Changing Public Discourse on School Discipline: Media Treatments of Zero Tolerance and the School-to-Prison Pipeline

• In Event: 474 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 10. Media and Movements

Abstract

In the late 1990s, support for zero tolerance policies for student misbehavior dominated both public discourse and education practice across the United States. Within fifteen years, however, harsh disciplinary practices in public education had become broadly questioned, while a growing number of Americans became aware of the school-to-prison pipeline. In this article, we employ a content analysis of media coverage of school discipline issues in a sample of five national newspapers between 1999 and 2014. Our goals are to document this shift in public discourse about school discipline and identify the actors that have contributed to it. Our findings suggest that grassroots community organizers and civil rights advocates may have helped shift public discourse away from support of zero tolerance. Moreover, we find that these movement activists shaped public discourse about the school-to-prison pipeline from the beginning and successfully framed harsh school discipline as a racially inequitable practice. We contribute to the literature on community organizing and education policy by highlighting the neglected ways that organizing groups have coordinated efforts across localities and formed alliances with educational justice advocacy groups to influence national public discourse. This shift in discourse has set a more favorable context for the success of organizing efforts at local and state levels to change harsh and racially inequitable school discipline policy towards more positive and restorative practices.

Authors

• Mark R. Warren, University of Massachusetts Boston

• Lindsay Morgia

• Luke Krupscznk, University of Massachusetts Boston