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Even before Donald Trump's election victory took newsrooms nationwide by surprise, audiences criticized journalists as being disconnected from the communities they cover, especially poor and working-class communities.

For many reporters, there's not much time during the work week for building sources and exploring neighborhoods because their job responsibilities have grown so much in recent decades. But journalists themselves have changed as the field has evolved into an elite profession that draws well-educated men and women, many of whom come from middle-class families, went to the same colleges and move in the same social circles. Almost half the writers and editors at the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, for example, attended elite colleges, and 20 percent graduated from Ivy League schools, a 2018 study published in the Journal of Expertise shows.

This tip sheet, from two journalists who grew up poor and still have strong ties to the working class, is meant to help newsrooms do a better job covering poverty and people with limited resources.

Heather Bryant, the founder of Project Facet who also was a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University in 2017, has written about socioeconomic diversity in journalism and her experiences growing up in rural poverty as the daughter of a frequently incarcerated single parent. She also has written about the negative responses she has gotten when other journalists learn her husband is a garbage truck driver.

Denise-Marie Ordway, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and 2015 fellow of Harvard's Nieman Foundation for Journalism, was raised on food stamps in a Florida trailer park by a mother who didn't make it past the sixth grade. As a young woman, Ordway married an undocumented immigrant from Central America and forged ties within central Florida's migrant farmworker community. Now the managing editor of Journalist's Resource, she's raising five kids with her current partner, a tow truck driver.

Together, Bryant and Ordway created this tip sheet to get journalists to think more deeply about how they select and cover stories, who their audience is and how current journalistic practices can limit lower-income individuals' ability to access the news.

"Most news coverage isn't created with people experiencing poverty in mind - as part of the audience," Bryant says. "Impoverished people are often separated from other subject groups that are affected by policies and participation in civic and community life."

She adds: "When people in economic hardship are included, their socioeconomic status is typically the reason for their inclusion and the central framing of their identity or it's used inaccurately as a shorthand for things including race, geography, education level or employment status. And finally, the depiction of people experiencing poverty is problematic in ways that are often exploitive, dehumanizing or insulting."

These tips aren't meant to be exhaustive. But they're a starting place for tackling some of the biggest and most common problems.
---------- WHAT TO AVOID: Representing people experiencing poverty as one of three character types: the victim, the criminal or the exception.
Generally speaking, news coverage tends to exclude people experiencing economic hardship as though they don't participate in the same societal, political and economic systems as everyone else, Bryant says. "They are, instead, most often depicted as the victims of some force or policy; the criminal element that the rest of society has to fear and punish; or the 'exceptional poor person' who walks miles to work or school, has multiple jobs or good grades or has managed to do something to be worthy of help or an escape from their economic situation," she says. "The first character makes it difficult to report on poverty as a circumstance that can be changed by policy or practice. The second character enforces stereotypes that inhibits the good will and effort to develop those policies and practices. The third is a moral measuring stick used to set aside policy and practice and attribute economic hardship to personal attributes and effort rather than the complex circumstances that result at the convergence of cultural, economic and political priorities."

HOW TO GET IT RIGHT: Seek out sources who are experiencing poverty for all kinds of stories - not just stories about poverty.

Just as a reporter should seek out a diversity of sources - including racial and sexual minorities - they also should try to incorporate the opinions and experiences of people from different income levels. "Poverty does not exist in a vacuum," Bryant says. "Much in the way we are having more conversations about implicit bias around race and gender, consider also the potential for the moral judgments frequently associated with people experiencing poverty and how that can affect inclusion and framing."
WHAT TO AVOID: Making broad statements about what "everyone" thinks or does, especially when those statements likely don't apply to individuals of all income levels.
"Journalists often make statements that intentionally or unintentionally signal that their work isn't meant to be read, viewed or heard by people of limited means," Ordway says. "For example, when a reporter says or implies that everyone is excited about an expensive new product or that a small increase in the price of something isn't a big deal, that sends a message to lower-income people. Also, think about this: If 'everybody' is supposedly excited, disappointed or shocked about something and I don't feel that way, does that mean I'm 'nobody?' - or that your news organization thinks I'm nobody?"

Ordway points to this lede from a New York Times ' story about the death of designer Kate Spade as an example of journalists incorrectly assuming everyone has the same experiences: "Buying a Kate Spade handbag was a coming-of-age ritual for a generation of American women."
HOW TO GET IT RIGHT: Think carefully about how you approach a story and the messages you're sending to people with limited incomes.
When you're covering any topic, ask yourselves these questions: Am I making class-based assumptions? Is this approach or the language I'm using going to offend, demean or be relatable to people who are currently experiencing poverty or have experienced it in the past? Am I covering this topic as though lower-income individuals are reading, listening or watching? Am I treating lower-income people as though they are an equally important part of my audience?

"Journalists cover topics they consider newsworthy and these decisions are influenced by their own life experiences and socioeconomic backgrounds," Ordway explains. "Newsrooms rushed to report on Starbucks replacing straws with a new type of lid for their drinks and that story displayed prominently on many news sites. Do newsrooms also rush to cover changes at businesses frequented mostly by lower-income people? If Save-A-Lot, a discount grocery store with locations throughout the United States, suddenly stopped giving shoppers free cardboard boxes to use to carry their groceries to the car as a way to reduce environmental waste, would the national news media cover that? Local newspapers report on the opening of a new Trader Joe's. How often do they cover plans for a new Big Lots, which is something I'd be more excited about?"
WHAT TO AVOID: Neglecting to consider that your audience includes people experiencing economic hardship.
Says Bryant: "Journalists have to balance respective audiences with two focal points - people within a circumstance that require information in order to navigate those circumstances and the people with the political, economic or social capital to affect change of those circumstances. News coverage of poverty and related issues most frequently targets the latter and neglects the former, abandoning opportunities to empower individuals with information and ill-serving those in power by omitting more accurate and essential stories about the lived experience of poverty."
HOW TO GET IT RIGHT: Consider prioritizing journalism for and with people over coverage about people.
"It's essential when reporting on historically marginalized or vulnerable communities that we always ask ourselves who we are speaking to when we are reporting out a story and reflect on whether our approach or presentation exploits, dehumanizes or disempowers them as active agents of their own stories," Bryant says. For a quick example, look up stories with the phrase "the poor" in the headline and ask yourself who that story was created for and who received the most useful information from that story.
WHAT TO AVOID: Using words such as "poverty-ridden" and "poverty-stricken," which are vague and rely on stereotypes.
"These words make poverty sound like a disease or affliction," Ordway says. "And, really, what do they mean? If I say something occurred in a 'poverty-ridden' area, am I describing something that happened in a place with high crime? A neighborhood where a lot of roofs need patching? A region where a certain proportion of residents qualify for government assistance? What information are you trying to convey? Not only are these words vague, they are demeaning and promote stereotypes."
HOW TO GET IT RIGHT: Use words that clearly convey the specific information you want to share.
When describing a community, tell your audience what you see and hear. Rely on concrete statistics instead of labels or catch phrases. "I know from experience that what most of my journalist colleagues consider 'low income' is not what I'd consider to be low income," Ordway says. "But if you say, for example, that 80 percent of the adults living in this area earn $12,000 a year or less, we're all on the same page."
WHAT TO AVOID: Unnecessarily using big words and making obscure references.
Being poor doesn't mean being uneducated and it certainly doesn't prevent someone from having an impressive vocabulary. However, a lot of poor people don't have advanced degrees or vast vocabularies that many journalists do. "When journalists rely on big words and jargon or make obscure historical and literary references, they make it unnecessarily difficult for everyone to understand and get the same access to the news," Ordway says "This habit also discourages people who don't have the same knowledge base from seeking out the news."
HOW TO GET IT RIGHT: Present the news as though it's important for everyone to understand the information you're providing.
You don't have to "dumb down" your writing to make it more accessible and understandable. In fact, writing clearly can be challenging. You have to have a strong grasp of the issues you're covering in order to write about them in a straightforward way. You can't simply parrot back the explanations and descriptions offered by government officials and academics.
WHAT TO AVOID: Associating poverty with certain habits, lifestyle choices or TV shows.
" Stories that include people experiencing hardship often tiptoe, if not outright stride, into 'poverty-porn' territory with excessive dissection or description of personal habits like smoking, coffee or soda drinking, watching certain kinds of TV shows, or food choices - especially fast food," Bryant says. "These short-hands are often used as a way of conveying just how bad or desperate things are rather than the extraordinarily common practices they are. This also includes an exaggerated focus on pronunciation, word choice and delivery."

(Journalist Sarah Smarsh, who writes about class and rural America, has also spoken about how reporters edit quotes in a way that plays to their personal biases. Check out her tips on covering rural America.)
HOW TO GET IT RIGHT: Include details that have meaning to the person you are reporting on.
"Details that establish scenes and circumstances are important, but stories that dwell on details that point to stereotype and not the fuller range of a person's life only contribute to dehumanizing rather than creating a connection between the audience and the person," Bryant explains. "Pay attention to whether you only have visuals that are moody or stark or include surroundings that read as poor, messy, cheap or low quality. Strive to be equal in your fidelity to exact speech and description of delivery in all of your reporting."

Ordway adds: "I've read a few stories featuring low-income families that point out how dirty and poorly clothed the children playing outside are. Do any of us allow our kids to play outside in their best outfits? All kids who play outside get dirty - rich or poor. I often wonder if journalists from higher-income backgrounds point out details like these in their stories simply because they seem unusual to them. Maybe they didn't spend their childhoods playing in the dirt and the trees like I did because they had tennis practice or piano lessons or something else to occupy their time. It's so important for journalists to think carefully about the details they include in their stories and how they represent people of limited means because these stories are guiding how other people view them and their place in society."
WHAT TO AVOID: Only depicting poverty as despair.
"Life while in poverty is not exclusively lived in despair the same way a life with means is not exclusively easy or joyful," Bryant says. "Sometimes stories can't cover this range because of a specific focus or scope. But if your newsroom's aggregate coverage of poverty focuses extensively on tragedy, you are missing part of the story."
HOW TO GET IT RIGHT: Help audiences understand that people living in poverty are multidimensional, as are their experiences.
"One of the best pieces of advice I give to less experienced journalists is: Spend a lot of time with people who are very different from you - people who might even make you a little uncomfortable," Ordway says. "This is good advice for journalists at all levels because it encourages them to learn more about those with different life experiences. Think of the insights a reporter from the middle class might get from hanging out with a person who uses food stamps to afford groceries, someone else who qualifies but refuses to accept government benefits, a senior citizen who has been poor his whole life, a Millennial who is experiencing financial hardship for the first time and an individual who has taken a vow of poverty."

This photo, taken by Blake Bolinger, was obtained from Wikimedia Commons and is being used under a Creative Commons license. No changes were made.

