Dive Brief:

• Maryland plans to address its newly-exposed failure to educate juvenile prisoners by increasing budget oversight and possibly creating new laws to address the severe shortcomings.
• The news comes after an investigation by the Baltimore Sun called attention to the fact that the Maryland State Department of Education "is failing to meet the standards it enforces in the state's 24 public school districts" when it comes to educating incarcerated youth.
• Chronic teacher shortages and a lack of federally-mandated Individualized Instruction Plans were two of the lapses cited for redress, and state Sen. Robert A. Zirkin says he will schedule a hearing "to seek answers from the education agency and the Department of Juvenile Services," while Sen. Delores G. Kelley wants to introduce "a package of bills" on juvenile justice. 

Dive Insight:

A reported 5,000 incarcerated students are served annually by the Maryland Education Department's oversight regarding education within 14 juvenile justice facilities run by the state. Some critics point out that it's actually hard to tell whether the juvenile justice system is disserving incarcerated youth, since "one of the reasons young people act out in the first place is that they fall behind in school and become frustrated."

That could be true. Behavioral disabilities can also play a role. One middle school in Columbus, OH, was found to have suspended a single sixth-grader for a total of 70 days in one school year without recognizing the child's disabilities, resulting in a mandate of special training for the school's entire staff — administrators included. 

The phenomenon known as the school-to-prison pipeline, which paves a path to incarceration for young students of color through the disproportionate use of harsh disciplinary tactics, has received significant attention in recent years. Now, many states are taking steps to remedy the problem. California leads the way, and Illinois has passed a new law banning all zero-tolerance policies for the 2016-17 academic year and limiting out-of-school suspensions.