Broad Winner Led Texas in "School-to-Prison Pipeline"

From the Texas Tribune:

"The School-to-Prison Pipeline"

by Matt Stiles and Brian Thevenot

When it comes to discipline, the Aldine Independent School District doesn’t mess around. The large suburban district expelled more students last year — 525 — than any other district in Texas, despite being a fraction of the size of large urban districts, according to state data.

Aldine boots nearly three times as many students as neighboring Houston ISD — which expelled 181 students in 2008-09 — even though its enrollment, about 67,000, is only a third the size. The forced-out students get processed into either the Harris County Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Program or one of two “very strict” special schools run by the Harris County Department of Education, an unusual agency that provides services to area districts but runs no schools for the general public, according to agency spokeswoman Carol Vaughn. An additional 1,399 students were shipped off to a district alternative program — not technically expelled but removed from traditional classes.

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The 2008-2009 school year was also the year the Broad Foundation gave Aldine the Broad Prize for Urban Education.

The 2008-2009 finalists for the award also included Gwinnett County (whose board member erroneously believed her district had won the prize; her statement was revised after I notified her that Aldine was the winner) and the Broward County Schools (which lost a school board member and county commissioner in an FBI sting in late 2009).