Gutierrez 1

Sarah Gutierrez
English 1T
Huerta
23 March 2015
Inmates Of the Future
DYX854 that was her identification in that institution. She is sitting in a concrete tomb
awaiting her fate on an attempted murder case. Thoughts run through her mind of happier times
when she was a child unaware of how cutthroat the world could be. She remembers the first
time she had ever gotten in trouble, she was twelve and she playfully put whip cream from a
cupcake on her friends face to celebrate his birthday. What started off as a fun joke got her
suspended for three days and put into alternative placement. While her actions werent meant to
hurt anyone, the system and policies put into place to produce their students with a safe and
secure environment say what she did risked the safety of other students. She was a bad seed
now, a student that must be constantly monitored because she was a troubled student. This is
how teachers identified her. She led her life under this presumption for years. Many students
have been affected by policies set into place to keep schools safe but instead they are sending
these troubled kids down a path towards shackles and felony convictions. Schools are
expected to have be a safe secure environment for all students to learn.

Reality is parents dont

want to send their kids to a school they cant trust. Schools set out to make sure they provided
their students with a safe environment so they began to set in place policies to make sure schools
remain organized, safe, and secure. The policy that was eventually developed was called The
Zero Tolerance Policy. The intentions behind Zero Tolerance Policies was to have a sense of

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safety and security within the educational environment. The students have been impacted by this
policy because it is the assumption that administration is producing a safe school climate for
students, however what is sometimes happening is students are being profiled within the
classroom causing them to disconnect from their education which can lead to what some experts
call The School to Prison Pipeline. In order to shift away from the Zero Tolerance Policies and
its harsh consequences there needs to be programs that involve positive reinforcement and create
more of a community on campus for students.
Zero Tolerance Policy was first implemented in the late 80s to fight the war against drugs
in schools. Administration wanted to show they had control on the matter and ensure the parents
felt as though their children were safe within school grounds at all times. In Arresting
Development Zero Tolerance and the Criminalization of children Annette Fuentes states,
Congress enacted the Drug-free schools and communities act in 1986, brining the war on drugs
to school with rules that mandated aero tolerance for any drug or alcohol on public school
grounds. During the Clinton administrate, Congress took zero tolerance set further, passing the
1994 Safe and Gun-Free Schools Act, which mandated a one-year expulsion for students who
brought a firearm to school and pumped federal department of Education and Justice funding
into anti violence programs (18). The policy was originally developed to protect children in
school so that students have a safe environment to learn. Parents needed to feel as though their
children are safe when they send them to school and that is definitely one of the major aspect of
why the Zero Tolerance Policy was put into place.
Although these policies have been in place to produce a safe environment for students to
learn in, the reality is that its in fact proven to create a less safe school climate which actually

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prevents learning. It was assumed that by having Zero Tolerance Policies and eliminating
disruptive students allowed other students to have a safe climate to learn in. Annette Fuentes
states,
Policing and punitive disciplinary approaches to school safety contribute to a school climate that
is actually more dangerous, not safer. Education professors Matthew Mayer and peter Leone
studied school violence and strategies for creating safer schools back in 1999 and found that
schools with more security measuresincluding metal detectors, locked doors, ad security
guards paradoxically had a higher level of disorder They called it a cycle of disorder in
which such restrictions and controls actually create a reciprocal, destructive relationship with
students who live in a heightened state of fear(22).
Fuentes argues that more extensive security measure actually cause more chaos for students in
that type of punitive environment. At the expense of the students secure learning environment
these policies were put into place to keep students safe. In reality students are more likely to
fail in this kind of a learning environment because of this constant state of fear they have not to
mess up and face harsh disciplinary action. Many of these students are in a constant state of fear
because of the heightened security measure and also because many of these student face constant
profiling by teachers.
Due to Zero Tolerance Policies many students are being profiled by their teachers
preconceived views. The students that are being most effected by teachers profiling are students
of color. In School discipline feeds the pipeline to prison by Deborah Fowler, she states,
Studies show the overrepresentation of African American students in disciplinary referrals is not
related to a higher rate of misbehavior. They are referred for misbehavior that is both less

