SYSTEM FAILURE provides a framework for understanding the ways in which education policy across organizational settings contributes to the school-to-prison pipeline, as documented in the literature and as observed by authors in empirical studies of justice-involved youth in regular public schools, juvenile court schools, probation settings, and alternative schools. Burch and contributors argue that education policy fails low-income justice-involved youth in three major ways: maintaining silence around issues of structural racism and civil rights, marginalizing youth voice and culture and language, focusing on schools or the criminal justice system, and overlooking intermediate settings including the role of for-profit and not-for-profit education companies. While the problem of the school to prison pipeline has been well documented, the book adds critical detail and description of a policy process that tolerates the school-to-prison pipeline and stalls efforts to abolish it.

The book is intended for educators, students, policymakers and practitioners interested in a comprehensive introduction to the policy issues as well as advocates doing serious work on the issues.