Pushout (22 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5

REPAIRING RELATIONSHIPS, REBUILDING CONNECTIONS

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

—Leila, eighteen years old, Chicago

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Heaven had many distractions.

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

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

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

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

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

Heaven was nervous about her prospects of being able to get back on track—especially since she felt that she was primarily on her own. She seemed to fancy herself a good person. For the most part, she claimed, she tried to do the right thing. At age fourteen, she ran away from home and went to live with her sixteen-year-old boyfriend. She was even a good girlfriend to him, especially when he made the decision to get his life back in order and take advantage of programs that were designed to help young men reintegrate into school.

“I always wanted a relationship. . . . Even when I was fourteen, I wanted a relationship. . . . But it took a toll on me in another way. It made me feel like a grown woman, because I was staying with him and I was taking care of a man, so it was like, I was doing everything my mom did for her boo, for my boo. And so . . . now I wasn't going to school. But I made sure
he
went to school and he got
his
high school diploma. . . . You know, I was never really worried about myself. I was always the kind of person who cared about others more than me.”

“Why did you sacrifice your own education so he could go to school?” I asked.

“Honestly, I don't know . . . because it wasn't smart. But I know I didn't want him to be like the rest of these boys standing out here on the street . . . and it was so crazy because we started off going to school together. And when he went on the run . . . he used to come to juvie . . . and when he went on the run and cut off his ankle [bracelet], I went with him because I knew that he wasn't going to come to school, and since I wanted a serious relationship, I knew that relationship wouldn't continue unless I was with him all the time, you know. I was one of those . . . I was very insecure. And so I wanted to be with him all the time, and he wanted the same thing. And so if he went to school . . . say if he went to school and I was doing something, he would always want to come and meet me, or I would want to come and meet him . . . while we were in school. So when he went to juvie, I was in school but I was stressin'.”

“About what he was doing?” I asked, still processing the fact that she was willing to sacrifice her own education to make sure that her boyfriend had his.

“Yeah. How was he, and things of that nature. But then when he went to a group home and he wasn't able to go places or do nothing, he utilized all of these programs, these youth programs and school, and so every program, every time he went to school, who was there? Me. And so, instead of me being at
my
school, I was up at
his
school bringing him something to eat, giving his security guard sandwiches . . . so he'd be able to leave.”

Heaven started laughing, as if she could hardly believe her own naiveté. She shook her head slowly.

Then I asked, “Did anybody ever ask you, ‘What are you doing here? You're here for
his
program' . . . did anyone ever turn to you and ask for your story?”

I wanted to believe that the adults running a program for young men might have seen this young woman who was clearly standing by her boyfriend in all respects, yet still experiencing many of the same conditions for which he was getting help.

Her commitment to her boyfriend could be understood as powerful love. If only she had been able to focus some of that love on herself.

Heaven paused for a moment and then shook her head. “They always liked that I was on his team, that I was motivating him to do better. He didn't have nobody else pushing him to do right . . . and I knew that if I wasn't there, he wasn't going to stay that whole time, 'cause he was going to come looking for me somewhere. So I tried to make sure that he stayed on that program. So it messed up
my
program. It's bad and good at the same time. But it's bad for me. I don't regret doing that, to be so honest, because he wouldn't be the person he is now. I'm mad at myself that I couldn't juggle both, but I don't regret it.”

I'm mad at myself that I couldn't juggle both.
Black girls internalize very early on the idea that their well-being comes secondary to others'. Our policies, our public rhetoric about healing, even our protests all make the pain of Black females an afterthought to the pain of Black males. Heaven blamed herself for not being able to be with him all day and manage her own daily obligations. She blamed herself for essentially not being able to be in two places at once. The idea that Black girls have to hold the pain of Black boys, even at their own expense, is a form of internalized sexism. But when it's couched as a matter of being a “ride or die” girlfriend, many girls never see that by accepting these conditions, they become complicit in their own oppression. For girls like Heaven, getting an education is not only a rehabilitative act; it's an act of social justice.

Education, particularly formal education, is a primary avenue for accessing greater opportunity. Those who are pushed to the margins are often rendered too powerless to manage a clear vision of what a truly inclusive learning environment even looks like, let alone how they might participate in ways that support their well-being as learners, as Black girls, and as negotiators of their own destiny.