Last updated: September 4, 2018

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Covering poverty: What to avoid and how to get it right

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Even before Donald Trump's election victory took newsrooms nationwide by surprise, audiences criticized journalists as being disconnected from the communities they cover, especially poor and working-class communities. For many reporters, there's not much time during the work week for building sources and exploring neighborhoods because their job responsibilities have grown so much in recent decades.

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Meeting with any policymaker-be it a local, state, or federal legislator; county commissioner; mayor; local boards of health or state health administrators - can be a valuable opportunity for you to educate them about your local health department''s (LHD) outstanding work, and to establish yourself and your LHD as valuable resources on public health issues. As with the media, building relationships with both elected and non-elected policymakers is a key component to effectively communicating the role of local public health, and one that''s often undervalued or overlooked amidst competing demands on your time.

Individuals and agencies that take the time to foster friendly relationships with policymakers will see the investment come back to them in the form of support for expansion or defense of funding streams; assistance in facilitating alliances and partnerships to strengthen your work; and public support of your efforts including serving as sources for positive media coverage regarding your role in improving the lives of the people in your town, city, or state.

That said, if you''ve never focused on building relationships with policymakers, where do you begin? Building relationships with policymakers can be done much more easily than you may imagine. The key to initiating and cultivating these relationships lies in a few basic steps that are described below.

Have messages and examples ready to share.

One of the first things you will need is a brief, easy to understand message regarding the role of local public health agencies and their contribution to the well-being of our communities. Elected officials are constantly meeting with constituents (someone who lives in and/or has a direct impact on the lives of the people in the community they serve). This means two things: 1) as a constituent they have a real interest in hearing what you have to say; and 2) given the competing demands on their time, to make a lasting impression you must be prepared to get your message across in a brief and compelling way. Luckily, that step has been taken care of for you. The attached fact sheets provide well-developed core messages about local public health to share with policymakers during your outreach and education efforts.

One of, and often the most, important issue to elected officials is how your work directly impacts the people who put them in office-the people who live and work in the communities they represent. Provide examples and let them know, clearly and specifically, how their constituents are being helped by your LHD (the fact sheets offer examples).

Know your policymaker.

Invest some time prior to the meeting to discover if there is an intersection between their interests and your LHD''s activities. If so, you might thank the member for his or her policy interests and mention how their concerns correlate with what you''re doing. A good place to start is his/her own Web site. If the policymaker does not have a Web site (most local elected officials and non-elected policymakers, such as members of your state board of health often do not), talk to colleagues and fellow community members to get a feel for what he or she cares about. For example, what specific issues does the board of health chair care about most? This will help you develop messages and select a story that links their priorities to your work.

Determine what you want the outcome of your meeting to be.

Often times constituents meet with their local policymakers with a specific request in mind. If you do not have a specific "ask" for the policymaker, let them know that the purpose of your visit is to cultivate a relationship in hopes of future collaboration and support around an important public health issue or program and ask them to consider you as a resource when they need additional expertise or feedback on public health-related issues.

Describe who you are and why you are there.

Describe your LHD and its purpose concisely. Summarize the purpose of your visit early in the conversation and succinctly. Make sure to describe the population your program serves both demographically and geographically.

Tell a relevant story.

The most compelling and memorable way to educate a policymaker on the true value of your work is to tell a brief story about an individual or program that demonstrates the unique impact of your LHD. Keep the story simple, positive, and on point. Provide a few details about the individual or who the program serves (neighborhood, age, etc.). Whenever possible, tie the story to the policymaker''s interests. If the state health commissioner cares deeply about decreasing the spread of AIDS in under-served communities, for example, share a vivid example of how you contributes to that effort. For instance, tell a story about African American women who were empowered through your work to defend themselves and their communities against the spread of the disease. If you don''t personally know of a specific story, doing brief research on the policymaker''s interests will allow you to ask colleagues who work more directly on the issue to provide you with specifics. The above-mentioned fact sheets can also assist in stimulating your thinking about compelling examples from your community.

Leave materials behind.

Bring a limited amount of material to leave behind for the policymaker to refer to later. The material should include a short (1 or 2 page) description of your LHD and any local news clips about your work. You should also leave a copy of a fact sheet that includes your agency''s contact information. When meeting with policymakers and their staff, less is more. Whether they are local, state or federal decision makers, they are constantly barraged with information; the ability to look at less than to get a solid feel for your work will significantly improve the chances that they will actually read the materials. The key is to give them an effective taste so they know where to go when they need to delve deeper into the issues.

Be patient and follow up.

A good relationship with a policymaker can take a considerable investment of your time-but it can be well worth it. Remember to always send a thank you letter following your meetings and keep in touch. Keep the policymaker''s staff updated on your LHD''s activities and impact within the community and on your mailing list. Sometimes policymakers and their staff seem less responsive than you would like them to be. Do not take this as a lack of interest in you or your work, but rather understand that you may have to make more than one call and send more than one E-mail to move your issues up on their radar screen. Often this is a result of their hectic schedules rather than a personal snub. Be respectively persistent and you will find it well worth investing your time.

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Meeting with any policymaker-be it a local, state, or federal legislator; county commissioner; mayor; local boards of health or state health administrators - can be a valuable opportunity for you to educate them about your local health department''s (LHD) outstanding work, and to establish yourself and your LHD as valuable resources on public health issues.

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Half of suspensions across Tennessee in the 2014-15 school year were handed out in just 8 percent of schools, many of which serve black students in Memphis.

Statewide, 20 percent of black male students were suspended at least once that year. Black students were also more than five times as likely as white students to be suspended.

Sky-high suspension rates at some Memphis schools contributed significantly to that disparity. For instance, at Grandview Heights Middle School, fully two-thirds of students were suspended.

The revelations come from Tennessee's latest discipline data, which state education officials presented last month in Nashville to members of a testing task force. Commissioner Candice McQueen called the high concentration of suspensions at 150 schools across the state "startling."

"When you know [students] are not in front of any teacher, that they're on their own, that's the least-quality option,"McQueen said.

The new data reveals that suspensions are on the decline across Tennessee, and especially in Memphis, where the main school district, Shelby County Schools, has posted a double-digit drop in its suspension rate since the 2013-14 school year.

Chief Academic Officer Heidi Ramirez said students attended the equivalent of 65,000 more school days last year because of the reduction in suspensions, from 63 per 100 students in 2013 to 50 per 100 students last year. (Many students were suspended more than once.)

But the new data also shows that the city, where most public school students are black, has a long way to go. In the 2014-15 school year, local schools enrolled less than 10 percent of the state's students - but handed out more than a quarter of its suspensions.

The stunning numbers reflect national trends. Across the U.S., black students are nearly four times as likely to be suspended than white students, even as the total number of suspensions falls. A number of school districts, including Indianapolis and Miami, have moved to eliminate suspensions for non-violent offenses or vaguely defined ones such as insubordination that are meted out more often to black students.

The data released by Tennessee doesn't include the reasons students were pulled out of school. But leadersof both districts in Memphis say schools too often use suspensions when other forms of discipline could address behavior problems while keeping students in school.

Together, 21 percent of students in the two districts in Memphis - Shelby County Schools and the Achievement School District, the state-run turnaround district whose schools are almost exclusively in the city - were suspended in the 2014-15 school year. MLK College Preparatory High School led the ASD in suspensions, with 57 percent.

The ASD has revised its discipline policy to eliminate expulsions, according to a district spokeswoman.

"We believe students deserve instruction regardless of behavior," said Jennifer Williams, the district's manager of enrollment and discipline.

Shelby County Schools, the largest district in Tennessee, is monitoring suspensions and expulsions more closely than ever, and encouraging schools to adopt restorative justice , where students talk out their infractions with faculty and each other. (Read more about the district's strategies here.) But Ramirez said not enough schools are yet on board.

"That's not happening at the scale we'd like," she said. "The challenge there is not having enough adults in buildings who have time in the course of the day" to guide students through restorative justice.

Almost every school in Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools has adopted a restorative justice approach, with districtwide help and resources from Brown University's Annenberg Institute for School Reform. As a result, the district has significantly reduced suspensions and narrowed racial disparities in discipline .

"Changing people's mindset about the best way to manage discipline is a barrier," said Tony Majors, Nashville's director of student services. "But there are more people supportive of alternative discipline practices than opposed."

We compiled lists of schools with the highest rates of discipline actions across the state. Read through them all or skip to the ones you're most interested in:

- Districts with the highest percentage of students suspended overall
- Districts with the highest percentages of black students suspended
- Districts with the highest percentages of students expelled overall
- Districts with the highest percentages of black students expelled
- Schools with the highest percentages of students suspended overall
- Schools (excluding alternative schools) with the highest percentages of overall students suspended
- Schools with the highest percentages of black students suspended
- Schools (excluding alternative schools) with the highest percentages of black students suspended
- Schools with the highest percentages of students expelled
- Schools (excluding alternative schools) with the highest percentages of students expelled
- Schools with the highest percentages of black students expelled
- Schools (excluding alternative schools) with the highest percentages of black students expelled
Districts with the highest percentage of students suspended overall: Districts with the highest percentages of black students suspended:

1. Shelby County, 21.9

2. Achievement School District, 21.8

3. Madison County, 17.8

4. Fayette County, 17.6

5. Metro Nashville, 16.9

6. (tie) Cheatham County, 16.2, Millington, 16.2

7. Hamilton County, 15.8

8. Sequatchie County, 15.4

9. Knox County, 14.8

Districts with the highest percentages of students expelled overall:

1. Shelby County, .8

2. Hamilton County, .6

3. Metro Nashville, Hamblen County, Giles County, Hardin County, .4

4. Lenoir City, Montgomery County, Sullivan County, Bartlett, Sequatchie County, South Carroll County, .3

Districts with the highest percentages black students expelled:

1. South Carroll County, 3.2

2. Lenoir City, 1.5

3. Hamilton County, 1.3

4. Shelby County, .9

5. Collierville, .8

6. Sullivan County, .7

7. Metro Nashville, .6, Hamblen County, .6

8. Montgomery County, .5, Rutherford County, .5

Schools with the highest percentages of students suspended overall

1. MNPS Middle ALC, Metro Nashville, 88.9 percent

2. Union County Alternative Learning Center, Union County, 82.8

3. Richard Yoakley School, Knox County, 68.4

4. Grandview Heights Middle, Shelby County, 65.7

5. MCS Prep School-Northwest, Shelby County, 63.8

6. KIPP Collegiate Middle, Shelby County, 62.6

7. Hamilton High School, Shelby County, 58.6

8. Hillcrest High School, Shelby County, 57.7

9. MLK Prep High School, Achievement School District, 57

10. MLK Transition Center, Shelby County, 56

Schools (excluding alternative schools) with the highest percentages of overall students suspended: Schools with the highest percentages of black students suspended: Schools with the highest percentages of overall students expelled: Schools (excluding alternative schools) with the highest percentages of overall students expelled:

