Inside the Cage – Street Level Justice

Those of us who have been running prison education programs for awhile know it is up to the Warden to decide what programs will be offered.  Yet, while the Warden sets the educational policy and priorities for the institution, we also know that it is the correctional officers (once less respectfully referred to as “guards”) who can make or break a program.  Without the support of the guards, all kinds of  weird little things can go wrong.  Faculty members could be left in waiting rooms for hours.  Students could be kept locked in their cells instead of escorted to the classroom.  Computers might be broken or mysteriously stop working.  Books could be taken away.  Important papers and documents get “lost” in the mail.   Working in the prison environment has brought me face to face with powerful, “street level bureaucrats” who impact public policy every day (Cooper, et al. 2015).

***

December 6, 2016.  

TO:  Chief Deputy Warden, CSP-Los Angeles County

Dear Chief Deputy Warden:

I’m writing to request your help on a matter of utmost seriousness.  I’m sorry to say, ma’am, but the retaliation has not ceased, but instead, has now increased to include a few more officers, with the nature of the attacks (harassments) becoming more physiologically and psychologically dangerous.  I’m truly convinced that these harassing attacks will NOT stop until Sergeant W utterly destroys me personally or decimates my rehabilitative efforts to become a positive human being.  Therefore, I am please asking you to transfer me out….I tried my best to endure it so that I could continue with Cal State LA and the rest of my positive programming. …. I just want to leave this bad situation while it is still safe for me to do so, so that I can continue my rehabilitative efforts elsewhere.

Sincerely,

K.P. – Cal State LA Student

***

In  Street-level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services (2010), Michael Lipsky contends that  “Street-level bureacrats may consider legitimate the right of managers to provide directives, but they may consider their managers’ policy objectives illegitimate.”  I see these dynamics between prison administrators and front line correctional officers all the time.

It is not as bad as it used to be, but K.P. was certainly not the only incarcerated student of ours who was harassed and made to feel inferior for pursuing an education.  Confronting  the correctional officers put me on iffy-ground — to be appear argumentative would have most certainly caused a backlash and disservice to the program.  To be too deferential, however, would appear weak and acquiescent.  And most importantly, to take my complaints directly up the ladder to the Warden would have signaled war.

In hindsight, I recognize that the Warden made a huge mistake when he alone green-lighted Cal State LA’s BA degree program at the prison.  Rippner stresses the importance of involving stakeholders throughout the four stages of policy development however at the prison, there was never a time that the correctional officers were actually informed – much less consulted – about starting a college education program at the facility.  Instead, one bright day, a couple of college professors showed up at the gate bearing books and syllabi and a cheery demeanor that was met with skepticism and derision from almost every correctional officer.

Lipsky writes:

When relationships between policy deliverers and managers are conflictual and reciprocal, policy implementation analysis must question assumptions that influence flows with authority from higher to lower levels, and that there is an intrinsic shared interest to achieving agency objectives.  This situation requires analysis that starts from an understanding of the working conditions and priorities of those who deliver policy and the limits on circumscribing those jobs by recombining conventional sanctions and incentives. (2010, pg. 25).

Now, a few years into the program, correctional officers have mostly stopped blatant attempts to derail the program.  Some CO’s welcome working on a yard that emphasizes education because there is less violence and fewer behavior challenges.  Still, many of the guards are philosophically against providing an education to prisoners and they resent the expectations and work that have been imposed upon them.  Correctional officers have a long history of serving as street-level bureaucrats and that is no less true at the prison I work in.  However, had we followed Rippner’s advice and included the correctional officers in the early information gathering and planning phases, I suspect we probably would have had a smoother roll-out.  Consider it lessons learned!

References

Cooper, M. J., Sornalingam, S., & O’Donnell, C. (2015). Street-level bureaucracy: an underused theoretical model for general practice? The British Journal of General Practice, 65(636), 376–377. http://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp15X685921

Lipsky, M. (2010 originally published in 1980). Street-Level bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the individual in public services. Russel Sage, New York.

P, K. (2016). Lancaster BA Program [Letter to Chief Deputy Warden]. Lancaster, CA.
Rippner, J. (2016). The American education policy landscape.

Yes – Your College Education is Worth It!

