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Who has the best DAEP in Texas?
By Jim Walsh
 The Dawg is sniffing around in search of the best disciplinary alternative education program (DAEP) in Texas. If you think your program is top notch, send me an email!
DAEPs are getting a lot of scrutiny these days. In 2007, the Legislature instructed the Texas Education Agency to adopt minimum standards for the operation of these programs. Those standards were adopted and became effective in December 2008. Meanwhile, local districts face pressure from TEA if special education students or racial minorities are over represented in the DAEP, which they usually are.
Much of this scrutiny and pressure is the result of the School-to-Prison Pipeline Project, a multiyear study conducted by Texas Appleseed (www.texasappleseed.net). The nonprofit public-interest law center is one of 16 Appleseed centers in the United States and Mexico City. The folks at Texas Appleseed have studied the impact of school-based ticketing and arrests, court involvement in school disciplinary cases and the effectiveness of Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Programs, and they have concluded that DAEPs aren't working very well. They dubbed their project "school-to-prison pipeline" in recognition of what every corrections official and every assistant principal already knows: Kids who do time in DAEP are much more likely to also do time in the joint later on.
I have become more personally sensitive to this issue in the past few years as I have assisted my wife with her work with Truth Be Told, a Texas nonprofit that serves women in prison (www.truth-be-told.org). Truth Be Told provides incarcerated women with specific skills to help them both while behind bars and afterwards, in the community. One of those skills is public speaking. The women in her class learn how to give an effective five- to seven-minute speech, telling the story of what brought them to prison.
My job is to visit the prison and listen to these women's speeches and provide helpful feedback on how they can deliver their messages most effectively. I learned how to do this through 22 years with Toastmasters. Almost all of the women I have heard speak were the victims of abuse before they committed their crimes. Many of them were raised in a pervasive climate of drugs, alcohol and family violence. You will not be surprised, therefore, to hear that their stories frequently involve trouble in school.
You readers already know this. You know that schools do not cause good kids to go bad. Public schools do not create the problems in our society; they reflect them. When advocacy groups like Texas Appleseed criticize our school programs, we tend to respond defensively. "It’s not our fault. We do the best we can with limited resources. These problems are in the community, the family. Don’t blame us!"
All of which is true. And all of which is beside the point. The point is that what Texas Appleseed has pointed out is true: The future prison population can be found in our DAEPs right now. So, what are we doing about that?
We already know what others should do about it. Parents should do better. Other agencies should pitch in. We need more resources. But what are we -- the leaders of the public school system -- doing? That's what I’m asking. And I'd like to start by identifying a really good program -- one that is working well despite all the obstacles and intractable problems.
We here at Texas School Business are interested in hearing about the successes. We aim to be part of the solution, not the problem. "Working well" means that kids don't come back to DAEP. They get it. The self-discipline component of your program is getting its message across. If you have such a program, send me an email at jwalsh@wabsa.com.
JIM WALSH is editor in chief of Texas School Business and the managing editor of Texas School Administrators’ Legal Digest. Also a school attorney, he co-founded the firm of WWalsh, Anderson, Brown, Gallegos & Green, P.C. He can be reached at jwalsh@wabsa.com or by visiting www.walshanderson.com.
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