1. Orchard Knob Middle School, Hamilton County, 6.8

2. Hamilton Middle School, Shelby County, 5.6

3. Geeter Middle School, Shelby County, 5.2

4. The Howard School School, Hamilton County, 4.7

5. Brainerd High School, Hamilton County, 4.6

6. Oakhaven Middle School, Shelby County, 4.3

7. Whites Creek High School, Metro Nashville, 4.2

8. (tie) Hillcrest High, Shelby County, and Melrose High, Shelby County, 4.1

9. Trezevant High, Shelby County, 4

Schools with the highest percentages of black students expelled Schools (excluding alternative schools) with the highest percentages of black students expelled: Corrections and clarifications (Oct. 26, 2016): This story has been updated to correct that MLK College Preparatory High School led the Achievement School District in suspensions, not KIPP Collegiate High School, as an earlier version stated. KIPP Collegiate High School is in Shelby County Schools. This story also reflects that the ASD has phased out expulsions for all grades, not suspensions for pre-K through third grade, as an earlier version stated. In addition, this story clarifies that the 21 percent suspension rate in the 2014-2015 school year reflected suspensions across both Shelby County Schools and the ASD. :

meet the new boss

Amie Baca-Oehlert, a school counselor from the Adams 12 district north of Denver, recently took the helm of the 35,000-member Colorado Education Association. She's served as the vice president of the state's largest teachers union since 2012, working closely with recent president Kerrie Dallman. In that time, union-backed candidates have gained ground on school boards across the Front Range, while at the statehouse, the union fended off efforts to weaken licensure and partnered with conservatives to roll back standardized tests. But the last session ended with a political defeat: Changes to the public employee pension system significantly raised the retirement age for teachers.

Baca-Oehlert was elected as president in April, on the heels of two days of teacher protests at the Capitol that shut down schools across the state. She takes over as the union faces an uncertain political environment. Teacher protests generated renewed engagement, but the union's preferred gubernatorial candidate lost the Democratic primary. There's a competitive governor's race, control of the state Senate is also up for grabs, and a third attempt to raise taxes for education could appear on the ballot. What happens in November could open up new possibilities to advance the union's agenda or shut doors.

Baca-Oehlert recently sat down with Chalkbeat to talk about her top priorities, whether she has any regrets about wading into the primary, and what the lasting impact of April's teacher walkouts might be.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
You've been in a leadership position with CEA since 2012. As you take over as president, what are the biggest challenges? What are your top priorities?
School funding certainly is top of mind and something we need to continue to work toward, to make sure that every child regardless of where they live here in Colorado has access to a quality public education.

And teacher voice, ensuring that the professionals ... are honored and respected and listened to. That's something I really value as a leader. They are the ones closest to the students doing the work.
When (immediate past president) Kerrie Dallman took over, she said in an interview that the union couldn't just be the voice of no, that the union had to present a positive vision of reform. Do you still feel like that's important politically or do you feel like the political environment has changed?
There is broader understanding that our schools aren't broken or something that needs to be fixed, but we aren't necessarily doing right by our schools or by our students, and that gets back to funding. When you look back at the last 10 years of underfunding our schools and what that has done, what that has meant to schools and communities, there is broader understanding that we need to support our schools. We need to resource our schools. We need to give the educators and teachers working with students the tools and resources they need to serve students' needs, whether that be more mental health supports, things for school safety, down to supplies. We put out a report that teachers are spending on average $656 a year on supplies for their students.
There's a good likelihood there will be a tax increase to fund education on the ballot in November. We've been here before in Colorado. What can you do to have a different outcome this time?
It's doing that talking to people, sharing our stories. I think one of the most powerful things from the April Days of Action was people were able to tell their stories. It shifted the conversation. People were able to really see and understand what's happening in our public schools and how educators in Colorado are treated. They definitely have to have bachelor's degrees. Many of them have master's degrees, yet they're working two and three jobs, many of their own children are on free- and reduced-[price] lunch. We were able to help people understand that we have one of the fastest-growing economies in the country, yet we're treating our educators and our students in this manner. People were able to share those stories and help people understand we can and should do better by the students of Colorado.
You waded into the Democratic primary, not only endorsing Cary Kennedy but also running pretty negative ads against Mike Johnston and Jared Polis. Polis is now the nominee. Do you have any regrets about that?
We didn't run those ads, that's an independent expenditure committee that ran those ads. But I don't regret that we as an organization went into the primary. We wanted to ensure there was a candidate who was a champion for students and public education and that education was going to be something that mattered in this election for governor. I certainly believe there was a lot of talk about education and education became an issue in the governor's race. I believe it still will be in the general election. We have an internal process for how we recommend candidates, and that process will be going on for the general election.
Just for the record, you were a significant donor to the independent expenditure committee that ran those ads.
Yes, we did contribute.
Do you have any concerns that if there is a Polis administration, he won't be as receptive to the perspective that you all bring?
No. The union is 35,000 educators across Colorado who are Colorado citizens. I would hope that anyone sitting in the governor's office would understand the value and the need to listen to educators, to hear their voices and have educators at the table as partners.
Is that true also if Walker Stapleton is the next governor? As state treasurer, Stapleton advocated changes to the Public Employees Retirement Association pension system that were strongly opposed by the teachers union. There's a challenging history there. What do you see as your job if there's a Republican in the governor's office?
My job is to come to the table. No matter if it's a Democrat or a Republican, it's about coming to the table to do what's best for students and public education. My role as president of the CEA would be to share our issues, share our concerns, and hopefully work together to do what's right.
In the conversation about school funding, many conservatives ask what kind of outcomes we'll get if we invest more in schools. They also raise the issue of teacher effectiveness and being really rigorous about having a highly effective teacher in every classroom. What's your answer to that? What improvements can we expect if we invest more?
What we can expect is we can have a system that's supporting students, supporting their needs, and that in turn leads to greater student success. We've seen what the underfunding of our schools has done. We have more students who have significant mental health needs. We have more students who are entering into school without enough food, without school supplies, who sometimes don't even have shoes. When we can meet students needs, we know it leads to greater student success.

We've not been afraid of teacher accountability or teacher evaluation. It's been an unfunded mandate, and districts have not been able to implement that system well.
In addition to more resources, is there anything you would support to improve student achievement?
Beyond resources? There are certainly things we could look at in terms of teacher recruitment and teacher retention and how we're providing professional development. And that's something we've been very heavily involved in with our COpilot program , online, teacher-provided, vetted, professional development that meets an individual teachers needs.

I think we also need to look really closely at how we're supporting educators in those first one to three years. If you look at the medical field, you don't get a six-week training and then you're off on your own. You get several years of side-by-side. We could really look at how we support that teacher in their first one to three years and doing more collaboration and more co-teaching before you are off on your own.

One of the other things we need to look at is the whole role of social-emotional needs of students. My background is as a school counselor so I have a lot of experience in that work and knowledge. I definitely believe a child cannot learn if they are not safe socially and emotionally. That has gone out of our curriculum in a lot of places, and we need to look at what we can do in our system so we're helping the whole child and not just that academic side.
Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, was recently quoted as saying teachers unions are becoming more political, not less. Do you agree with that?
We just need to maintain what we've been doing. I agree that we certainly don't need to become less political. The nature of public education is political. We elect school board members who make decisions about what happens in our classrooms. We elect legislators who make decisions. It is a political job. In that sense, you have to engage in that work to have some sense of control over what's happening to you as a professional. Again, we are seeing people really come to realize that. We saw that with the April Days of Action. People are realizing, "I have a voice. We have a process. We live in a democratic country and we have an ability and a responsibility to exercise that voice and come together." People are not going to sit by and just watch things happen to them. People are going to exercise their voice and come together.
What did you gain by the teacher walkouts in April and how will we see that reverberate going forward?
The biggest gain was the public awareness that came out of that. I think a lot of people were just not aware of what the last 10 years of underfunding our schools has meant, what the impact on individual educators and students has been.

It was very validating for many of our members who often feel like being a teacher is a very difficult job. There are a lot of expectations on you, and sometimes you don't hear the thankfulness or the gratitude people have. Just the honks and the support and the people saying, "we stand with you," that gave them a boost. It kind of reinvigorated them to say, "I have a voice, and I can use my voice to make a difference for myself and my profession and my students."

Emerging differences

The two candidates left in the race to succeed Gov. Bill Haslam agree that teachers should get more pay, state testing should be reviewed, and a college degree isn't for everyone as Tennessee seeks to equip students for the jobs of tomorrow.

But their priorities for "school choice" and school funding look different. And important nuances contrast their positions on issues like publicly funded early childhood programs and using student test scores in teacher evaluations.

Former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean and Williamson County businessman Bill Lee won their primary races Thursday and will face off on Nov. 6 in the general election.

The victor will follow Haslam, a term-limited Republican governor who inherited and embraced a blueprint for student improvement developed under Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen as part of Tennessee's $500 million Race to the Top award in 2010.
READ: In his final months as governor, Haslam reflects on his education legacy
Stay the course?

Dean, 62, the Democratic nominee and a lawyer, says his administration generally would stick with that plan which is based on 1) raising academic standards; 2) adopting an aligned test to measure student progress; and 3) using the results to hold students, teachers, schools, and districts accountable.

"We have done a great job of raising standards and expectations so that students will be ready for college and career," Dean told Chalkbeat in a recent survey of candidates on education issues. "We now need to give educators the resources and supports they need to make sure students master our higher standards."

Lee, 58, the Republican nominee and engineer who owns a $250 million heating, ventilation and plumbing company, agrees that high standards are important, but says it's "how you get there that is really the question."

"I think we can push for high standards while reducing the testing burden and focusing on a testing protocol that is more meaningful to our teachers and parents," Lee said.

As governor for eight years, Haslam has held firm to the controversial policy of including student growth scores from state tests in teacher evaluations - and believes it's been key to Tennessee's achievement gains on national tests since 2011. However, he worries the policy could crumble under a new administration and General Assembly due to the state's widespread problems administering its 3-year-old TNReady assessment.
To see the candidates' full statements about testing, teacher evaluations, and more, read their answers to our survey questions
Voters care

Voters have told pollsters that education is the top issue in this year's gubernatorial race.

"Tennessee's next governor and General Assembly will face many decisions that can either advance or slow student achievement progress," said Jamie Woodson, CEO of the State Collaborative on Reforming Education, also known as SCORE, a nonpartisan advocacy and research organization founded by former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee.

Those decisions, she said, will include how to improve low-performing schools; support effective teaching; help all students be ready for college, career, and jobs; and administer tests that tell educators, parents, and communities how their students are doing.

State lawmakers also will play a big part in the direction Tennessee goes. And the Legislature and its leadership will look significantly different beginning in 2019 due to a large exodus of members, including the retirement of two House education committee chairmen and the exit of the House speaker who appoints members to those panels.

