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HRW/ACLU’s research uncovered a number of areas in which facilities’ educational offerings are deficient. Girls receive no schooling during the first two weeks of their incarceration. Many girls told us that a shortage of qualified staff combined with the grouping in a single classroom of girls of widely different educational levels and needs deprives them of necessary individualized instruction. The vocational training offered to girls embodies archaic gender stereotypes and does not measure up to what is offered to boys. Barriers to girls’ transition back to regular schools upon their release from OCFS facilities adds an additional educational handicap.
It should be noted that, according to one New York education expert, many children feel that the education they receive in OCFS facilities is better than that provided in some New York City schools, because the classes are smaller and children feel that the teachers care more about them.361 Although, in the expert’s opinion, OCFS “could be doing a better job,” its schools and aftercare services compare favorably to city schools, where the special education program in particular is “broken.”362 The accounts below in part contradict this rosy picture, at least with respect to Lansing and Tryon. But even assuming it is accurate, it says more about the failures of the New York City school system than about OCFS facilities. It should certainly not be cause for complacency.
When a girl is remanded to OCFS custody, she is discharged from the public school in which she was enrolled.363 OCFS is then responsible for providing the girl with an education.364 As of 2003, there were 1,709 boys and girls in OCFS schools.365
During the first two weeks of their incarceration, girls do not receive schooling. They are placed initially at Tryon Reception Center to receive assessments to determine in which facility they will ultimately be held, and in addition are provided “group” sessions on such topics as HIV awareness, drug use, and aggression, as well as some physical exercise. No formal education takes place at Tryon Reception Center, and for much of the two-week period, girls are left alone and idle in cells. Many girls say the group sessions they attend are of little educational value. According to Miranda N., such sessions consisted of “watching movies from Lifetime.”366 When asked about the counseling offered to her, Stephanie Q., now 18, replied:
They have this whole wellness criteria, a wellness group. Like dealing with aggression. . . . It didn’t help, because it’s common sense. You know that automatically. Most of the people [incarcerated] there are smart. But if you look at the stuff, most of it is dumb, they just want to fill up the schedule.367
Girls placed at Lansing and Tryon attend facilities-operated schools on facility grounds. At Tryon, school consists of small classes of ten or twenty students, depending on whether half a unit or an entire unit is placed in a class together, and there is generally one teacher per class.368 Incarcerated girls range in age from twelve to nineteen and exhibit a wide range of educational abilities.369 Some girls enter the facilities with a high level of educational aptitude and achievement and the ambition of earning a high school diploma and going to college, while others have very limited reading ability, special educational needs, and may have been out of school for long periods of time.370 Incarcerated children with learning disabilities have the right to specialized educational services administered according to individualized educational plans (IEPs).371
For all girls, the education offered at the Lansing and Tryon facilities is deficient, primarily because the facilities’ schools lack the qualified staff necessary both to provide the scope of classes offered at regular schools and to provide the individualized attention many students need.372 Girls of different grade levels are lumped together and frequently asked to study independently from a book or a worksheet without the help of a teacher. This arrangement compromises the educational progress both of girls with individualized educational needs, who complain that they do not receive enough individual attention to allow them to learn,373 and those with stronger educational backgrounds, particularly older teenagers, who express frustration at being under-challenged in the facilities’ schools.
