Sheila Bedi On a Federal Initiative to Keep Students in Schools and Off the Streets
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We all want our schools to be safe and orderly. Our teachers should be able to focus on teaching and our children should be able to focus on learning. Sadly though, the effort to instill greater discipline into our schools has backfired. Instead of creating classrooms conducive to learning, schools have enacted policies that criminalize students and force teachers to spend more time on classroom management than teaching –- an approach that better prepares students to be inmates than members of the workforce. Currently, this country imprisons 2.2 million people -– the highest incarceration rate in the world.