Other issues

Setting funding for schools is one of the state's biggest responsibilities, but whether the money is adequate is being reviewed in the courts due to lawsuits filed against Tennessee by three of its four largest school systems.

Dean said his administration would propose spending increases for schools, while Lee wants to appoint an inspector general to "seek out waste and abuse in the system."

On "school choice," both candidates like high-quality, nonprofit charter schools, but are split over whether Tennessee should allow vouchers or other incentives that channel public money to pay for private school tuition - an idea repeatedly rejected by the Legislature over the last decade.

As Nashville's mayor from 2007 to 2015, Dean supported publicly financed, privately operated charter schools, but adds that they are no panacea and don't necessarily work for rural communities. He is adamantly opposed to tuition vouchers.

Lee says he's more interested in the quality of schools than who owns the buildings and is open to voucher-like programs. "When parents have the freedom to choose, not only is their child's trajectory improved, but the introduction of choice and competition raises the bar for everyone," he told Chalkbeat.

As for the state's pre-K program, both candidates want to prioritize improving its quality, which was called into question by a major study by Vanderbilt University. Dean has campaigned to expand pre-K access and after-school enrichment opportunities as well.

This will be the first election since 1994 that Tennesseans will cast ballots in the same year in competitive gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races. Bredesen, who preceded Haslam as governor and spearheaded Tennessee's Race to the Top award, is running against U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn for the seat being vacated by U.S. Sen. Bob Corker.

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Tennessee students more likely to be suspended if they're black boys - or live in Memphis

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Half of suspensions across Tennessee in the 2014-15 school year were handed out in just 8 percent of schools, many of which serve black students in Memphis. Statewide, 20 percent of black male students were suspended at least once that year. Black students were also more than five times as likely as white students to be suspended.

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Executive summary

As many as one in ten African American students has an incarcerated parent. One in four has a parent who is or has been incarcerated. The discriminatory incarceration of African American parents is an important cause of their children's lowered performance, especially in schools where the trauma of parental incarceration is concentrated. In this report, we review studies from many disciplines showing that parental incarceration leads to an array of cognitive and noncognitive outcomes known to affect children's performance in school, and we conclude that our criminal justice system makes an important contribution to the racial achievement gap.

Educators have paid too little heed to this criminal justice crisis. Criminal justice reform should be a policy priority for educators who are committed to improving the achievement of African American children. While reform of federal policy may seem implausible in a Trump administration, educators can seize opportunities for such advocacy at state and local levels because many more parents are incarcerated in state than in federal prisons. In 2014, over 700,000 prisoners nationwide were serving sentences of a year or longer for nonviolent crimes. Over 600,000 of these were in state, not federal, prisons.

Research in criminal justice, health, sociology, epidemiology, and economics demonstrates that when parents are incarcerated, children do worse across cognitive and noncognitive outcome measures.

Key findings include:

An African American child is six times as likely as a white child to have or have had an incarcerated parent. A growing share of African Americans have been arrested for drug crimes, yet African Americans are no more likely than whites to sell or use drugs.

Independent of other social and economic characteristics, children of incarcerated parents are more likely to:

drop out of school

develop learning disabilities, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)

misbehave in school

suffer from migraines, asthma, high cholesterol, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and homelessness

Each of these conditions presents a challenge to student performance.

To improve their students' outcomes, educators should join forces with criminal justice reformers to:

eliminate disparities between minimum sentences for possession of crack vs. powder cocaine

repeal mandatory minimum sentences for minor drug offenses and other nonviolent crimes

encourage President Obama to increase the pace of pardons and commutations in the final days of his term

increase funding for social, educational, and employment programs for released offenders

Introduction

Criminal justice policy is education policy.

Several police killings of young men in African American neighborhoods, as well as the national racial polarization exposed in the recent presidential election campaign, have brought increased attention to our unresolved racial inequalities, including the disproportionate numbers of African American men who are in jail or prison.

In the last months of his administration, President Obama has responded to excessive federal prison sentences with a stepped-up rate of commutations. Since the beginning of his administration, he has granted over 1,000 sentence commutations (more than his 11 predecessors combined), mostly for nonviolent, victimless drug crimes. 1

President-elect Trump, in contrast, has advocated a nationwide policy of "stop-and-frisk," a police practice concentrated in low-income minority neighborhoods that invariably leads to the arrest and eventual imprisonment of men, African American men in particular, for low-level crimes.

"Stop-and-frisk," as well as excessive sentencing for minor crimes, are not federal policies, and, once in office, Mr. Trump will have little influence over them. These are policies and practices of local and state governments, and reform is no less realistic or urgent now than it was before the presidential election.

Education policymakers have been concerned with a related problem: the "school-to-prison pipeline." The term refers to the practice of stationing police officers in schools to arrest children whose offenses once would have been handled by school counselors and principals without the involvement of the criminal justice system. The term also refers to harsh and racially disparate school disciplinary policies that include "zero tolerance" and mandatory suspensions or expulsions for nonviolent infractions. Students who are arrested by school police, or suspended by school officials, are more likely to later serve jail or prison time than students with similar offenses who are subject to less harsh forms of discipline. 2

However, even where incarceration does not have roots in school disciplinary problems, education policymakers and educators in states and localities should pay greater attention to the mass incarceration of African Americans because student performance is harmed when parents are caught up in the harsh criminal justice system.

The extraordinary growth in incarceration rates has been extensively described by scholars as well as in more accessible works such as Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow. Our purpose in this report is not to restate these discussions but rather to stress that mass incarceration is not a criminal justice issue alone. The evidence is overwhelming that the unjustified incarceration of African American fathers (and, increasingly, mothers as well) is an important cause of the lowered performance of their children. When parents are imprisoned, it is not only they who suffer, but also their offspring. The number of children affected has grown to the point that we can reasonably infer that our criminal justice system is making an important contribution to the racial achievement gap in both cognitive and noncognitive skills. a

We have organized this report as follows: First, we report data on the extent, and the growth over time, of incarceration in the United States; although these data are well known to advocates of criminal justice reform, educators may not be aware of their full extent. We then describe the racial, ethnic, and gender composition of the prison population and look at data on the share of children, and of African American children in particular, who have (or have had) parents in jail or prison. Next, we summarize the extensive social science and epidemiological literature documenting the effects of parental incarceration on children's cognitive and noncognitive development. b The statistical sophistication of these studies plausibly eliminates the possibility that the depressed student outcomes are attributable to socioeconomic or demographic characteristics of the children rather than to their parents' present or previous incarcerations. We then describe the plausible pathways by which parental incarceration influences children's development and is an independent cause of the gap in cognitive and noncognitive outcomes between black and white students. Finally, we summarize contemporary criminal justice reform efforts and suggest that educators who hope to raise the achievement levels of disadvantaged children should make such reform of state and local policies and practices their cause as well.

However implausible reform of federal policy may seem in a Trump administration (and we hope we are wrong), pursuit of state and local policy reform is likely to have the greatest impact, as many more parents are incarcerated in state than in federal prisons. In 2014, over 700,000 prisoners nationwide were serving sentences of a year or longer for nonviolent crimes. Of these, over 600,000 were in state, not federal, prisons. 3 This reality presents an opportunity, and a necessity, for educators to press for changes in states' policing and criminal justice policies that will substantially benefit their students.

The extent and growth of mass incarceration in the United States

The American criminal justice system incarcerates at a rate without equal in the modern world. In the United States today, there are approximately 700 prisoners per 100,000 residents. The next highest rate is the former Soviet republic of Turkmenistan (with approximately 600), followed by El Salvador and Cuba (500 each) and Thailand (450). Vladimir Putin's repressive Russian Federation also imprisons at a rate of 450, while South Africa, a nation whose racial hierarchy is in some ways similar to our own, imprisons 300, as does theocratic Iran. Israel, faced with potential uprisings of its Arab minority, imprisons only 250, as does Turkey. Among other Western industrialized nations, the United Kingdom (including England and Wales), Spain, and Australia have the highest rates of incarceration (150), while others-Canada and France, for example-have rates of around 100 or below. Figure 1 displays incarceration rates for selected countries. 4

The U.S. pattern of high incarceration rates is a relatively recent phenomenon. Figure 2 shows that in 1970, the incarceration rate was only 160 per 100,000 residents. It rose to 220 in 1980, to 460 in 1990, and to 690 in 2000; it continued to rise until 2008, when a slow decline commenced. 5

The relationship between crime and incarceration is difficult to pinpoint. Since 1990, crime rates nationwide have declined steadily. 6 From 1990 to 1999, when the incarceration rate increased by at least 50 percent, both violent and property crimes decreased by about 25 percent. 7 There is no scholarly consensus regarding the causes of the decline in crime during the 1990s, but increased incarceration does not seem to be responsible for more than a very small share of the decline (perhaps 10 percent), and this small impact has been almost entirely on a decline in property, not violent, crimes.

In a previous report, we called attention to research attributing a substantial share of the decline in crime during the 1990s to the removal of lead from gasoline in the 1970s, the decade in which young men most likely to commit crimes in the 1990s were born. 8 (In that report, we explain that exposure to lead is correlated with cognitive and behavioral impairment and with increased criminal behavior.) Other likely factors contributing to the decline in crime during the 1990s include an aging population, decreased alcohol consumption, improvements in how police deployed resources, income growth, and a decline in unemployment. Since the year 2000, crime rates have continued to decline, but incarceration was not a contributing factor in these declines; of the other factors that seem to have contributed to the decline of crime in the 1990s, none appear to have been influential since 2000. 9

Offsetting any possible role of current imprisonment levels in preventing serious crime is the role of prisons in exacerbating it. Whether, on balance, prisons do more to deter than to breed crime is unknown. Many prisoners are exposed in prison to a more intense culture of criminality than they had experienced before their incarceration; a criminal record reduces employability in the legal economy for those released; and imprisonment tends to sever a prisoner's ties to noncriminal social networks. Each of these conditions can increase crime in the long run. In addition, when imprisonment becomes epidemic in particular communities, its stigma is greatly reduced, normalizing behavior that can lead to arrest and incarceration. 10

The explosion in imprisonment rates has not resulted from rising crime rates. Rather, two policies have been mostly responsible. One has been an increasingly punitive sentencing policy, including prison terms for violent crimes that have increased by nearly 50 percent since the early 1990s. The other has been a declaration by the federal and state governments of a "war on drugs" that has included severe mandatory minimum sentences for relatively trivial victimless drug offenses. 11 The trend has been exacerbated by the reimprisonment of released offenders for technical probation violations or for an inability to pay escalating fines and court fees. Absurdly, while released prisoners are in many cases excluded-either formally or informally-from employment in the legal economy, they can be reimprisoned for violating the terms of release by failing to hold a job.

Although increasing rates of imprisonment may have contributed, in small part, to the decline in serious crime, it is doubtful that imprisonment has any effect on the rate of drug use. There is no evidence that drug use has declined since the onset of mass incarceration.

