Were the painting done today, it might show law enforcement acting in a very different capacity. Instead of leading a black child safely into school, the image might very well be of police officers escorting a child out. Sixty years after the Brown decision, de facto segregation persists because of a complex web of factors rooted in our nation’s long history of discrimination. But segregation is only one of the issues faced by students of color. Increasingly, minority children are drawn into the so-called school-to-prison pipeline – the phenomenon in which draconian disciplinary policies force students out of the educational system and into the criminal justice system.
