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Reframing Policy Discourse on the School-to-Prison Pipeline

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A Correction to this article was published on 26 August 2021

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Abstract

This work selects a political cite in which the state policy reform occurs to examine reasons and underlying ideologies for some consensus on the debates regarding the need to criminalize or decriminalize truancy. Studying the legislation help to unpack the nature of relationships in social systems, with the purpose of eliminating unbalanced power relations in the politics of school discipline policy reform. Embedding whiteness as a grounded lens, we conducted critical discourse analysis and critical policy analysis to deconstruct one bill to capture major competing political discourses pertinent to school disciplinary policy reform the Texas State Legislature. Although the counter-discourse of the reform shows resistance toward change, findings reflect widespread concerns across broad constituencies about the injustice of school disciplinary policy, the necessity of decriminalizing students, and the ideologies of discipline and control. The rich discourses reveal tensions of opponents’ political stances on the issues of school-to-prison pipeline at the macro-level. With an eye toward reframing the academic discourse with respect to school disciplinary issues, we further discuss the language used in describing truancy issues and offer an in-depth understanding of the dominant discourse of discipline policy reform.

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Notes

  1. Scholars define truancy as unexcused student absences (Gage, Sugar, Lunde & DeLoreto, 2013; Gleich-Bope, 2014).

  2. Since 2011, Texas legislators have led on a series of bills related to school disciplinary reform efforts in order to address this pipeline through what we might term “the school-discipline gap.” (Texas has a biennial legislative session with regular sessions meeting every other year).

  3. See Complaint filed with Dep’t of Justice by Disability Rights Texas, Nat’l Ctr. for Youth Law, and Texas Appleseed concerning Dallas County Truancy Courts (Jun. 13, 2013) at n. 15, available at http://www.texasappleseed.net/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=966&Itemid = [hereinafter DOJ Complaint].

  4. Texas Appleseed is a nonprofit public interest justice center. They focus on many policy issues, ranging from debt collection to helping kids stay in school and out of the criminal justice system. See https://www.texasappleseed.org

  5. Texas Legislature Online, 2015. Senate Bill 106. http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/BillLookup/History.aspx?LegSess=84R&Bill=SB106

  6. Since 2011, Texas legislators have led on a series of bills related to school disciplinary reform efforts in order to address this pipeline through what we might term “the school-discipline gap.” (Texas has a biennial legislative session with regular sessions meeting every other year).

  7. SB106 is related to court jurisdiction and procedures relating to truancy, providing criminal penalties, and imposing a court cost. This bill intends to decriminalize truancy by changing the regulations of referring students to truancy court (Texas Legislature Online, 2015). If the bill had passed, students would no longer have been referred to adult court but the juvenile court instead. Students would not be fined $500 for truancy. SB106 accords schools with greater responsibility for resolving truancy issues than sending students to court. SB106 establishes truancy prevention programs, decreases the initial truancy fine to $50, and refers truancy cases to civil court instead of criminal court. In other words, this was the most robust truancy reform bill that was considered during the 2015 session such that once it became law, law enforcement’s involvement in suspension-related truancy problems would get restrained to a historical minimum. Regrettably, however, the bill was passed in the Texas Senate but did not pass through the House or, consequently, to Governor Greg Abott’s desk. The present analysis offers partial but compelling evidence regarding the role of the participants’ language use to construct their support or opposition of SB106.

  8. All the quotes are selected based on numbers of codes and themes from both supporters and opponents of SB 106 after running a cluster analysis on Nvivo.

  9. See page 14 for a complete quote.

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  1. Department of Educational Leadership and Foundations, University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX, USA

    Wei-Ling Sun

  2. Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

    Angela Valenzuela

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Sun, WL., Valenzuela, A. Reframing Policy Discourse on the School-to-Prison Pipeline. Urban Rev 53, 708–732 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-021-00613-2

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