The incarceration explosion is primarily an expression of our race relations and of the confrontational stance of police toward African Americans in neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage. The incarceration rate of middle-class African Americans has declined and makes no contribution to the rapidly rising rate of incarcerations.

Young African American men are no more likely to use or sell drugs than young white men, but they are nearly three times as likely to be arrested for drug use or sale; once arrested, they are more likely to be sentenced; and, once sentenced, their jail or prison terms are 50 percent longer on average. African American drivers are no more likely than white drivers to change lanes without signaling, but they are more likely to be stopped by police for doing so, and, once stopped, they are more likely to be caught up in the penal system, including jail time for inability to pay fines. The Justice Department's investigation of police practices in Ferguson, Missouri, found that African Americans were stopped by the police more frequently than whites, but of those who were stopped and searched, more whites were found to be carrying illegal drugs than African Americans. 12

During the growth of mass incarceration rates from 1970 to the present, the share of those arrested for the most violent crimes (murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) who were African American decreased, while the share of those imprisoned for nonviolent offenses such as drug use who were African American increased. 13

Whites are incarcerated at a rate of approximately 400 per 100,000 white residents, high by international standards but not the highest. Our ranking as the nation with the most-incarcerated population is attributable primarily to the imprisonment of 2,200 African Americans per 100,000 African American residents, and to a lesser extent to the Hispanic imprisonment rate of nearly 1,000. 14 Figure 3 describes the racial and ethnic distribution of incarcerated men (as of 2014). 15 Figure 4 describes the likelihood of incarceration for men in these demographic categories. 16

Racial and social class differences in children's experiences with parental incarceration

By the age of 14, approximately 25 percent of African American children have experienced a parent-in most cases a father-being imprisoned for some period of time. The comparable share for white children is 4 percent. 17 On any given school day, approximately 10 percent of African American schoolchildren have a parent who is in jail or prison, more than four times the share in 1980. 18

This growth in the share of African American children suffering from parental incarceration has in all probability offset many efforts to raise the average achievement levels of these children during the last 35 years. Although the share of white children with a father in prison has grown comparably (from 0.5 percent to 2 percent), the concentration in low-income neighborhoods of African American children with imprisoned fathers presents challenges to teachers and schools unlike those presented by the relatively rare white child with an imprisoned father. 19

Of imprisoned fathers of African American children, only one-third are in prison because of a violent crime. Another third have been convicted of drug offenses. The remainder have committed property crimes or technical violations, such as failure to show up for a court date or probation officer appointment; failure to meet other conditions of release, like steady employment; or failure (usually from inability) to pay traffic or similar fines. 20

Outcomes for children of incarcerated parents

Children of incarcerated parents suffer serious harm. It is tempting to think that these consequences are attributes of disadvantaged children, independent of parental incarceration. But careful studies of the effects on children have accounted for these attributes. Children of the incarcerated have worse cognitive and noncognitive outcomes than children with similar socioeconomic and demographic characteristics whose parents have not experienced incarceration.

Association of parental incarceration with children's cognitive outcomes

Children with incarcerated parents are 33 percent more likely to have speech or language problems-like stuttering or stammering-than otherwise similar children whose fathers have not been incarcerated. c,21 The grade point averages of children with incarcerated parents decline. 22

It is more common for children of incarcerated parents to drop out of school than it is for children of nonincarcerated parents, controlling for race, IQ, home quality, poverty status, and mother's education. 23 This is especially true for adolescent boys between the ages of 11 and 14 with a mother behind bars. Such boys are 25 percent more likely to drop out of school, and they are 55 percent more likely to drop out of school because they themselves have been incarcerated. d,24

Children of incarcerated fathers complete fewer years of school than children of nonincarcerated fathers, controlling for other likely confounding social and demographic characteristics. The statistical methods used to determine this are sufficiently sophisticated to suggest that the paternal incarceration itself is the cause of children completing fewer years of education than children of never-incarcerated fathers. 25

Association of parental incarceration with noncognitive outcomes

Incarceration also hurts children's noncognitive outcomes. Children of parents who have been incarcerated are more prone to learning disabilities than are children whose parents were never behind bars. 26

Children with incarcerated parents are 48 percent more likely to have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) than children with nonincarcerated parents. They are 23 percent more likely to suffer from developmental delays. Children with incarcerated parents, especially sons of incarcerated fathers, are 43 percent more likely to suffer from behavioral problems. These differences show up in comparisons of otherwise similar children, even those who experience other disruptive events like parental divorce or death, and after accounting for other characteristics that are generally understood to cause learning disabilities. e,27

Figure 5 summarizes studies that describe the increased likelihood that children of parents who have ever been incarcerated will have various negative outcomes, in comparison to the likelihood that children of never-incarcerated parents will have them. 28

Children of incarcerated fathers suffer from worse physical health: They are a quarter to a third more likely than children of nonincarcerated fathers to suffer from migraines, asthma, and high cholesterol. f,29 Their mental health is also worse than that of children of nonincarcerated fathers. Children of incarcerated fathers are 51 percent more likely to suffer from anxiety, 43 percent more likely to suffer from depression, and 72 percent more likely to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. g,30 As adults, daughters of parents who have been incarcerated have a higher body mass index, which is associated with other health problems, such as heart disease and diabetes. For example, a 150-pound, 5-foot 6-inch, 28-year-old woman has a predicted greater weight of 9 pounds if, when she was a child, her parent was incarcerated. 31

Children of incarcerated parents are more likely to engage in behavior that exposes them to the criminal justice system. For example, they are 43 percent more likely than socially and demographically similar children of nonincarcerated parents to use marijuana. 32 They are 10 percent more likely to turn to delinquency than children without incarcerated parents. h,33 And finally, children of incarcerated parents are at greater risk of themselves being imprisoned (with the risk of incarceration being greatest for children of incarcerated mothers). 34

Children of incarcerated parents lose faith in public institutions. In all but two states, convicted felons are prohibited from voting while in prison; in some states, ex-felons are prohibited from voting even after they have served their sentences. In many states, only gubernatorial or court action can reverse this disenfranchisement. 35 Children of parents who have been incarcerated are, as adults, less likely to vote, less likely to trust the government, and less likely to engage in community service. i,36

Plausible pathways between parental incarceration and negative outcomes for children

Parental incarceration is independently likely to result in worse outcomes for children because of socioeconomic factors, psychological and family factors, and health factors.

Socioeconomic pathways

Children of incarcerated parents experience more economic instability and are more likely to become poor. 37 Prior to their incarceration, more than half of all inmates were the primary income providers for their families. 38 But prisoners make little or no money, so incarceration usually means a sharp decline in (or the complete loss of) family income. Financial distress continues after release from prison because finding a job can be difficult: a criminal record can formally and informally bar former prisoners from employment. 39 Formerly imprisoned African American men without a high school education earn substantially less than African American men with similarly low educational attainment but without a criminal record. 40

Parent income is a strong predictor of how children will fare in school and, thus, into adulthood. 41 Income losses from incarceration and exclusion from post-incarceration employment cause multigenerational harm, because income mobility is rare, and it is especially rare for African Americans.

The United States has less intergenerational mobility than many other industrialized societies. Of American children born to parents with incomes in the bottom income quintile, almost half (43 percent) remain trapped in the bottom quintile as adults and only 30 percent make it to the middle quintile or higher. African Americans have even less mobility. For those born to parents in the bottom income quintile, over half (53 percent) remain there as adults, and only a quarter (26 percent) make it to the middle quintile or higher. 42 In other words, incarceration not only predicts worse outcomes for prisoners' children, but also for their grandchildren and beyond.

Family and psychological pathways

Visiting a parent behind bars is stressful. There is usually no place to play. Waiting times can be long. Sometimes, physical contact between child and parent is limited or prohibited. 43 In combination, these are traumatic for a child.

After a parent is incarcerated, the remaining parent is likely to have higher stress levels than before his or her partner was incarcerated. 44 The nonincarcerated parent is less able to pay attention to his or her child. Children of incarcerated parents are likely to be unsupervised more frequently than children of nonincarcerated parents. When a father is incarcerated, the remaining parent, the mother, may need to work longer hours, making her less available to her child.

Instability in their parents' relationship as a result of the incarceration puts children at heightened risk of misbehaving in class to the point where they get suspended or even expelled, and these consequences frequently deteriorate into delinquency. 45

When children witness their parents' disenfranchisement, it erodes their engagement in the democratic process and social institutions. When children see their parents marginalized from political participation by losing the right to vote, they are less likely to perceive government institutions as just, trustworthy, or deserving of their participation. 46

In the context of institutions that are meant to be socially supportive, like schools and churches, a parent's incarceration is often kept hidden for fear of social stigmatization. 47 Children of incarcerated parents therefore have fewer opportunities to benefit from resources that are important for social integration. Social relationships and systems are fractured, including the structures of family and home. Children of incarcerated parents experience greater residential instability, as the remaining parent typically can no longer afford the family's previous housing and must either find a new, less costly, and usually less adequate place for the family to live; move in with relatives; or place children in foster care. 48 These conditions also predict children's misbehavior, suspension, and expulsion from school. 49

Children of incarcerated mothers are especially likely to end up in foster care. 50 The increase in rates of maternal incarceration has added about 100,000 children to the foster care system, close to one-third of the increase in the number of fostered children between 1985 and 2000. 51 In general, children in foster care do worse in school than socioeconomically and demographically similar children who live with a parent. 52 They are absent from school more frequently and have more behavioral problems. 53

Homelessness is also more common for children of parents behind bars. Children of incarcerated parents, especially incarcerated fathers, are more likely than otherwise similar children to end up homeless; 54 the homelessness trend is especially pronounced for African American children of incarcerated fathers. 55 Because they are more likely to move around, live in housing shelters, and sleep on the street, nonincarcerated family members are more likely to be victims of crime. 56 Children who are homeless are more likely to do worse in school than otherwise similar children who are not homeless. 57

Health pathways

Stress, especially toxic stress that occurs when a parent is incarcerated, leads to deterioration in mental health, with anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder being common manifestations, as well as in physical health; for example, many children of incarcerated parents develop asthma. Indeed, children who grow up under stressful conditions have more sympathetic nervous activity, including elevated blood pressure. They have more activity in their hypothalamic pituitary axis, which regulates cortisol. This disrupts their prefrontal cortex activity, sympathetic nervous activity, and metabolic system, causing diminished cognition as well as worse health.

