SchoolHouse: Equity in Education

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SchoolHouse is a podcast created by the Communities for Just Schools Fund and hosted by Allison R. Brown. SchoolHouse shares stories about how young people, their families and communities, and other advocates and activists are working in and around schools to make them healthy, safe, and equitable places for children to be. In SchoolHouse, we will learn together about the global implications of local movements for change in our schools.

This Week: CJSF's Allison R. Brown speaks with Dr. Monique W. Morris, about her book Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools which explores the individual and institutional forces that serve as barriers to opportunity for Black girls in school.

About CJSF:
The Communities for Just Schools Fund (CJSF) is a nationally-focused donor collaborative. CJSF provides resources in support of community-led organizations that are working to ensure positive and supportive school climates that affirm and foster the success of all students. CJSF’s community partners organize young people, parents and caregivers, educators, and other community members to advocate on behalf of students who are disproportionately impacted by the over-use of exclusionary school discipline practices, including suspensions, expulsions, and arrests in schools. They organize community members to stand up for positive, healthy, and supportive school climates that produce better academic and social outcomes for the students who enroll than school climates with a heavy police presence, zero tolerance school discipline policies, and over-reliance on exclusionary discipline methods. CJSF’s community partners educate students, parents and caregivers, school officials and teachers, police departments, and community leaders on highly beneficial alternatives to suspension, expulsion, and school-based arrests. For more information, email us at info@cjsfund.org and sign up for our newsletter at www.cjsfund.org.

About Dr. Monique W. Morris:
Monique W. Morris, Ed.D. is an author and social justice scholar with more than 20 years of professional and volunteer experience in the areas of education, civil rights, juvenile and social justice.  Dr. Morris is the author of Black Stats: African Americans by the Numbers in the Twenty-First Century (The New Press, 2014), Too Beautiful for Words (MWM Books, 2012); and Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools (The New Press, 2016), a forthcoming book on the criminalization of Black girls in schools. She has written dozens of articles, book chapters, and other publications on social justice issues and lectured widely on research, policies, and practices associated with improving juvenile justice, educational, and socioeconomic conditions for Black girls, women, and their families.

Dr. Morris is the Co-Founder and President of The National Black Women’s Justice Institute and a 2012 Soros Justice Fellow. She is a former lecturer for Saint Mary’s College of California and adjunct professor for the University of San Francisco. She is also the former Vice President for Economic Programs, Advocacy and Research at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the former Director of Research for the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice at the UC Berkeley Law School. Dr. Morris has also worked in partnership with and served as a consultant for state and county agencies, national academic and research institutions, and communities throughout the nation to develop comprehensive approaches and training curricula to eliminate racial/ethnic and gender disparities in the justice system. Her work in this area has informed the development and implementation of improved culturally competent and gender-responsive continua of services for youth. For more information and to buy the book, contact Dr. Morris at: www.Moniquewmorris.me.

Additional Information:
* The Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline
* National Black Women’s Justice Initiative