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serious and more subjective than white students. These disparities exist when controlling for
socioeconomic status (106). The problem isnt that these student of color are more disruptive
than their fellow classmates. The real issue is that students of color are facing harsher
punishments by their teachers because of the color and socioeconomic background. How can a
student be invested in their education is they are in constant fear of being labeled a troubled
student because of their color and economic background? The truth is they cant. Students will
most often disconnect from their education and form negative views on authority figures.
Teachers arent meant to police the students and once they start approaching students in that
manner the students will build this wall of distrust and disconnect from their education.
These students who are being profiled start to form negative views against their education
and the students disconnect. The Students that are being profiled begin to resist their teachers
instruction which can lead them to facing punishments at school that can eventually cause them
to drop out. When students are constantly being viewed in a negative way often times they will
react with negativity. When students are profiled and labeled as troubled students they begin
to disconnect from their education and really begin to become accustom to that disconnection. If
they continue to remain connected to their education they are leaving themselves open for
feelings of disappointment so in order to avoid these feelings they disconnect. The school is no
longer an environment where these troubled students go to learn its where they go to be
disciplined and monitored. If these students dont obey the rules then they are either expelled or
sent to juvenile hall for truancy. Fowler states, The cost of failing to provide meaningful, early
behavioral interventions at school is too great to ignore. Dropout and academic failure put youth
on a path to future criminal activity and justice system involvement where whole communities

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pay the price (108). As Fowler points out not only are students being impacted because they are
being forced to disconnect and these harsh punishments are leading them to drop out. The
actions taken place within an educational environment is not just negatively affected the student,
but the community as well. These profiled students are going out into the community and
continuing this negative cycle of drop outs, bad decisions, and possibly jail time. Harsh
disciplinary actions taken against students can lead them down a path of self destruction. Many
of these students form negative views of authority figures in their lives and begin to form
negative behavioral patterns because that is what is expected of them. Students adapt to the
negative view being projected onto them and eventually that can lead them into a life of felony
convictions and shackles on their ankles.
In order for students to flourish in an educational environment their has to be positive
reinforcement within a classroom. Students have to see that their work in acknowledged and
doest go unnoticed. When you positively reinforce students it allows them to take pride in the
work they are producing. Fowler states, PBIS is based on the proven model that children
perform best when they are explicitly taught what to do, when positive behavior is identified and
praised, and when behavior mistake are corrected and met with effective consequences. Much
like academic instruction, behavior is clearly defined, analyzed, and reinforced (107). In order
for students to positively connect to their eduction and the work they are producing they must
have positive reinforcement in the class. No student is going to be perfect, but what human
being is perfect? It is the teachers job to correct the behavior that is problematic and allow the
student to learn how to effectively develop behavior skills within a classroom. This build a trust
between the student and the teacher and allows the student to create a trusting relationship with

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their teacher. This creates a positive environment for the student to really put some roots down
and feel a sense of community.
By creating an on campus community for students it allows them to feel connected to
their education. By having a sense of community students will have an environment on campus
that promotes strong trusting relationships. When students have a sense of community on
campus they tend to produce work that is meaningful and creative because they are in an
environment they feel safe in. APA argues, Many of the most effective programs in the nation
for dealing with student disruption are characterized by high levels of student support and
community. Solutions to the zero tolerance dilemma may seek to shift the focus from swift and
certain punishment to using research-supported strategies to improve the sense of school
community and belongingness(117). Students have to feel a level of support by their peers and
their teachers in order to ensure their success within an educational environment. When students
feel a sense of community they are more likely to care about the work they are producing
because they feel safe and supported. Students begin to form positive relationships with one
another investing more into their education. Students will begin to hold each other accountable
and begin to form connections with their education.
While Zero Tolerance Policies was first put into place to have a sense of safety/security,
what unfortunately took place was the school climate changed in a way that compromised the
learning taking place within the educational environment. Students are being profiled which
causes them to disconnecting from their education. In order to ensure all students success in the
future there should be positive reinforcement and a sense of community within schools. All
students White, Black, Latina, Asian, etc. deserve to receive an education that helps them to
develop into independent strong minded critical thinkers. School isnt meant to be a place where

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students need to feel like they are in a constant state of fear. Often these students end up on a
path to self destruction which can eventually lead them into a world of concrete walls, cell doors,
and felony convictions. These students are our future, but what kind of future can we have if
majority of our society end up with prison identities reduced to numbers and letters DYX854
that was who she became that was now her life. She was an inmate.

Work Cited

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American Psychological Association Zero Tolerance Taskforce. Are Zero Tolerance Policies
Effective in the Schools? American Psychological Association. American
Psychological Association. Web. 18 Sept. 2014.
<http://www.apa.org/pubs/info/reports/zero-tolerance.pdf>.
Fowler, Deborah. School Discipline Feeds the Pipeline to Prison Kappan. Phi Delta Kappan,

Oct. 2011. Web. 18 Sept. 2014.

Fuentes, Annette. "Arresting Development: Zero Tolerance and the Criminalization of Children."
Rethinking Schools 2011: 18-23. Print.