Parental incarceration provokes or exacerbates family poverty, which itself elevates the stress hormones of infants and children between the ages of 7 months to 4 years. Stress hormones disrupt the metabolic system, leading to increased risk of obesity. Growing up in poverty also influences gene expression. 58 Children who grow up with the chronic stress of poverty (child-family separation, violence, family turmoil, noise, crowding, and poor housing quality) have disrupted brain activity. The areas of the brain that are disordered are responsible for emotional regulation, anxiety, and memory. 59

The pathway between stress and asthma is also worth explaining, as an understanding of it can help shape policy solutions. Psychological factors-a child's own mental and emotional state as well as his or her mother's-can trigger the onset of asthma as well as worsen the disease. If a mother is emotionally unwell-for example, if she is dealing with the stress of her partner's incarceration-her mental state is likely to increase her child's physiological response to harmful external stimuli as well as disrupt the child's hormonal production. 60 The child may appear fine externally, but these internal biological changes can contribute to the later onset of asthma. 61

In addition, family disruption and diminished resources may mean that children are taken to a doctor less often than is recommended. This, too, contributes to poor health.

These relationships between incarceration and family harm can become cyclical: A parent is incarcerated. Family income drops. Housing stability is eroded. Stress increases. Children do worse in school and their health deteriorates. They drop out or are expelled. They become delinquent or homeless or end up in foster care. Eventually, they are incarcerated and their own children suffer the same consequences they have faced.

Recommendations

The incarceration of African Americans has taken on such massive proportions that even those policymakers who recognize the problem are paralyzed in their consideration of how to address it. The incremental approach that American policymakers usually take to addressing social problems is wholly inadequate to the task of integrating into mainstream society the astounding numbers of African American men and their families who have been unjustly caught up in the penal system. And if attempted, the integration will not be smooth. Because, as we have noted, prison culture develops tendencies toward criminal behavior in many of those who, incarcerated for nonviolent, victimless crimes, had few such tendencies before, penal reform could result in small increases in crime that would nonetheless stimulate a backlash that could be hard to resist.

Perhaps because the enormity of the task is so frightening, our nation has taken only very modest steps to address it.

There are no simple formulas for reducing the incentives for prosecutors of those charged with violent crimes to seek prison terms that are excessive by historical standards and are not needed to deter or prevent crime. In the case of the war on drugs, however, reforms are easier to design and implement. 62

For example, one of the more serious racially discriminatory aspects of the criminal justice system is the difference between sentences for crack and powder cocaine, two chemically identical substances. African Americans tend to use crack cocaine, and whites tend to use powder. In 1986, Congress adopted minimum sentences for possession of crack cocaine that were 100 times more severe than the sentences for possession of powder cocaine: A person arrested with 5 grams of crack cocaine faced a 5-year mandatory minimum sentence, while one arrested with powder cocaine did not face the same 5-year sentence unless he or she possessed 500 grams. This obvious racial disparity was upheld by courts because, under our current legal doctrines, racial discrimination can be proven only if those enacting the law openly stated that their purpose was to discriminate on the basis of race. After years of inaction, Congress in 2010 reduced the disparity from a ratio of 100-to-1 to 18-to-1 and also slightly reduced mandatory minimums. These compromises had no rational basis, and they preserve the mass incarceration of African Americans. The ratio should be eliminated entirely, along with the elimination of mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent crimes. 63

In the closing days of his term, President Obama has commuted the sentences of hundreds of federal prisoners, most of whom were serving long prison terms for nonviolent drug offenses. He has commuted more than 1,000 sentences since the beginning of his presidency, exceeding the combined total of his 11 predecessors. Administration officials anticipate additional commutations before he leaves office. 64 His actions have been politically controversial and courageous, though limited. Commutations only reduce sentences; unlike pardons, they do not restore prisoners' full civil rights. Pardons of nonviolent drug offenders would not only restore their eligibility to vote, but-importantly for the welfare of their children-would restore their right to public housing or housing vouchers, food stamps, and other poverty-reduction benefits. Without such a restoration of rights, the poverty and homelessness of children's families that have such devastating effects on those children's outcomes will continue long after their parents' sentences have been commuted.

President Obama's actions have also been limited because the overwhelming majority of those imprisoned for nonviolent, victimless drug crimes are not in federal but in state prisons, institutions that presidential executive clemency cannot reach. In some states, reform has proceeded in concert with federal action-reducing minimum sentencing disparities, for example-but, as indicated by the enormous number of nonviolent state prisoners, much more should be done if children of the targeted African American population are to have better opportunities to thrive.

Because imprisonment can lead to more crime by placing those who have committed minor offenses in daily proximity to more experienced offenders, the release of large numbers of unjustly imprisoned men will be a policy failure without substantially increased support for transitional education, employment, and social services. Nearly three-fourths of imprisoned African American men between the ages of 18 and 25 lack a high school diploma, making it difficult for them to find legal employment upon release-even if they did not have criminal records. Supporting these men in obtaining skills and credentials that would enhance their employability would be a step forward. Yet it is insufficient to ensure that they have improved skills and credentials if job opportunities are unavailable because of inadequate macroeconomic policy and discrimination. 65

After years of earning no income, and now unemployable because of criminal records, released prisoners are further confounded by the absence of social service supports and educational and employment opportunities. The growth of a new underclass is the inevitable consequence, and the children of those released are the inevitable victims. In this context, one of the more absurd and outrageous aspects of our criminal justice system is the rearrest of released prisoners for failure to pay their accumulated court costs, fees for probation services, or child support-when they have no practical way of earning income in the legal economy; their children then continue to suffer the consequences of having a parent behind bars. 66

To reduce this harm to the children of prisoners, educators should urge President Obama to continue pardoning and commuting the sentences of federal prisoners convicted of nonviolent drug crimes in the time remaining in his administration. And to have the greatest impact, educators should focus their attention on criminal justice policy in their own states and communities, where their students are harmed in large numbers by the discriminatory arrest and subsequent incarceration of their parents in state prisons.

Conclusion

Children's cognitive and noncognitive problems, to which parental incarceration contributes, and the concentration of children of incarcerated parents in low-income minority neighborhoods and in segregated schools, create challenges for teachers and schools that are difficult to overcome. Because of its effects on children, the mass incarceration of African American men contributes to the relatively low average performance of African American children.

Ending the war on drugs and the resulting mass incarceration of fathers of schoolchildren should be a primary focus of school reform. The problem of mass incarceration for drug crimes, however, is not typically thought of as an educational crisis, and it is an issue that educational policymakers have little experience in confronting. How educators can add their voices to demands for an end to this war is a challenge that we should all begin to confront, if our other educational reform efforts are not to be frustrated by unjustifiable criminal justice policy and practice.

About the authors

Leila Morsy (l.morsy@unsw.edu.au) is a senior lecturer in education at the School of Education, University of New South Wales, and a research associate of the Economic Policy Institute.

Richard Rothstein (rrothstein@epi.org) is a research associate of the Economic Policy Institute and a senior fellow of the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. He is the author of the forthcoming book, The Color of Law (Spring 2017), exposing a forgotten history of how racially conscious government policy segregated cities from San Francisco to Boston.

The authors gratefully acknowledge Kimberly Rubens, a graduate student at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, who provided valuable assistance in the preparation of this report.

Endnotes

1. Juleyka Lantigua-Williams, "President Obama Hits Another Commutation Milestone," The Atlantic, November 22, 2016.

4. Peter Wagner and Alison Walsh, " States of Incarceration: The Global Context " (2016).

5. Justice Policy Institute, The Punishing Decade: Prison and Jail Estimates at the Millennium (Washington, D.C.: Justice Policy Institute, 2000), 4, Graph 4.
Margaret Werner Calahan and Lee Anne Parsons, "Historical Corrections Statistics in the United States, 1850-1984 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, December 1986), 30, Table 3.3 (for 1970 and 1980 data).
Danielle Kaeble, Lauren Glaze, Anastasios Tsoutis, and Todd Minton,Correctional Populations in the United States (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2014), 3, Table 2.
Allen J. Beck and Darrell K. Gilliard,Prisoners in 1994 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1995), 2. Note that the number for 1970 is estimated from the figure on page 2, not from the table.
Jeremy Travis, Bruce Western, and Steve Redburn,The Growth of Incarceration in the United States (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 2014), 35, Figure 1.

6. Oliver Roeder, Lauren-Brooke Eisen, and Julia Bowling, What Caused the Crime Decline? (New York: The Brennan Center for Justice, 2015), 16, Figure 2.
Schanzenbach et al. 2016, 2, Figure A; see note 3.

7. Roeder, Eisen, and Bowling 2015, 7; see note 6.

9. Roeder, Eisen, and Bowling 2015, 29; see note 6.
Bruce Western, Punishment and Inequality in America (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2006), 186-187.

10. Glenn C. Loury, "Crime, Inequality & Social Justice," Dædalus 139, no. 3 (2010), 134-140.
Patrick Bayer, Randi Hjalmarsson, and David Pozen, Building Criminal Capital behind Bars: Peer Effects in Juvenile Corrections, NBER Working Paper 12932 (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2007).
Donald T. Hutcherson II, "Crime Pays: The Connection between Time in Prison and Future Criminal Earnings," The Prison Journal 92, no. 3 (2012), 315-335.

11. Schanzenbach et al. 2016, 3, Figure 2A; see note 3.
John Pfaff, " The War on Drugs and Prison Growth: Limited Importance, and Limited Legislative Options," Harvard Journal on Legislation 52 (2015), 173-220.
Alfred Blumstein and Allen J. Beck, "Population Growth in U.S. Prisons, 1980-1996," Crime and Justice 26 (1999), 17-61.

12. Schanzenbach et al. 2016, 7; see note 3.
Kia Makarechi, " What the Data Really Says about Police and Racial Bias," Vanity Fair (July 14, 2016).

13. Loïc Wacquant, "Class, Race & Hyperincarceration in Revanchist America," D æ dalus 139, no. 3 (2010), 79.
Western 2006, 46, Figure 2.2.; see note 9.

14. Prison Policy Initiative, " United States Incarceration Rates by Race and Ethnicity, 2010 " (2012).

16. The Sentencing Project, Fact Sheet: Trends in U.S. Corrections (Washington, D.C.: The Sentencing Project, 2015), 5.
Thomas P. Bonczar,Prevalence of Imprisonment in the U.S. Population, 1974-2001 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, August 2003), 7, Figure 3; 8, Table 9.

17. Christopher Wildeman and Bruce Western, "Incarceration in Fragile Families," The Future of Children 20, no. 2 (2010), 162, Table 2.

19. Western and Pettit 2010, 4; see note 18.

20. Western and Pettit 2010, 20, Figure 11; see note 18.

21. Kristin Turney, "Stress Proliferation across Generations? Examining the Relationship between Parental Incarceration and Childhood Health," Journal of Health and Social Behavior 55, no. 3 (2014), 310. doi:10.1177/0022146514544173

22. Holly Foster and John Hagan, "The Mass Incarceration of Parents in America: Issues of Race/Ethnicity, Collateral Damage to Children and Prisoner Reentry," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 623, no. 1 (2009), 185.