There’s a Cal State LA student who has worked in my office for the past 5 years.  He is like many of the students on our campus.  He is the only one in his family to go to college.  He is the family translator who balances carefully between two languages.  He is the one who reads the documents when it is  time to get a new lease on a car and he contributes to the rent.  He works two jobs and is only two classes away from graduating with a bachelors degree in computer science.

In the Fall, he told me he was dropping out.  He’d run out of financial aid.  He was afraid to get a private loan.  His friend told him he could be recruited for the Los Angeles Police Academy right away.   He was going to start training.

“Sorry – can’t let you do that,” I told him flatly.  Sternly.  “You are TWO classes away. I won’t let you drop out of school.  Not now.  Because you know what?  You are going to be worth more to your family with a college degree than without and you’ve gone too far to give up now.”

***

According to the article Is College Worth It?  Yes, But Not Always by Bridget Terry Long (2016), a college education is not always considered a good investment.  Ms. Long says that the power of the investment is influenced by the college one attends, the debt load, and the field of study.  But at Cal State LA, I say all college is a “good investment” — and not just because someone hopes to earn more money, although social mobility does play into it.

I wish I could say the situation of my student is unique but in fact, the most common concern I hear from the East Los Angeles parents who visit our campus is that they need their children’s income now — not four, five or six years later.  The wait seems unimaginable to families in need.

One of the reasons I push our students (and their parents) so hard to stay in school is because Cal State LA has the potential to boost social mobility more than any other university in the country.

According to the New York Times, Cal State LA is ranked number one in the U.S. on the upward mobility of our students.

The study by The Equality of Opportunity Project examines the role of colleges and universities in helping individuals climb the income ladder. Cal State LA has propelled a higher percentage of students from the bottom fifth of income into the top fifth of U.S. earners, the study found. Records from more than 2,000 colleges and universities were studied.  Cal State LA has long viewed itself as an engine of social mobility because of its success in educating its diverse students, many of whom are the first in their families to attend college.   – Cal State LA, 2018.

According to the study, my student and other first gen students at Cal State LA who are like him  have the most to gain (and lose) if they do or do not earn a college degree.  The case for pursuing a college education to promote upward mobility is compelling and worth exploring.  Robert Fluegge, one of the social mobility report’s authors said, “This data present an exciting opportunity to understand what we’re doing to be successful with these college students and how the work can be replicated elsewhere.”

The report’s focus on the noteworthy value of a college education suggests there are also policy implications worth exploring and researching.  Taking a page from Rippner’s chapter 7 argument in The American Education Policy Landscape (2016) that “instrumental use” of research helps to inform or develop policy.  “There is a direct application of research to policy in the instrumental model…. As cautioned previously, policymakers must carefully evaluate the context in which the research took place and whether the results would be likely in the current context.”  (Rippner, 2016).

It would behoove Cal State LA and other universities to not simply take the rise of social mobility at face value.  Rather, we have an opportunity to better understand what ingredients comprise our “secret sauce” that leads to student success with an eye towards sustaining and replicating wherever possible.  This includes a real exploration of: What policies and practices does Cal State LA currently employ to help facilitate this upward mobility trend? What processes do we have in place to help guarantee student success?  What are some policies that need to be reviewed and potentially dismantled?  What policies and procedures need to be in place in order to improve student success?  Why, for example, if we consider higher education to be very important to future generations and communities, are our policies on financial aid so rigid and uncompromising?

One way to help inform policy understanding and development is to talk to the students themselves.  As Koenen, Dochy, and Berghmans (2014) suggest, the students  can play an important role in understanding the policy role in social mobility.  “Students can be involved in assessment in different ways such as self-assessment, peer assessment and co-assessment. ” (Koenen et al., 2014).  We would benefit from hearing student voices in focus groups or interviews.

Rippner goes on to say that instrumental research can help policy development by better understanding “costs, benefits, and implementation challenges.”   Reports say that a degree Cal State LA provides some of the greatest value a college education can offer in terms of social mobility.   If that’s the case, we owe it to our students — like the young man in my office — to figure out what our recipe for student success and to support policies that allow us to continue and expand upon our success.

In the meantime – we kept my student in school.  He should be finishing his classes at the end of the summer session.  And I will be cheering him on when he walks across that stage.

