March 29, 2021
Findings from Appleseed Network’s and Willkie’s 2020 collaborative report “Protecting Girls of Color from the School-to-Prison Pipeline” to be discussed.
On March 30 at 6 pm EST Massachusetts Appleseed Research and Policy Assistant Melanie Rush will be taking part in a nationwide virtual panel discussion, School Discipline Policies and the School-to-Prison Pipeline. She will be presenting the findings from the 2020 report Protecting Girls of Color from the School-to-Prison Pipeline, which was a collaborative effort of the Appleseed Network and Willkie. The discussion is sponsored by the Multi-Faith Initiative to End Mass Incarceration. For more information and to register, click here.
The comprehensive report, “Protecting Girls of Color from the School-to-Prison Pipeline,” was the product of a year-long research project examining disparities in school disciplinary treatment for Black girls in Massachusetts, Alabama, and Kansas. The report’s findings show that girls of color, particularly Black girls, are consistently disciplined at a rate much higher than their white peers. The findings also emphasize the significant change needed in school district disciplinary policies and data collection methods in order to protect girls of color from being funneled into the school-to-prison pipeline by means of excessive school discipline.
Willkie worked with representatives from Alabama Appleseed, Massachusetts Appleseed and Kansas Appleseed to collect and analyze federal school disciplinary data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection database, as well as state-level data from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
The Willkie team was led by partner Heather Schneider and included associates Katie DeAmico and David Howe.
The Appleseed Network is a non-profit network of independent organizations in the United States and Mexico working towards social and legal justice.
