The Southern Disability Law Center has published an article “Stopping the Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Pipeline by Enforcing Federal Special Education Law” by Jim Comstock-Galagan, Esquire and Rhonda Brownstein, Esquire. This excellent article highlights the alarming relationship between the incidence of emotional and educational disabilities among children involved in the Juvenile Justice System. The authors cite statistics that illustrate the degree of this correlation:
• Seventy percent of children in the juvenile justice system have an educational disability — the vast majority is children with Emotional Disturbance (ED) and children with Specific Learning Disabilities.
• Children with ED fail more courses, earn lower grade point averages, miss more days of school, and are retained more often than other students with disabilities.
• Children with ED have the worst graduation rate of all disabilities; nationally, only 35% graduate from high school (compared to 76% for all students).
• Children with ED are more than three times as likely to be arrested before leaving school as other students.
• Children with ED have alarmingly high drop-out rates and, for those who drop out of school, 73 percent are arrested within five years of leaving school.
• Children with ED are twice as likely to be living in a correctional facility, halfway house, drug treatment center, or “on the street” after leaving school compared to other students with disabilities.
• Children with ED are almost twice as likely to become teenage mothers as students with other disabilities.