References

Chetty, R., Friedman, J. N., Saez, E., Turner, N., & Yagan, D. (2017). Mobility report cards:       The role of colleges in intergenerational mobility (No. w23618). national bureau of     economic research.

Koenen, A. K., Dochy, F., & Berghmans, I. (2015). A phenomenographic analysis of the     implementation of competence-based education in higher education. Teaching and   Teacher Education, 50, 1-12.

Long, B. T. (2016, November 11). Is A College Education Worth it? Yes, but not always. Retrieved July 15, 2018, from https://www.payscale.com/career-news/2016/11/college-is-worth-it

Rippner, J. A. (2015). The American education policy landscape. Routledge.

(2017, June)  Cal State LA Ranked Number 1 in the nation for upward mobility.  Retrieved   July 8, 2018 from http://www.calstatela.edu/univ/ppa/publicat/cal-state-la-ranked-number-one-nation-upward-mobility

 

 

 

 

A Second Chance for Educational Policy and Incarcerated Students

I just finished reading chapter 6 of The American Education Policy Landscape (2016) by Jennifer A. Rippner.  Please give me a moment to wipe away my tears and collect myself because I just realized the entire book was written during the Obama years and I really miss the guy.

Oh, the humanity….

I miss the days when higher education policy was developed with an eye towards increasing access, improving progress towards degree, and being inclusive of first-gen students (Rippner, 2016).  I’m uncertain as to what the educational policy vision is for the current administration.  The only thing I can glean the Secretary of Education is focused on is the dismantling of policies established during the Obama era.  “After halting and gutting two major rules that were put in place to safeguard students and taxpayers from predatory and abusive practices, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is apparently planning yet another round of deregulation that will dismantle key protections against fraud, waste and abuse, under the guise of flexibility to promote innovation.” (Inside Higher Education, April 6, 2018).

Knowing this, I proceed cautiously in my own work because a significant chunk of what I do was set in motion during President Obama’s final year in office.  The chaotic decision making of the current administration is a stark reminder that policies are an expression of values (Rippner, 2016) and the political landscape is never permanent.

I currently run the only BA degree completion program for incarcerated students in the state of California.  Our sustainability depends upon the Second Chance Pell Pilot program which was unveiled by the Obama administration in July 2015.  The policy is under Title IV of the Higher Education Act (Robinson and English, 2017) and offers community colleges and universities an opportunity to access federal financial aid in order to provide an education to incarcerated individuals in federal and state prisons.  Cal State LA is one of only 67 institutions in the country selected to participate in the program which provides prisoners access to federal grants to pay for college tuition.

The bipartisan support that gave rise to the Second Chance Pell Pilot program was in part a response to research conducted by the Rand Corporation that found prisoners who participated in any kind of educational programming had 43% lower odds of recidivating.  If the individuals receive some form of college-level education, the chances of recidivism decrease even more (Davies, et. al, 2013).  Couple that information with the Associated Press analysis that housing someone in a California prison for a year costs $75, 560 which is more than a year at Harvard (June, 2017), and one can see why educating prisoners makes good policy sense.

Still, one of the things I’ve learned about educational policy and funding over the years is that there are no guarantees for permanence or sustainability. For example, this Second Chance Pell program is not new — it is the second time the United States has offered Pell funds to incarcerated students.  In fact, between 1965 and 1992, there were an estimated 772 educational programs in more than 1,200 correctional facilities before the policy was gutted by the crime bill in 1994 (Robinson and English, 2017).

This is the second time prisoners have had a second chance through Pell funding.  Get it?  🙂

What it means now for all 67 Second Chance Pell sites is that while we are knee-deep in the implementation of a broad educational policy we also really need to focus on Rippner’s stage four — assessment and evaluation.  Our long term sustainability depends upon our ability to tell the story of our successes and to respond to constructively to doubts and concerns.  Rippner included a quote from President Lyndon B. Johnson that I think is very fitting with regards to prison education:

Let us not begrudge the costs of these programs.  The funds we provide do not simply disappear never to be recovered.  A highly educated population creates far more wealth than it consumes.     (Johnson, 1969, p. 109)

I believe this to be true.  And as long as I have the Second Chance Pell policy behind me, I’m determined to make it happen.

