Kiera is black, curious, has "an exemplary record," and no record for poor behavior. This forces me to ask, which of these characteristics is the one that deemed her a criminal by the school district?

"School-to-prison pipeline" is a phrase that describes a set of policies and practices that push young people out of public schools and into the criminal justice system. It is a kind of shorthand that activists use to refer to places where schools are linked to the merciless tendrils of the prison system.

Two students set off fire alarms in the same school district. One of them, an African-American kindergartner, is suspended for five days; the other, a...

In America, we talk a good game about loving our children, but do we walk the walk? A harsh look at our practices and an honest assessment of our outcomes suggest, sadly, that we do not.

We must not forget about our little black girls, who continue to be invisibilized in classrooms, media, policies, and mainstream society.

Three attributes, which are non-existent in many urban schools today, pervaded my school environment: a humanized educational environment; teachers who believed in us and expected us to learn; and punishment, which was not as a means to criminalize students for adolescent behavior.

Rather than giving all of our kids an opportunity to succeed, expelling and criminalizing young people pulls the rug out from underneath them at childhood, steering them away from college or career, and redirecting them on the path of dropping out and prison.