The School-to-Prison Pipeline: We Built It. We Can Break It.
How “commonsense discipline” became a pipeline to prison for millions of kids.
On April 23, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order he claimed would “restore safety and order in American classrooms” by enforcing what he calls “commonsense” school discipline.
The order directs federal agencies to ensure that schools base discipline solely on “objective behavior, not DEI” (which is especially crazy if they would fully spell out “diveristy, equity, and inclusion”).
To his supporters and all who believe in “colorblindness,” Trump is promising fairness and consistency. But civil rights advocates and education experts know that anything considered a “behavior-only” discipline mandate is a mistake that ignores deep-rooted biases and could worsen inequalities.
One thing that I was so proud 🥹 to see in my comment sections this week was how many people brought up the school-to-prison pipeline immediately after this order dropped.
You guys already knew, but the school-to-prison pipeline is the harmful pattern where strict school rules push kids out of classrooms and into the criminal justice system. It hits students of color, students from low-income families, and disabled students the hardest - ironically, the same kids who need those “pesky” DEI programs the most.
Quick pause for a fact check: You’ve probably heard that prisons are built based on third-grade reading scores. That’s not true. No state has ever used literacy data to calculate the number of prison beds.
The myth sticks around because there is a correlation between low literacy, high school dropout rates, and incarceration. But correlation is not causation. Struggling readers aren’t doomed to end up in prison. What does increase the risk is a lack of support, systemic bias, and policies that criminalize students rather than care for them.
Trump’s executive order is the latest in a long-running battle over school discipline. One side of this battle frames strict discipline as necessary to maintain order, while the other sees that strictness feeding into a pipeline of over-criminalization.
How did American schools reach this point? Well, the answer lies in decades of zero-tolerance policies, the rise of police in hallways, and stark racial disparities in how students are punished.
And, ultimately, this is a story of two diverging paths for America’s children.