and mental health services and support not being provided to
the incarcerated youth in these centers.
Below are the findings from my report.
You can certainly “read between the lines” here to imagine the full
state of affairs in the centers that I visited.
_ _ _ _ _
Curricular and
Technological Issues: Academics and Social, Emotional, and
Behavioral
Finding #1. Despite the best efforts of the staff, some
of the textbooks/materials in the classrooms are outdated and/or do not
completely conform to the Common Core State Standards.
_
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
Finding #2. In the social, emotional, and behavioral
area, the DYS Education System has no formal, sequenced social skills
curriculum to teach students the interpersonal, social problem-solving,
conflict prevention and resolution, and emotional coping skills that they need
to be successful.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Finding #3. The DYS Education System needs to upgrade and
update its technology and availability of hardware- and software-based assistive
supports, and complete an updated Technology Audit.
_
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
Teacher/Instructional
Issues
Finding #4. The DYS Education System’s instructional
staff need to know the current functional academic and social, emotional, and behavioral
skill level of every student in the school as soon after their enrollment as
possible.
Health, mental health, English second
language, and disability-related issues also should be immediately determined,
shared, and addressed through comprehensive services and supports. Progress
monitoring assessments in all of these areas should occur on a continual basis
thereafter.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Finding #5. An explicit behavioral
standards/accountability system with specific behavioral expectations and
targeted responses to inappropriate behavior is not being used in or between
classrooms. In addition, an organized,
explicit, and strategically-implemented system of meaningful student incentives
and rewards was not apparent during any of my visits.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Functional Assessment
and Intervention Planning Recommendations
Finding #6. A systematic data-based functional assessment
problem-solving process is not being used anywhere in the DYS Education System:
* To
diagnostically determine why students are having academic or behavioral
difficulties;
* To identify specific services, supports,
and interventions needed; and
* To formatively and summatively track the
impact of specific treatment approaches.
Instead, students are
being clinically labeled, and global mental health status tools are being used to
track students’ general psychological functioning.
_ _ _ _ _
Finding #7. Intervention planning and evaluation
discussions related to students’ specific treatment plans do not routinely
occur among classroom teachers, support and safety/law enforcement staff, clinical/mental
health staff, and residential staff.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Finding #8. At the prevention and effective classroom
level, the DYS Education System’s classroom teachers and support staff have not
received consistent levels of preparation, supervision, and feedback on a
number of effective classroom and basic social, emotional, and behavioral intervention
approaches. Thus, there is not a
consistent “core” or presence of these classroom management approaches
available or used for all students.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Finding #9. There are not enough clinical therapists
available to meet the needs of the System’s students. In fact, there are more case workers than
clinical therapists available, and the latter group is not skilled in how to
implement classroom-centered strategic or intensive social, emotional, or
behavioral interventions.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Finding #10. Few, if any, students are receiving the
cognitive-behavioral therapy approaches needed for the anxiety, post-traumatic
stress syndrome, depression, and/or phobic conditions that they demonstrate. Treatment
approaches like progressive muscle relaxation therapy, anger replacement
therapy, and attribution retraining are not evident.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Issues Related to
Communication and Collaboration
Finding #11. The students’ “home” schools or districts
are not systematically kept “in the loop” relative to the status, needs,
progress, and disposition of their respective students.
For example, the home schools or districts
are not typically invited to IEP meetings- - which they could attend
virtually. Moreover, they rarely are
involved in the transition planning needed when a student is preparing to
return to his or her home (or transition) setting.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Finding #12. There needs to be better, more accountable,
and ongoing coordination among the administrators and supervisors across the
different state agencies responsible for these students: the Arkansas Department of Human Services
(e.g., the DYS Education System and the Children’s Behavioral Health Division);
the Arkansas Department of Education (e.g., the Learning Services
Division- - including the alternative education, health, and special education
programs; and the Teacher Accountability Division); the Arkansas Department
of Career Education (e.g., the Career and Technical Education, Adult
Education, and Rehabilitative Services departments); and others.
_
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Summary
I understand that- - for schools- - the children and students described
in this message are complex, challenging, frustrating, and sometimes unresponsive
to our assistance.
At the same time, we are talking about over SEVEN PERCENT of our
student population. . .
And these are some of the students who lag in their academic
achievement, demonstrate significant behavioral challenges, drop out of school,
eventually need welfare support or commit crimes in our communities, and then
continue a generational pattern when their at-risk children get ready to
come to school.
(I am not trying to suggest a causal pattern here. . . but the
probabilities do add up.)
With national, state, and
community support and coordination, our schools must be active service providers addressing these students’
academic, social, emotional, behavioral, vocational, and other needs.
While our motivation to help the students whose parents are incarcerated
may be more forthcoming- - because the situation is “not their fault,” we
must be equally giving to the students who themselves have been incarcerated.
As noted earlier: I “get” that
some of these returning students have significant past histories of suspensions
and expulsions, and some administrators simply want to refuse their re-entry
(sometimes in the “name” of protecting their other students). At the same time, this should be a Student
Support Team decision. . . a decision that is based on the student’s current
psychoeducational status and needs.
Indeed, in Part D (Prevention and Intervention Programs for Children and
Youth who are Neglected, Delinquent, or At-Risk) of the recently reauthorized Elementary
and Secondary Education Act (ESEA/ESSA), it requires State Education
Agencies to describe how they will:
* Establish “procedures to ensure the timely re-enrollment of each
student who has been placed in the juvenile justice system in secondary school
or in a re-entry program that best meets the needs of the student, including
the transfer of credits that such student earns during placement; and
* (O)pportunities for such students to participate in credit-bearing
coursework while in secondary school, postsecondary education, or career and
technical education programming. . . “
* . . . “to the extent feasible- - deliver services and interventions
designed to keep such youth in school that are evidence-based. . . “
_ _ _ _ _
When they plan and write these procedures, I hope that our state
education departments will be mindful of the psychoeducational perspective that
is needed, as well as to the social, emotional, behavioral, and mental health
needs of these students (both with incarcerated parents, and who are
incarcerated themselves).
For districts and schools, I hope that you will (continue to)
embrace the moral imperative (if not the unambiguous reality) that we need to provide
services and supports to these students.
While I know that this requires the coordination and support of many
community partners, we need to be at the table.
Perhaps, to start, you can use the recommendations above as an informal “check-list”
to evaluate the current status of your school or district.
_ _ _ _ _
As
we move into the last month(s) of the school year, know that I appreciate everything
that you do for all of your students and their families. I appreciate
your care, your leadership, and your advocacy for all students in need. And I always look forward to YOUR thoughts
and comments.
Feel free to contact me at any time. Let me know how I can help your state,
regional cooperative, district, or school to move to the next level of
excellence.
Feel free to forward
this Blog link to your colleagues.
Best,
Howie
