Tag Archives: children

Early education prevents incarceration —peer-reviewed research

In ScienceDaily, 10 June 2011,

Large-Scale Early Education Linked to Higher Living Standards and Crime Prevention 25 Years Later



In the study published June 9 in the journal Science, Reynolds and
Temple (with co-authors Suh-Ruu Ou, Irma Arteaga, and Barry White)
report on more than 1,400 individuals whose well-being has been tracked
for as much as 25 years. Those who had participated in an early childhood
program beginning at age 3 showed higher levels of educational attainment,
socioeconomic status, job skills, and health insurance coverage as well
as lower rates of substance abuse, felony arrest, and incarceration than
those who received the usual early childhood services.

Among the detailed findings for the study group:

  • 28 percent fewer abused drugs and alcohol; 21 percent fewer males alone

  • 22 percent fewer had a felony arrest; the difference was 45 percent for children of high school dropouts

  • 28 percent fewer had experienced incarceration or jail

Here’s

the journal article:
Arthur J. Reynolds, Judy A. Temple, Suh-Ruu Ou, Irma A. Arteaga, and
Barry A. B. White. School-Based Early Childhood Education and Age-28
Well-Being: Effects by Timing, Dosage, and Subgroups. Science, 9 June
2011 DOI: 10.1126/science.1203618.

We don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia.
Invest those tax dollars in education, instead.

-jsq

Bright flight visualized

Lanier County gained more than 30% in children under 18.
Lanier looks like the exurbs around Atlanta, except it’s even more striking.
Also visible on the map is Hamilton, County, Tennessee, home of Chattanooga,

CUEE’s favorite example of school unification:
Hamilton County showed a loss of children while just across the state line
Catoosa County, Georgia gained 15-30%.
If school unification doesn’t cause bright flight, it doesn’t seem to
stop it.

Haya El Nasser and Paul Overberg wrote in USA Today 3 June 2011,

Census reveals plummeting U.S. birthrates

Because families with children tend to live near each other,

the result
is an increasingly patchy landscape of communities teeming with kids,
and others with very few.

…

Even in counties where the percentage of children grew, only 49 gained
more than 1 percentage point — many of them suburbs on the outer edge
of metropolitan areas such as Forsyth, Whitfield and Newton outside
Atlanta and Cabarrus and Union outside Charlotte.

So that makes Lanier County one of only 49

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The backfire effect, and how to leapfrog it

If you have evidence against something that will harm public health
or waste money, just tell everybody and they’ll understand and stop it, right?
Nope, humans don’t work that way.
More likely you’ll provoke the backfire effect,
reinforcing beliefs in the bad information that caused the problem
in the first place. Here are some ways to jump over that effect to get at solutions to the problem.

Shankar Vedantam wrote in the Washington Post 15 Sep 2008 about

The Power of Political Misinformation,
illustrating with a couple of well-known examples of misinformation
(you’ll recognize them), and continuing:



Nearly all these efforts rest on the assumption that good information
is the antidote to misinformation.

But a series of new experiments show that misinformation can exercise
a ghostly influence on people’s minds after it has been debunked —
even among people who recognize it as misinformation.

Countering bad information directly just reinforces it.

Chris Mooney wrote more about why that is in Mother Jones 18 April 2011,

The Science of Why We Don’t Believe Science:

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Stopping a ‘done deal’ -Jim Parker



This LTE appeared in the VDT today. -jsq

I’m just an older, working man that lives in our fair city of
Valdosta. I have children and grandchildren that live, work and go to
school in Lowndes County. After looking at the information available, and
doing some research in my limited spare time, I’ve come to the
conclusion that this proposed biomass facility that the Industrial
Authority is trying to push through is a really bad idea. The pollution
that will continuously pour from the plant will create cancers, heart and
respiratory disease, as well as seriously aggravating chronic conditions
such as asthma. Children are especially at risk, and there are two schools
within a mile of the plant site, not to mention all the homes.

As a cancer survivor

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State needs to rethink locking up nonviolent offenders –Nathan Deal

Conservative Georgia governor Deal wants fewer people in prison,
discovering, like Texas before, that Georgia can’t afford it.
Jim Galloway reported in the AJC 17 Jan 2011,

Georgia Gov: Drug court offers good alternative
Cost of crime and punishment is high on new governor Nathan Deal’s list:

Georgia Governor Nathan Deal has said that violent offenders will remain
behind bars, but the state needs to rethink the costs of locking up
others, like nonviolent drug offenders.

Last May we noted that
Georgia spends a billion dollars a year to keep the fourth-largest
number of prisoners of any state.
Now that the state is cutting every other budget,
including huge cuts in education, we just can’t afford
to lock so many people up.



The number of people locked up

has grown way faster than violent crime since 1980.
The U.S.,
with 5% of the world’s populatioon now has 25% of
the world’s prison population:
more than any other country total and per capita:
more than China, more than Russia, more than Cuba.
As Sen. James Webb remarked in 2009:

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Michael Noll: precious gifts to all of us

Dr. Michael Noll sent the appended message to all members of the
Valdosta Board of Education yesterday, 13 Oct 2010.

-jsq

Dear VBOE members.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to share some important documents with
you last night. As we recognized during the invocation, our children (and
grandchildren) are precious gifts to all of us, and those of us who have
healthy children (and grandchildren) can count their blessings every single
day.

As a parent of two school-aged children and member of the community, I feel
it is my responsibility to bring the issue of our children’s health into a
clearer focus. It is my sincere hope that once you have had the chance to
reflect on the materials I handed out last night, you will realize just how
serious the issue is. As a responsible parent I am compelled to advocate
for my childrens’ health.

