Dismantling the School to Prison Pipeline

June 2016

Despite continual gains in the number of students graduating from Boston Public Schools, inequities remain in school discipline and dropout rates. These indicators, which are linked to incarceration rates, disproportionately affect young men of color. The school to prison pipeline refers to policies and practices that push our schoolchildren, especially our most at-risk children, out of classrooms and into the juvenile justice systems. In this policy, brief we teamed up with the Boston Opportunity Youth Collaborative and the Boston Public Schools to take a look at this critical issue in Boston.

Report Year

2016

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Blog

Rethinking Grading

March 28, 2024

Schools have assessed student learning and growth with essentially the same grading system for more than a century. Since this system was created, the field has learned so much more about the way students learn, the systemic inequities embedded in the design of traditional grading and assessment, and what type of learning leads to success in life. Grading should be aligned with what we know about the learning process, child and adolescent development, and the demands of career, college, and community life. But traditional grading is so deeply ingrained in our culture, that making changes to this system can seem like an insurmountable task. That’s why we partnered with DESE and reDesign to support five unique high schools as they interrogate their traditional grading practices and make shifts toward new systems that better measure student learning and growth.