23. Lauren Aaron and Daniel H. Dallaire, "Parental Incarceration and Multiple Risk Experiences: Effects on Family Dynamics and Children's Delinquency," Journal of Youth and Adolescence 39, no. 12 (2010), 1471.
Emily Bever Nichols and Ann Booker Loper, "Incarceration in the Household: Academic Outcomes of Adolescents with an Incarcerated Household Member," Journal of Youth and Adolescence 41, no. 11 (2012), 1463.

24. Rosa Minhyo Cho, "Maternal Incarceration and Children's Adolescent Outcomes: Timing and Dosage," Social Service Review 84, no. 2 (2010), 273.

25. Foster and Hagan 2009, 185; see note 22.

26. Turney 2014, 310; see note 21.

27. Turney 2014, 310; see note 21.
Rucker Johnson, Ever-Increasing Levels of Parental Incarceration and the Consequences for Children (New York: The Russell Sage Foundation, 2009), 14, 18, and 29-32, Tables 6-8. (Note that this study refers only to behavior.)

28. For PTSD, anxiety, high cholesterol, asthma, migraines, and depression, see Rosalyn D. Lee, Xiangming Fang, and Feijun Luo, "The Impact of Parental Incarceration on the Physical and Mental Health of Young Adults," Pediatrics 131, no. 4 (2013), 1192, Table 3, Model 3. doi:10.1542/peds.2012-0627
For ADHD, behavioral problems, developmental delays, and learning disabilities, see Turney 2014, 310; see note 21.
For marijuana use, see Daniel P. Mears and Sonja E. Siennick, "Young Adult Outcomes and the Life-Course Penalties of Parental Incarceration," Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 53, no. 1 (2016), 21, Table 4. doi: 10.1177/0022427815592452
For delinquency, see Aaron and Dallaire 2010, 1480, Table 7; see note 23.

29. Lee, Fang, and Luo 2013, 1188; see note 28.

30. Lee, Fang, and Luo 2013, 1188; see note 28.

31. Michael E. Roettger and Jason D. Boardman, "Parental Incarceration and Gender-Based Risks for Increased Body Mass Index: Evidence from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health in the United States," American Journal of Epidemiology 175, no. 7 (2012), 641. doi:10.1093/aje/kwr409

32. Mears and Siennick 2016, 21, Table 4; see note 28.

33. Aaron and Dallaire 2010, 1480, Table 7; see note 23.
Joseph Murray, Rolf Loeber, and Dustin Pardini, "Parental Involvement in the Criminal Justice System and the Development of Youth Theft, Marijuana Use, Depression, and Poor Academic Performance," Criminology 50, no. 1 (2012), 282.
Amanda Geller, Irwin Garfinkel, Carey E. Cooper, and Ronald B. Mincy, "Parental Incarceration and Child Well-Being: Implications for Urban Families," Social Science Quarterly 90, no. 5 (2009), 1188.

34. Danielle H. Dallaire, "Incarcerated Mother and Fathers: A Comparison of Risks for Children and Families," Family Relations 56, no. 5 (2007), 446.
Beth M. Huebner and Regan Gustafson, "The Effect of Maternal Incarceration on Adult Offspring Involvement in the Criminal Justice System," Journal of Criminal Justice 35, no. 3 (2007), 291.

35. National Conference of State Legislatures, " Felon Voting Rights " (Washington, D.C.: National Conference of State Legislatures, 2016).

36. Hedwig Lee, Lauren C. Porter, and Megan Comfort, "Consequences of Family Member Incarceration: Impacts on Civic Participation and Perceptions of the Legitimacy and Fairness of Government," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 651, no. 1 (2014), 53.

37. Johnson 2009, 14; see note 27.

38. Western and Pettit 2010, 3; see note 18.

39. Kai Wright, " Boxed In: How a Criminal Record Keeps You Unemployed For Life," The Nation (November 6, 2013).
Western and Pettit 2010, 5, 22; see note 18.

40. Schanzenbach et al. 2016, 11; see note 3.

41. Educational data consistently show a close relationship between family income and test scores. The National Assessment of Educational Progress reports that, for example, in 2015 fourth graders eligible for free or reduced price lunch (with family incomes no greater than 185 percent of the poverty line) had average math scores of 229, while students who were not eligible had average scores of 253. This is a gap of about 0.8 standard deviations, similar to a gap of about 29 percentile points in cohort rank. Taking a more extreme comparison, between children from the wealthiest families (at the 90th percentile of the income distribution) and those from the poorest (at the 10th percentile), the test score gap is about a full standard deviation or greater (similar to a gap of about 34 points in cohort rank). Other data show similar differences. We might, for example, expect a narrower difference on the SAT, because a smaller proportion of students from less-wealthy families take the SAT, and those who do are probably those with greater ability than the typical lower-income student. Yet children of families with annual household incomes of $80,000 or less have average mathematics SAT scores of 484, compared with 548 for children of families with annual household incomes greater than $80,000-a gap of about 0.6 standard deviations, similar to a gap of about 26 percentile points in cohort rank.
National Center for Education Statistics, NAEP Data Explorer, Main NDE.
Anna K. Chmielewski and Sean F. Reardon, "Patterns of Cross-National Variation in the Association between Income and Academic Achievement," AERA Open 2, no. 3 (2016), 2. http://cepa.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/ChmielewskiReardon2016_preprint.pdf
The College Board,2015 College-Bound Seniors Total Group Profile Report (New York: The College Board, 2015), 4.

42. Leonard Lopoo and Thomas DeLeire, Pursuing the American Dream: Economic Mobility across Generations (Washington, D.C.: The Pew Charitable Trusts, 2012), 6, Figure 3; 20, Figure 15. These estimates compare the average income of parents over a 5-year period with the average income of their children when these children are approximately the same age as the parents were when the initial income data were collected.

43. Joseph Murray, David P. Farrington, and Ivanna Sekol, "Children's Antisocial Behavior, Mental Health, Drug Use, and Educational Performance after Parental Incarceration: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis," Psychological Bulletin 138, no. 2 (2012), 178. doi:10.1037/a0026407

44. Aaron and Dallaire 2010, 1472; see note 23.

45. Nichols and Loper 2012, 1464; see note 23.
Aaron and Dallaire 2010, 1482; see note 23.
Christopher Wildeman, "Parental Incarceration, Child Homelessness, and the Invisible Consequences of Mass Imprisonment," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 651, no. 1 (2014), 77.
Johnson 2009, 14; see note 27.

46. Lee, Porter, and Comfort 2014, 53; see note 36.

47. Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2012), 166.

48. Geller et al. 2009, 1188; see note 33.

49. Johnson 2009, 18; see note 27.

50. Wildeman 2014, 77; see note 45.

51. In 2000, 568,000 children were in foster care, up from 276,000 in 1985 (Wildeman 2014, 77; see note 45).
Cho 2010, 258; see note 24.
Christopher A. Swann and Michelle Sheran Sylvester, "The Foster Care Crisis: What Caused Caseloads to Grow," Demography 43, no. 2 (2006), 309, 323.

52. Vanessa X. Barrat and BethAnn Berliner, The Invisible Achievement Gap, Part 1: Education Outcomes of Students in Foster Care in California's Public Schools (San Francisco: WestEd, The Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning, 2013).
Cecilia Casanueva, Ellen Wilson, Keith Smith, Melissa Dolan, Heather Ringeisen, and Brian Horne, NSCAW II Wave 2 Report: Child Well-Being (Washington, D.C.: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2012).
J.J. Cutuli, Christopher David Desjardin, Janette E. Herbers, Jeffrey D. Long, David Heistad, Chi-Keung Chan, Elizabeth Hinz, and Ann S. Masten, "Academic Achievement Trajectories of Homeless and Highly Mobile Students: Resilience in the Context of Chronic and Acute Risk," Child Development 84, no. 3 (2013), 841-857.
Joy Lesnick, Robert M. George, Cheryl Smithgall, and Julia Gwynne, Reading on Grade Level in Third Grade: How Is It Related to High School Performance and College Enrollment (Chicago: Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, 2010).

53. Dylan Conger and Alison Rebeck, How Children's Foster Care Experiences Affect Their Education (New York: Vera Institute for Justice, 2001), 16; Casanueva et al. 2012; see note 52.
Mary Dozier, Melissa Manni, M. Kathleen Gordon, Elizabeth Peloso, Megan R. Gunnar, K. Chase Stovall-McClough, Diana Eldreth, and Seymour Levine, "Foster Children's Diurnal Production of Cortisol: An Exploratory Study," Child Maltreatment 11, no. 2 (2006), 189-197.
Philip A. Fisher, Megan R. Gunnar, Mary Dozier, Jacqueline Bruce, and Katherine C. Pears, "Effects of Therapeutic Interventions for Foster Children on Behavioral Problems, Caregiver Attachment, and Stress Regulatory Neural Systems," Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1094, no. 1 (2006), 215-225.
Brenda Jones Harden, "Safety and Stability for Foster Children: A Developmental Perspective," The Future of Children (2004): 31-47.

54. Wildeman 2014; see note 45.

55. Wildeman 2014, 74, 93; see note 45.

56. Aaron and Dallaire 2010, 1478; see note 23.

57. John W. Fantuzzo, Whitney A. LeBoeuf, Chin-Chih Chen, Heather L. Rouse, and Dennis P. Culhane, "The Unique and Combined Effects of Homelessness and School Mobility on the Educational Outcomes of Young Children," Educational Researcher 41, no. 9 (2012), 397.

58. Jack P. Shonkoff and Andrew S. Garner, "The Lifelong Effects of Early Childhood Adversity and Toxic Stress," Pediatrics 129, no. 1 (2012), e235.

59. Pilyoung Kim, Gary W. Evans, Michael Angstadt, S. Shaun Ho, Chandra S. Sripada, James E. Swain, Israel Liberzon, and K. Luan Phan, "Effects of Childhood Poverty and Chronic Stress on Emotion Regulatory Brain Function in Adulthood," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110, no. 46 (2013), 18442.
Shonkoff and Garner 2012, 236; see note 58.

60. Salma Bahreinian, Geoff D.C. Ball, Timothy K. Vander Leek, Ian Colman, Brian J. McNeil, Allan B. Becker, and Anita L. Kozyryskyj, "Allostatic Load Biomarkers and Asthma in Adolescents," American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine 187, no. 2 (2013), 144.
Daniel Exley, Alyson Norman, and Michael Hyland, "Adverse Childhood Experience and Asthma Onset: A Systematic Review," European Respiratory Review 24, no. 136 (2015), 299.
Marijke M. Tibosch, Christianne M. Verhaak, and Peter J.F.M. Merkus, "Psychological Characteristics Associated with the Onset and Course of Asthma in Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review of Longitudinal Effects," Patient Education and Counseling 82, no. 1 (2011), 11.

61. Jutta M. Wolf, Gregory E. Miller, and Edith Chen, "Parent Psychological States Predict Changes in Inflammatory Markers in Children with Asthma and Healthy Children," Brain, Behavior, and Immunity 22, no. 4 (2008), 433-441.