All of us, whether we are parents, educators or members of the VLCIA,

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STPP: Dismantling the School to Prison Pipeline Symposium



Did you know that:

Children are far more likely to be arrested at school than they were a generation ago.

The vast majority of these arrests are for non-violent offenses such
as “disruptive conduct” or “disturbance of the peace.” Five
year olds are being led out of classrooms in handcuffs for acting out
or throwing temper tantrums. Students have been arrested for throwing
an eraser at a teacher, breaking a pencil, and having rap lyrics in a
locker. These children do not belong in jail.

Why do we pay more to incarcerate people than it would cost
to educate them?

Why is this happening? “Zero tolerance” policies criminalize minor
infractions of school rules and high-stakes testing programs encourage
educators to push out low-performing students to improve their schools’
overall test scores. Students of color are especially vulnerable to the
discriminatory application of discipline and push-out trends.

Here’s a chance to do something about it.

The School To Prison Pipeline (STPP) refers to a disturbing national
trend in which students are funneled out of public schools and into the
juvenile and criminal justice systems. Most of these kids are children
of color, and many have learning disabilities or histories of poverty,
abuse or neglect, and would benefit from additional educational and
counseling services. Instead they are punished and isolated.

The Valdosta

Dismantling the School to Prison Pipeline Symposium
is one of

a series throughout the state of Georgia.
It’s 9:30AM – 4PM 30 Oct 2010.

-jsq

Michael Bryant: “the appalling silence”

Pastor Michael Bryant expands on
his previous letter.

-jsq

Dear Pastors and fellow laborers in the Gospel of our Lord and Savior,

I was born and raised here in Lowndes County. Today I am as disturbed as I
was in 1973 when I, along with 42 other students, four ministers and their
wives, were jailed for protesting unfair treatment of students in the
Lowndes County School System. We were arrested while standing in the
parking lot awaiting to enter the building for a meeting called by
the Lowndes County Board of Education at their office on St. Augustine
Road. The meeting was supposed to be a good faith gesture designed to
mediate an amicable solution to the picketing which had been in process for
nearly six months. After being arrested, we were moved from Big 12 in a
prison truck in the dead of night. We were to be housed in the Cook County
jail and none of our parents knew where we were. When we exited the truck,
both sides of the walk way upon which we had to walk were lined with
numerous State Troopers and other Law Enforcement officers sporting riot
gear and shotguns. On the following day they refused to feed us breakfast.
We began to complain and the judge came upstairs dressed in his robe. He
said “I want you to stop making noise, and if you don’t, I can make you
stop.”

When we complained again, the cell in which we were jailed was sprayed
down with tear gas. We had one toilet and one sink in which to clear our
eyes. These are facts that went unreported by the papers. In fact they
said we were rabble rousers. The late Ralph Harrington signed all our
bonds, and we went through a lengthy trial, represented by the late Mr. C.
B. King, Sr., of Albany, GA. At the close of the trial all charges were
dismissed and expunged from our records.

As a student then, I witnessed the appalling silence of men and women of
God who preached the hell out of people on Sundays, collected their checks,
and went home untouched by the happenings in the community. This was much
like the appalling silence of ministers who sat on the sidelines while Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr., placed his life on the line for “the least of
these.”

Some years ago, Rev. Floyd Rose, two of my sisters and several other

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Phyllis Stallworth: “I am gravely concerned and disappointed”

I received this on 7 Oct for posting.

-jsq

Valdosta is an innovative city with expanding opportunities for
our growing community. Valdosta has recently celebrated 150 years of
progress. As a citizen, I have spent most of my adult life experiencing
this progress. I’ve seen economic developments through recruitment,
retention and expansions that benefit our city, with tremendous support
from our communities. I’ve seen job opportunities that improve the
livelihood of our citizens, through the recruitment of national companies
who have established their businesses in our great city.

Our school systems are innovative, and they serve as models for
other school systems in our state, with great parental involvement and
encouragement toward improvements. Our University and College systems are
some of the best in the state, with phenomenal enrollment and retention
of traditional and non-traditional students in our city and abroad.

Our religious establishments are growing from leaps and bounds with more
and more people becoming citizens of our great city, who are leaving
larger unsafe, polluted, and unproductive cities, for a safer, less
polluted and productive small town lifestyle, such as our wonderful
city provides.

The development of small businesses, through our downtown projects, have
been a great success story for our city. The innovative improvements
make our city one of the most visited in our state. We pride ourselves
as a Titletown community, through continuous progress over 150 years.

When I contemplate our shared 150 years of progress, I find it disturbing
that our Industrial Authority would make such a bad decision as to bring
a Biomass incinerator into our community. As an advocate for the welfare
of children, women, and families I am gravely concerned and disappointed
that such a project has been endorsed by leaders who were elected to
carry out the wishes of the community for the betterment of all citizens.

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Michael Noll: “enough is enough”

Here is a followup to
the VDT story in the previous post.

-jsq

Dear Lowndes County Commissioners.

My sincere thanks for letting me present my concerns at yesterday’s
meeting. It is very much appreciated.

Please understand that what I presented is based on facts. I have
worked for ten years at VSU as an educator, and my students and
colleagues know me as a straightforward person. I may ruffle some
feathers at times, but I clearly was brought up in a no-nonsense
household.

If Mr. Lofton would not continue to ignore our concerns (as he again
did at the BOE meeting), to misrepresent organizations such as the
Sierra Club (an organization I happen to support), or to keep
bringing up names of those who endorse the biomass plant (yet
conveniently overlooks a conflict of interest), I  probably would
have never brought this up. However, during these past couple weeks,
and particularly with his behavior at the BOE meeting, Mr. Lofton
has added insult to injury, and enough is enough.

To substantiate the comments I made yesterday,

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