Harvard Law & Policy Review

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Dismantling the School-to-Prison Pipeline: South Florida’s Approach

By Jeremy Thompson[1] The U.S. incarceration rate has increased 700% since 1970.[2] As a result, the U.S. has the highest prison population in the world.[3] In the U.S., only 12% of the population is Black.[4] Yet, despite living in a “post-racial,” “colorblind” society,” 38% of the prison population is composed of Blacks.[5] Part of this disparity stems from the disparate impact of zero-tolerance policies in school discipline. These policies were influenced by the fear of the media-driven …

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Working Together: Improving Accountability & College Access

By Julie Bachur Gopalan and Allison Wallace, CollegeSpring* Increasing the educational and professional prospects of low-income students is one of the most pressing social justice issues of our time. The Lumina Foundation estimates that over two-thirds of all U.S. jobs will require a postsecondary degree by 2018. Yet, only 9% of students in the bottom income quartile will earn a bachelor’s degree by the time they are twenty-four, compared to 77% of students in the top income quartile. Without …

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Getting Rid of Teacher Tenure Will Not Lead to Education Equality

By Ana Choi Last month, David Boies—the star litigator who represented Al Gore in Bush v. Gore and argued against California’s Prop 8 in Hollingsworth v. Perry—became the chairman of Partnership for Educational Justice (PEJ), an organization founded by former CNN anchor Campbell Brown to pursue lawsuits challenging teacher tenure. According to an interview with the Washington Post, Boies is crafting a state-by-state litigation strategy in order to eliminate teacher tenure through the court …

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California Teacher Tenure

By Tom Watts A California trial court judge decided in Vergara v. California today that California’s teacher tenure system violates the state constitution. This is a big deal: teacher tenure has been a political controversy for years, and, while anti-tenure advocates have repeatedly won legislative victories, this is their first judicial victory. However, I want to suggest that overheated rhetoric around the decision is exactly that: overheated. The decision probably does not herald the end of …

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