Over the years I've come to see how the expressive nature of Black girls has been both a blessing and a curse. Educational policies and practices that politicize dress or hair, that undermine or forgo learning in favor of hyperpunitive disciplinary actions, or that implicitly grant Black girls permission to fail all penalize characteristics and modes of being that could instead be built on and shaped into healthy tools for success.

To date, the conditions of Black females in the United States have been obscured by a racial justice agenda that persistently prioritizes males. The sometimes similar but frequently
not
so similar ways that Black girls are locked out of society become lost. The domestic gender justice agenda has also obscured experiences of struggling Black girls by steering the focus toward colorblind efforts that organize, invest, and develop strategies that purportedly support
all
women and girls—as if all girls are uniformly impacted by sexism, racism, and the consequences of patriarchy. The rather naive logic here parallels the cries that emerged shortly after “Black Lives Matter” unified millions in the wake of protests against routine police misconduct toward Black people: almost predictably, some people, including many well-intentioned ones, switched to the refrain “All Lives Matter.” The problem, of course, is not that all lives don't matter. Of course they do. But substituting “All” for “Black” obscures the specific resistance to the anti-Black racism and bias that are frequently at the root of police violence, use of excessive force, harassment, and other injustices. So yes,
all
girls experience injustice, and all of it matters. Boys, specifically boys of color, are incarcerated at unjustifiable rates. And that matters too. But addressing any of these shouldn't come at anyone else's expense. Yet that's what we've tacitly allowed to happen—and in some cases explicitly supported—when it comes to Black girls.

Still, amid these challenges, Black girls possess a resilience that points the way to how we can provide meaningful opportunities for their development. Heaven knew that her own learning suffered because of her decision to put her boyfriend's
well-being before her own. Without critical self-reflection—an engagement of her own thought process—she would not be able to see these actions as problematic. In her narrative is a cry for permission to center herself, and to know how and when to do it. Her education should facilitate and validate that process, not work against it, as is so frequently the case.

From the lessons, patterns, and insight gathered through speaking with Black girls from coast to coast, six themes emerged as crucial for cultivating quality learning environments for Black girls: (1) the protection of girls from violence and victimization in school; (2) proactive discussions in schools about healthy intimate relationships; (3) strong student-teacher relationships; (4) school-based wraparound services; (5) an increased focus on student learning coupled with a reduced emphasis on discipline and surveillance; and (6) consistent school credit recovery processes between alternative schools and traditional district or community schools.

At the root of these themes is the need to revisit “education as usual” and relationships that are facilitated, nurtured, and/or damaged in educational institutions. Increasingly, school districts across the nation are seeking alternatives to the alienating and punitive climate that informs negative interactions between schools and Black girls, as well as other girls of color. Many states have now acknowledged that the disparate use of exclusionary discipline among children of color is unconscionable and unsustainable if our nation is to truly implement an educational system that prioritizes teaching children over punishing them, and pushing them out of school.

Envisioning Schools Designed to Achieve Equity

Imagine a future for Black girls that is filled with dignity and where their learning spaces are places they are invited to critically engage, alongside educators, in the construction of their education and in the redemption of their lives. Imagine a Black female student
identity that is not marred by stereotypes, but rather is buoyed by a collective vision of excellence that should always accompany the learning identities of our girls.

As we've seen, Black girls' educational lives are dynamic and complex, and too often follow a school-to-confinement pathway. They are affected by school-based decisions and practices that reinforce negative stereotypes about Black femininity and facilitate pushout, and their vulnerabilities increase once their connection with school has been harmed or severed. But pathways to criminalization are clear, often eminently clearer than any other pathway. The failure to fully understand or make space for the wide-ranging gender identities that many of our girls embrace sets up a criminalizing pathway for girls. The absence of culturally competent and gender-responsive methods of teaching—approaches that respond to girls who stand at the crossroads of racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, and poverty—sets up a criminalizing pathway for girls. Blanket discrimination against detained or formerly incarcerated people, or those suspected of being involved with the criminal legal system in some way, sets up pathways that further criminalize girls who have made mistakes and want to recover from them. Alongside these criminalizing pathways, external forces—the kinds of influences educators and systems have little control over—all but ensure that Black girls with the deck stacked against them will indeed take these paths, ill-equipped as they are to see and create better ones.