Of school at Tryon, Devon A., who was held in OCFS facilities between the ages of 15 and 17, said:
It was a regular school, but it wasn’t up to par. The atmosphere of the school wasn’t real, the work was kindergarten, first grade type stuff. Like “What’s 13 times 2?” I was a pre-GED student. They didn’t have the materials. I felt very bored. I took the GED at Tryon and passed.374
Of school at Lansing, Ebony V., who was 16 at the time of her incarceration, said:
School was a setup. They teach you all this kindergarten or easy work. You’ll come back in the world and not be able to survive in regular schools. Part of school was crochet! Come on, we’re fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old, that should not be part of our curriculum. I think it was every day, a significant amount of time was crochet, beading, or making blankets to sell.375
Several other girls expressed frustration at what they view as the lowest-common-denominator approach taken by the facilities schools. Some girls felt that the primary aim of schooling at the facilities is to prepare girls for the GED,376 rather than preparing them to reenter and eventually graduate from regular high schools. One grievance reads: “Has been here ten months and has not gotten her proper studies to help her for her regents exam.”377 Indeed, residents sometimes do not receive homework or are barred from taking work out of the classroom.378 An emphasis on the GED over high school graduation denies children not only a choice but a right: New York State law requires that every child be offered the opportunity to earn a high school diploma, and the right to schooling continues until a child earns a diploma or turns 21.379
In addition to the lack of appropriate and individualized instruction, other occasional factors interfere with girls’ ability to gain an education at the facilities. Grievance logs contain complaints that teaching vacancies remain unfilled, teachers do not come to class or come late, girls are woken up late for school by staff, girls are not told what grade level they are in or are placed in the wrong grade level, and there are not enough books for the girls to read. 380 According to facility records, although the Tryon facility has some computers, they were malfunctioning and not usable for a period of over a month in 2005.381
The generally poor quality of facilities schools may be attributable in part to an apparent absence of outside monitoring. The New York State Department of Education is responsible for monitoring OCFS schools,382 yet when in the course of litigation the Department of Education was asked for its most recent reviews of schooling at Lansing and Tryon, the department turned over reports dating back to the late 1990s.383 Although its datedness renders its current value slight, a review of educational programs in the Lansing facility consisting of inspections in 1996 and 1998 found “problems of a serious nature,” specifically incomplete and poorly maintained Individual Education Programs for special education students, a dysfunctional and ineffective Committee on Special Education, and teaching-related inadequacies.384
Children may also face administrative barriers when they are released from OCFS facilities and attempt to transition back into community schools. The nature and extent of such barriers is not clear, and OCFS did not return phone calls from HRW/ACLU seeking to verify allegations in this regard,385 but New York City Department of Education statistics indicating that two-thirds of high school-age children leaving custody do not return to regular schools suggest that the barriers are substantial.386 This problem is at issue in a pending class action lawsuit brought by formerly court-involved children against the New York City and State Departments of Education.387 According to other sources, children leaving OCFS facilities are sometimes faced with unnecessary difficulty in reintegrating into regular schools because of the nature of the classes and credits awarded at facilities schools, combined with failure of coordination between OCFS and the city education departments, specifically, the absence of a memorandum of understanding governing the relationship between OCFS and the New York City Departments of Education.388 Another possible barrier may be that OCFS high schools are not registered with the State of New York and, as a consequence, the principal of a school a child wishes to enter upon her release from OCFS has discretion to determine whether she is to receive credits for her past work. 389 The determination as to how many credits a student is permitted to transfer is “complicated by the fact that the student may have attended multiple schools, not completed a full semester of coursework, or have taken courses that do not satisfy graduation requirements.”390 According to OCFS literature “general education” consisting of a core curriculum and electives is provided to children held at Tryon and Lansing in addition to “remedial education” and “special education.”391 OCFS literature states that its electives are “comparable or equivalent to approved syllabi established by the NYS Education Department,” but does not make a similar claim for its core curriculum.392
Some formerly incarcerated children report experiencing difficulty in transferring the credits earned in facility schools to regular high school. When Alicia K. was asked whether she was able to transfer her credits out of Tryon, she answered:
They transferred, but some of the grades and credits get lost between me coming home. I tried to contact the principal, but they never got back to me. I tried at least once a week for two months and my guidance counselor tried also. That’s what I’m trying to patch up now. That’s why I don’t know if I will be able to graduate this year.393
According to one service provider at a non-residential facility, educational programming at all OCFS facilities has suffered under recent changes in agency policy:
It used to be a lot more of a therapeutic environment. . . . But now the state is mandating uniformity across facilities, so each has to have same things going on, the same standards are applied, and ACA [American Correctional Association] accreditation is considered more important than program[s] for the girls. It’s obvious that they [the facilities] are really strapped for providing education and any additional programming. . .They’re more concerned with the punishing aspects, like restraining girls.394
Under international standards, all children have the right to an education.395 Incarcerated children, in particular, have a right to programs, including education and vocational training, calculated to help them achieve “socially constructive and productive roles in society.”396 As to the type of programs to be provided, research on girls counsels “strength-based,” as opposed to “deficit-based” educational programming. This philosophy coincides with the standard in international law that children’s education be directed to the development of children’s “personality, talents and mental and physical abilities to their fullest potential . . . .”397 The United Nations Rules governing juvenile facilities also stress the provision of quality education in facilities so that children may continue to pursue their education without difficulty upon release.398
Recognizing the importance of vocational training in equipping girls for economic survival upon their release, international standards relating to juvenile facilities require that girls be offered vocational opportunities.399 The paucity of vocational programs for girls in the Lansing and Tryon facilities, the barriers to accessing such programs even when they are offered, and the nature of the training offered are all matters of serious concern.