References

American Enterprise Institute (2017). The Second Chance Pell Pilot Program: A Historical Overview. [online] Available at: http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/The-Second-Chance-Pell-Pilot-Program.pdf [Accessed 13 Jul. 2018].

Davis, L. M., Bozick, R., Steele, J. L., Saunders, J., & Miles, J. N. (2013). Evaluating the            effectiveness of correctional education: A meta-analysis of programs that provide           education to incarcerated adults. Rand Corporation.

Johnson, L. (1969).  The choices we face.  New York, NY: Bantam Books.

Protopsaltis, S., & McCann, C. (n.d.). Risks of the Trump administration dismantling   federal protections. Retrieved April 16, 2018, from https://www.insidehighered.com/

Rippner, J. A. (2015). The American education policy landscape. Routledge.

 

If you loved me, you would show me the money

While reading Chapter 3 of The American Education Policy Landscape (2016) by Jennifer A. Rippner, I was reminded of a class on public policy and budgeting that I was required to take while pursuing my master in public administration at USC.  The instructor – an accountant by trade — waved his chalk in the air and pushed his mop of gray hair out of his eyes as he enthusiastically bellowed:  “Budgeting is an exercise in values!  Budgets tell you what is valued and what is not.”   

 That was a very long time ago, but I still remember it because it made sense then and even more so now.  Clearly, Rippner would agree with that tousle-headed instructor.  “Budgets are often deemed an entity’s primary policy mechanism because how a school district or college or state allocates its funding indicates its priorities.”  (Rippner, 2016, p. 36).   

 I am by no means a numbers person (I majored in social welfare and psychology because I DISLIKE math) but recognizing how budgets connect values with policy was one of the most important lessons I learned in the MPA program.  I think about budgets a lot because I’m trying to sustain a multi-faceted center that juggles several different programs with separate budgets.  As a mid-level administrator, I also get to see first-hand when purported values are not mirrored in budgeting decisions. 

 For example, I hear all the time that the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation “loves” the BA program my university runs at the prison, but I don’t really believe it because neither their policies nor their budgets reflect true love.  In other words, they give us no money (I mean NO MONEY) and they haven’t changed many of their operational policies in order to facilitate having a face to face BA program on a prison yard.   We do all of the heavy lifting.

My on-going argument with the educational superintendent at the Department of Corrections is this: “If you really believe that a college education for incarcerated students is important, you would be a true partner in this work with us.  You wouldn’t expect me to raise all the money.  You would find the dollars to fund a college coordinator.  Your wardens and correctional officers would help to facilitate college programming rather than put up roadblocks.  The list goes on….” 

 To which he usually nods sympathetically and then mumbles lamely about his inability to influence the budget. 

 I get it.  Changing policy IS hard.  But my response is: “If you really love me, then show me the money.”   

 References 

 Rippner, J. (2016). The American Education Policy Landscape. New York: Routledge. 

 

 

Should University Presidents Tweet?

As President of @Fresno_State, I stand with & support each & every one of our talented 25,000 students, including our 1,000+ Dreamers. #DACA

In October 2017, Josie Ahlquist (and no, I have no idea who this person is but maybe I should because maybe she’s an expert on all things higher ed?) put up a blog post on “25 Higher Education Presidents to Follow on Twitter.”  I have to admit, before I read the article, I said to myself:  “The only president I want to follow on Twitter is MY president — @Barack Obama” but then I read the post and I figure Ahlquist’s got some good points.

According to Ahlquist, “Higher Education institutions are increasingly depending on digital communities to recruit, retain and continue to engage students (and alumni) which is why it’s so important for college and university presidents to establish an online presence.” That might be true but I still don’t see my president doing it.  Mostly because our public affairs department holds pretty tight reins on all things related to image and branding on our campus such that there is little room for spontaneous creativity or the off-handed tweet.

Which is a bit of a shame because (although I’m skeptical that university presidents are actually crafting their own tweets.  or are they??) I think Ahlquist has a point — presidents who tweet nurture their image as accessible, transparent, engaged and just plain human.

Honestly, part of my resistance about tweeting as a primary outreach tool for the university president is largely because in the past year, I’ve watched the POTUS use tweeting as a weapon rather than a tool.  While I think that social media can effectively draw people in to help nurture the public good, Twitter in the wrong hands can also create wedges and sow divisiveness.