Op-ed: Parental Incarceration is Holding our Schoolchildren Back

OKLAHOMA CITY (KOKH) — OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. – There is a heartbreaking correlation among two areas where Oklahoma ranks worst in the country: Adverse childhood experiences and incarceration.

Adverse childhood experiences – which include exposure to violence, neglect and abuse, parental incarceration and divorce – carry a devastating legacy of negative outcomes in adulthood, including chronic health problems, high-risk behaviors, even early death.

Tragically, Oklahoma leads the country in the number of adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs. Nearly half of the children in Oklahoma have experienced three or more significant traumatic events in their lives. The effects of trauma directly impede academic success for hundreds of thousands of our children due to their negative impact on the developing brain.

The Oklahoma State Department of Education is working with schools to deliver strategies on trauma-informed instruction, so teachers can meet children where they are and understand the challenges they face both inside and outside the classroom. We are finding that the alarming prevalence of trauma in our students is tied to other systemic problems in our state.

One clear intersection is our state’s approach to criminal justice. Oklahoma locks up more people per capita than any other state in the country, and hands out much longer sentences for property and drug crimes. As a result, 96,000 Oklahoma children have a parent who was or is incarcerated, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Parental incarceration is a deeply traumatic experience for children emotionally, developmentally, and socially. A 2014 study of female prisoners in Oklahoma found many children are left without a parent at home when the mother is incarcerated. Children suffer when they are separated from their parents or witness a parent being arrested. They can feel isolation and shame from the stigma of having a parent incarcerated. Children also face material consequences like financial hardship, instability in care and food, all of which affect their ability to do well in school.

The right way forward to help Oklahoma schoolchildren is to address this root cause of trauma and work together on evidence-based criminal justice reforms that keep Oklahoma families together and lower the risk of children experiencing traumatic events.

Last fall, Oklahoma was the first state in the nation to host a full-day summit focused on childhood trauma and its impact on education. We continued that conversation this month with a session on trauma-informed instruction for over 500 educators. I wish we didn’t need a statewide summit on trauma, but until we better tackle systemic issues like Oklahoma’s incarceration crisis, we will have to spend already limited time and resources helping students cope with family separation and instability.

Right now, there are 10 smart criminal justice reforms being discussed at the Capitol that would help keep our families together, improve public safety and reduce our projected prison population by 17 percent within a decade. These are the right steps forward to mitigate the trauma Oklahoma schoolchildren face as a result of the criminal justice system and set them up for success in the future.

Joy Hofmeister is State Superintendent of Public Instruction.