In December 2005, when attorneys from New York’s Legal Aid Society visited the girls’ units at Tryon, no vocational classes were being offered.400 The Tryon facility has a culinary arts classroom but at the time of the visit the teacher had left and had not been replaced and the room stood idle. 401 Likewise, a former resident at Lansing said that the facility has a classroom for a cosmetology class, equipped with chairs, sinks, mannequin heads, and the like, but that during the time that she was held at Lansing the classroom was never used.402
Even when vocational training is offered, it may not be offered widely or it may be subject to prohibitive administrative prerequisites. This appears to be true of what at Lansing is called “OJT” or “On the Job Training,” which consists of either working in the kitchen helping to prepare meals for residents or acting as a teacher’s aide. Selena B., previously held at Lansing, said that she and a few other girls were allowed to perform OJT in the kitchen.403 Alicia K. wanted to work as a teacher’s aide but she was thwarted by rules limiting girls’ eligibility for the position, and by the fact that demand for such positions far outstripped supply:
You have to go through so much. The unit staff has to agree. You also have to be at least at adjustment stage,404 and you need signatures from the teachers, and you need good grades, and at least thirty days of good behavior. And then there’s a waiting list. There are lots of people on it. Within Tryon Girls everyone, once they hit adjustment stage after three months, signs up to be a teacher’s aide. You had to wait for someone to leave.405
Even when classes are offered and are, as a practical matter, available to girls at the facilities, the educational value of the classes appears to be questionable. For example, Lansing offers what it calls a “Career Class.” When asked what she learned in the class, a former resident said, “Nothing really. They give you a book and tell you to do worksheets. They ask you to define ‘part time’ and ‘internship’ and stuff.”406 A provider of vocational services in a non-secure girls’ facility complained that the job readiness curriculum provided by the state is unrealistic, employing examples such as “Johnny has a paper route,” rather than realistic contemporary urban scenarios.407 According to the provider, a more useful curriculum would include how to read want ads, information about legal and illegal questions potential employers may ask, job search strategies, and the social skills, often absent in girls who have been institutionalized for most of their lives, necessary to find and keep a job.408
The vocational training offered may also be problematic to the extent that the type of training given to girls is based on gender stereotypes and is for jobs that are of less economic value than the jobs for which boys are trained. Tryon ostensibly offers a “culinary arts vocational program,” a “cosmetology vocational program,” and an “office skills vocational program.”409 The basis for OCFS’s choice of cooking, hairdressing, and clerical work as its vocational offerings is unclear, but does not appear to rest on research indicating that these fields offer the most viable and lucrative career options for young women, and may in addition perpetuate stereotyped cultural roles.410
The vocational training offered to girls also appears to be vastly inferior to that offered to boys. As described above, a significant amount of time at the facilities is apparently spent on crochet, beading, or making blankets.411 In contrast, the boys facility at Tryon and other boys facilities across the state offer a range of vocational classes including “auto shop, culinary arts, sewing, typing/word processing and a computer distance learning center that uses ‘Safety Net,’ a web based educational program for incarcerated youth.”412 Boys at the Louis Gossett facility across the street from Lansing receive training in culinary arts, the building trades, automobile repair, building maintenance and property management, merchandising management, and office skills.413 Similar courses are offered at Tryon Boys Residential Center, located within the same complex as Tryon’s girls’ units, where vocational offerings include the above as well as a “career and financial management” class where students learn “job acquisition skills and…how to take care of your funds.”414 Each vocational class employs “hands-on” instruction facilitated by the extensive use of specialized equipment and staff training. 415 Auto shop is at Tryon is taught in a replica of a “genuine Midas auto shop.”416 Similar facilities exist or are planned at other boys’ facilities where boys practice their skills on donated cars.417
Although boys at the Gossett facility are initially assigned to one or another vocational program, boys’ requests to transfer to a different class are frequently granted, providing them with some freedom to pursue their individual interests.418 In addition, all but two of the semester-long courses at Gossett provide passing students with a marketable national certification. Because each course is only a few months long, boys often leave Gossett with two or more certifications. 419 In addition to vocational classes, which meet three times per week, boys at Gossett attend a weekly “job readiness class” to prepare their employment “portfolios.” 420 Regardless of which program they ultimately complete, however, incarcerated boys appear to benefit greatly from vocational offerings. According to a Gossett staff member, the job readiness class in combination with vocational training and certifications have helped many incarcerated boys find employment in skilled sectors shortly after their release. It is not uncommon for “quite a few” children certified in automotive repair to be “hired by Midas” or to go immediately into a “family business” upon their release.421 Comparable opportunities do not exist for girls.
September 2006
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