62. Pfaff 2015; see note 11.

64. Lantigua-Williams 2016; see note 1.

66. Alexander 2012, 151; see note 47.

Erratum
Note (12/22/16): An earlier version of this report incorrectly attributed the growth of mass incarceration of African Americans "primarily" to the war on drugs, without noting that greatly increased sentence lengths for nondrug crimes are also responsible. The report has been corrected. We acknowledge an anonymous web commenter for calling attention to this oversight.

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Mass incarceration and children's outcomes: Criminal justice policy is education policy

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Parental incarceration leads to an array of cognitive and noncognitive outcomes known to affect children's performance in school. Therefore, the discriminatory incarceration of African American parents makes an important contribution to the racial achievement gap. Educators hoping to narrow the achievement gap should make criminal justice reform a policy priority.

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Neighborhood Policing - "not social work, but crime fighting".

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Powerful voices on our national stage are asking us to ignore the proven reality that police have targeted people of color in the use of stop-and-frisk. If we want equality and safety in the United States, we must decline the invitation - and acknowledge the truth of racial discrimination in policing.

In recent weeks, the punditry has convulsed over New York's widespread use of stop-and-frisk, with some, like our former mayor Rudy Giuliani, suggesting it proved to be an indispensable crimefighting tool while disregarding or disputing the racial discrimination at its core.

As a lead attorney for the plaintiffs on that case, Floyd vs. City of New York, I was there almost every day of the nine-week trial that resulted in the court's August 2013 liability decision. I heard the testimony of witnesses who experienced a police practice that had, in New York, come to mean daily dehumanization for thousands of black and brown people.

Witnesses like Nicholas Peart, also a young black man, who was on his way to the corner store when two officers put him up against the wall of a church, grabbed the neck of his sweatshirt with their fists, handcuffed him and searched his pockets and wallet.

"For me to be stopped on my way to the corner store that's up the block, and to be treated like that by someone who works for New York City," Peart testified during the trial, "I felt degraded and hopeless."

And New York's experience has proven that the overly aggressive use of stop-and-frisk is not an effective crimefighting policy.

Let's review the evidence.

NYPD leaders admitted during the Floyd trial that they instructed officers to target black and Latino people for stops. The commissioner, the chief of department and precinct commanders demanded that officers stop "the right people"; this meant "young men of color." Or, as one official caught on recording by a whistleblower officer put it: NYPD officers were expected to stop "male blacks, 14 to 20."

When pundits or politicians urge us to institute the broad use of stop-and-frisk, they are touting a racially targeted police practice that does not serve its stated safety goal.

When someone applauds the old days of stop-and-frisk in New York, I hear in my head the words of another Floyd trial witness, Leroy Downs. Downs was stopped and searched in his own front yard. He too had done nothing wrong.

"I have a son, a newborn son coming into this world," he testified, "and I pray that they don't get profiled, not just him, but any other child."

Borchetta is deputy director of impact litigation at the Bronx Defenders.

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Stop-and-frisk & the damage done: Giuliani and others are flat wrong about the practice - NY Daily News

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Powerful voices on our national stage are asking us to ignore the proven reality that police have targeted people of color in the use of stop-and-frisk. If we want equality and safety in the United States, we must decline the invitation - and acknowledge the truth of racial discrimination in policing.

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http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/crime-commission-unveils-latest-crime-reduction-plan-3bdd0d66-dca2-0d00-e053-0100007ff207-392630961.html

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"identity vouching"

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Prison Break: Why Conservatives Turned Against Mass Incarceration, by David Dagan and Steven M. Teles, Oxford University Press, 240 pages, $29.95
Only recently have scholars taken a sustained interest in the 20th century construction of the "carceral state," the instruments and political logic by which the United States became the global leader in imprisonment. In Prison Break, David Dagan and Steven M. Teles, a pair of political scientists based at Johns Hopkins University, offer an elegant account of a related story: the conservative pivot away from prison.

Given the role that law-and-order Republicans played in forging the punishment apparatus in the first place, the story told by Dagan and Teles is as surprising as it is important. Since most criminal law is written by the states, most offenders convicted of a crime go to a state prison. As of now, Republicans boast almost twice as many governors as Democrats; in 23 states, they control both the statehouse and the executive. If the carceral state is to be dismantled, Republicans will have to supply not just the workhorses but much of the leadership as well.

The central insight of Prison Break is that Republican criminal justice reformers do not accomplish their task by parroting progressive views or renouncing cherished ideas. Instead they adopt what Dagan and Teles describe as an "indigenous" language, fashioning an authentically conservative critique of mass incarceration. The authors pay particular attention to a process they call identity vouching: a willingness to entertain unorthodox ideas when a well-credentialed and highly trusted leader or organization espouses them.

Identity vouching helps explaining all manner of reforms, from support for gay marriage to action on climate change. But it is particularly well-suited to the elite group of conservatives converted-sometimes as part of an actual Christian conversion-to oppose the politics of mass incarceration. Dagan and Teles recount the stories of two Republican insiders, Pat Nolan and Charlie Colson, both of whom served time behind bars and, as a result, offered powerful testimonials on the dismal choices prisoners confront. Colson, known as President Nixon's "hatchet man" and convicted for his role in the Watergate crimes, founded the organization Prison Fellowship after his release in 1976, and he used this platform to perform outreach to prisoners and their families as well as mount criticisms of the "lock 'em and leave 'em" approach to criminal justice. Two decades later, Nolan joined Colson's group after his own stint in federal prison, and with him came renewed focus on legislative advocacy and conservative reform.

Prison Fellowship and its affiliated work was a lonely ministry until Tea Party activism endowed the party with a more stridently ideological tenor, opening the door to a critique of the prison-industrial complex that resonated with the movement's appraisal of government performance in other areas. By "creating a climate of permanent austerity in the states," Dagan and Teles write, Tea Party activists made the "GOP's long time exemption [from fiscal review] for police and prisons ideologically and fiscally untenable." Republicans who "established increasing levels of incarceration as a problem" now positioned themselves as more conservative than others, not less.

The authors devote much attention to Texas' pioneering efforts, which began in 2007, and Georgia's more ambitious reforms, which started in 2011. After these states lent their conservative imprimatur to criminal justice reform, South Carolina, North Carolina, Mississippi, and Ohio followed with substantial legislative packages. In general, the new laws entailed lower penalties for nonviolent crimes, non-carceral sanctions for parole and probation violations, drug court diversion, credits given for good behavior in prison that applied for early release, or a rollback of "truth in sentencing" laws. With no great fanfare, against the run of the recent past and in the face of pressures from within their own party, red states have emerged as leaders in criminal justice reform.

These changes were driven not just by lawmakers pursuing savings but by technocrats at nonprofits, who worked diligently--and quietly--to supply reformers with information and expertise. As conservative leaders in Georgia and Texas leveraged their reputations, the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Justice Reinvestment Initiative hosted briefing sessions to counsel skeptics that prison was, in essence, a poor investment: a costly endeavor that often failed to enhance public safety.

And yet the story is not simply one of persuasion. The book's subtitle promises to tell us Why Conservatives Turned Against Mass Incarceration, but in fact we learn much more about "how" than "why." Absent other factors, the same activism from the same influential conservatives would have amounted only to speaking engagements and ornamental change. Though the authors treat as secondary the burdens of incarceration-how much prisons cost, how much they fail-these brutal and recurring facts feature prominently as motives for the conservative lawmakers who guided reform. Willie Horton-style scare ads might win elections, but they carried extensive (and expensive) implications. Over the last decade, Republicans discovered that prison was good politics but bad policy.

This raises the question of "interest," a fundamental preoccupation of political science famously examined in James Madison's Federalist No. 10, a treatise on factions motivated by shared concern. In a delicate brush, Dagan and Teles group various traditional incentives under the rubric of fortunata, a term they borrow from Machiavelli. Fortune could be good; it could be bad. Either one presents opportunities for reform.

This casual treatment of interest as merely background for their story exonerates decades of deliberately targeted incarceration via the war on drugs. To be clear, Dagan and Teles do review the racial bias in incarceration at the outset of their book. But in failing to give adequate attention to interest, they miss a tectonic plate shift that structures much of their story: the boom in rural drug use that has incarcerated tens of thousands of red-state and red-county offenders. Between 2000 and 2009, rates of incarceration for African Americans dropped precipitously, while rates for whites, especially white women, increased dramatically-most likely, according to the Sentencing Project, as the result of the mandatory sentences for methamphetamine possession and trafficking. Since then, the rise in rural heroin use has only accelerated these trends. Laws that conservatives designed to target others register differently when they wreak havoc at home. It is only natural that red-state drug problems have triggered red-state criminal justice reforms.

When Dagan and Teles omit these facts from their story, they unintentionally reinforce a narrative that positions people of color as criminals and whites as law-abiding citizens who adjudicate their fate. This oversight is particularly remarkable in light of the fact that two of their conservative protagonists came to criminal justice activism because of the time they served in prison. By confining discussion of white criminality to anecdotes and elites, Dagan and Teles convey a sense that it is exceptional.

Instead, the churning state apparatus of the drug war has helped to narrow the racial disparities of mass incarceration by assuming a posture more egalitarian in punishment, not more judicious in application. In fact, the drug war-fueled carceral state is incapable of such discretion. The United States government is addicted to the drug war. Although Dagan and Teles describe a number of material interests at stake in mass incarceration-prison guard unions, prosecutors, law enforcement, bail bondsmen-the authors do not give due consideration to the many ways in which state power itself relies on the drug war to execute daily tasks, from policing the inner city to exercising influence throughout the developing world. Drug prohibition is a blunt instrument, brandished by a behemoth.

Without an understanding of how deeply vested the state is in the drug war, criminal justice reformers of all stripes will preoccupy themselves with transactional instead of transformational change. Conservatives will encourage the proliferation of faith-based groups to help ex-offenders adjust to civilian life (another "interest" that receives only glancing recognition from Dagan and Teles); liberals will call for more investment in underserved communities. Both represent worthwhile ambitions. But who will rethink the drug war itself?

Some conservatives are now joining other politicians in tepid or fitful support for the decriminalization of illicit drug possession. Such efforts are valuable, but they do nothing to disrupt rampant criminal drug markets. Even the best intentions, guided by our best talent, will fall short in the face of the prohibition of illicit substances and the violent crimes that follow in prohibition's wake.

It will take much more than a well-placed cadre of political insiders to redirect the tidal scale of the war on drugs. It will require oppositional as well as establishment politics, for in this fight, the government, a necessary agent of change, is also the principal obstacle to it.

Fortunata only goes so far.

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Prison Break: Why Conservatives Turned Against Mass Incarceration, by David Dagan and Steven M. Teles, Oxford University Press, 240 pages, $29.95 Only recently have scholars taken a sustained interest in the 20th century construction of the "carceral state," the instruments and political logic by which the United States became the global leader in imprisonment.