Prison Education and Reentry Commons^™

Volume 6 #3 Full Issue

Journal of Prison Education and Reentry (2014-2023)

Full Issue

The History Of Denying Federal Financial Aid To System-Impacted Students, Bradley D. Custer

Journal of Student Financial Aid

People who are impacted by the criminal justice system (“system-impacted”) face barriers when seeking financial aid to pay for college. Between the late 1960s and the early 2000s, Congress created laws that prohibited incarcerated students and students with certain criminal convictions from receiving federal grants and loans. This paper offers a comprehensive review of the history of those laws, which provides context for current debates on restoring Pell Grants to students in prison. Legislative documents, scholarly sources, and news reports were studied to build this historical review. Key lessons from history are discussed as to how Congress might treat system-impacted …

Response To There Are No Hard-To-Serve Learners, Only Ill-Served Ones By Erik Jacobson, Montclair State University, Joni Schwartz

Publications and Research

A decade and a half ago, the community of adult educators to which I belonged called the phenomenon that Jacobson describes in There Are No Hard-to-Serve Learners as “creaming.” This is the practice of choosing to serve certain students, in this case those with high scores on their initial GED® practice test or students with advanced TABE® scores, so that we fulfilled our performance objectives and more easily demonstrated employability. We knew what we were doing. The reasons were economic; we needed to show outcomes that would continue to make our adult education program eligible for funding.

Challenges And Successes Teachers Experience Educating Incarcerated Youth: A Mixed-Methods Approach, Morgan Crozier

West Chester University Doctoral Projects

This study explores the educators’ perspectives on their experiences providing academic services and supports to incarcerated youth placed in short-term juvenile detention centers and how they perceive success and challenges in this environment. The study used an explanatory sequential mixed-methods research design while incorporating tools such as a questionnaire, interviews, and reflective journal activities to get a deeper understanding of the experiences educators encounter in this role. The questionnaire consisted of 38 questions designed to address the demographics of the teachers participating in the study, their teaching experience with incarcerated youth, professional development received, and the challenges and successes they …

Raw And Pure Education In The Society, Iwasan D. Kejawa

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

What does education mean to individuals in the world today? Education is a way one can attain or improve his or her ability to lead and survive in the society of ours. Without educational training of the mind, it may be impossible to realize the importance of adaptability of living in the environment. Without education, It may also be difficult to embellish the use of both the mental and physical attributes possessed by individual beings.

What really is education? Education is the training of the mind to perform desire functions or to perpetuate the modality of obtaining an end or …

Research Justice: A 25 Year Reflection On Critical Participatory Action Research Behind Bars, Michelle Fine, María Elena Torre, Kathy Boudin, Cheryl Wilkins

Publications and Research

In this chapter, we introduce the notion of research collaboratories where critical inquiry-based collaboration – not experimentation – flourishes; where critical participatory action research (CPAR) projects are conceived and implemented across universities and communities/movements to build theory, transform policy, support social change and forge new solidarities. In these spaces, academics, policy makers, community members, students and activists design research projects together, pool intentionally diverse standpoints, integrate qualitative, quantitative, archival and historic evidence to probe questions of (in)justice, enacting - No Research on Us, Without Us!

Stigmatizing Labels, School Bonds, And Capital In The School Reentry Experiences And Educational Outcomes Of Justice-Involved Youth, Peter S. Willis

Theses and Dissertations

Research indicates that justice-involved youth who reenter public and alternative schools following contact with the juvenile justice system struggle to find a place in the school community and complete their educations. Because educational attainment affects recidivism rates, successful school reentry for justice-involved youth presents important research questions for policy and practice. This study examined school reentry through cases studies of adults who had been justice-involved youth and had experienced school reentry following contact with the juvenile justice system. Study participants’ school reentry experiences were examined through a theoretical framework comprised of labeling, social control, and field theories. Findings suggest that …