Behind the Walls: A Guide for Families and Friends of Texas Prison Inmates

16. Education

95 If there is only one thing you can do to assist your convict friend or relative in his struggle to prepare for freedom and remain out of prison, that one thing should be to encourage him to get an education.You may believe that his lack of spiritual values, or his addiction, led to his criminal actions, and you want him to attend AA/NA and get involved in religious programs. This is good because he needs to address those issues also. However, he can’t read the Bible if he can’t plain read. He can’t complete the written portion of the Substance Abuse Treatment Program if he can’t write. He won’t be able to hold down a job, or be involved in the life of his family or the larger society, if he doesn’t grasp the fundamental concepts that you take for granted—balancing a checkbook , following written directions, taking the state driver’s license test, or forming a simple budget. He will have no connection with his neighbor or society if he knows nothing of the basic milestones of our history or doesn’t understand the civic process. Study after study of offenders, and the reasons they return or don’t, has shown that the single biggest variable that can be controlled by convicts themselves is education. It’s simple—the more education inmates get, the lower their rate of return to prison. Sure, there are men in prison education Chapter sixteen 96 Chapter Sixteen with college degrees. But they are vastly outnumbered by the tens of thousands of men who dropped out in the eighth or ninth grades, turned to drugs and crime, went to prison, have never held a job, have never learned the rudiments of adult life. If those men don’t acquire at least a basic education, they will never stand a chance in the free-world. The good news is that a convict in Texas who wants to educate himself has a variety of programs to choose from—basic educational courses, vocational courses, and two-year, four-year, and graduate level college courses. The not-so-good news is that many of these courses are offered only on certain units. To qualify for transfer to those units, convicts must meet certain criteria—good time, class and status requirements—that can be readily taken away by unit disciplinary and classification committees , necessitating extremely good behavior from sometimes not-sopatient convicts. Windham School District The Windham School District (WSD), created by the Texas Legislature to serve only Texas prisons, has a school on almost every unit in Texas. (Some transfer facilities, trusty camps, or state jails may not.) In 1998-99, WSD had a seventy-seven million dollar budget and provided educational servicesto74,441inmates–56,096institutionaldivisioninmatesand18,345 state jail inmates. The primary purpose of WSD is to prepare students to successfullytaketheGeneralEquivalencyDiploma(GED)examinationand earn their GEDs. In 1999, GEDs were awarded to 5,400 students. Inmates whose Educational Achievement (EA) is less than 6.0 (of a 12.9) are automatically enrolled in WSD academic classes, and will continue to attend until they raise their EA scores to 6.0, attain a GED, or are removed for disciplinary reasons. Close custody and administrative segregation inmates are not allowed to take any type of classes, other than correspondence courses, if the warden approves. Most don’t. Inmates with EA scores higher than 6.0, who are at least Line Class I and medium custody, may attend WSD if there is available room. Inmates with GEDs or high school diplomas are not allowed to take WSD classes other than college prep courses. Students in WSD are grouped according to EA scores. The remedial, or special education classes, are for students who are basically illiterate Education 97 and lack the fundamentals in almost every area of lower education. Once their scores are considered high enough, they will be funneled into classes that demand more of them. Windham is like any other school district in that it is always short of materials and its students are at the mercy of the initiative and energy shown by the individual principals and teachers. Like any district, WSD has terrible teachers and great teachers. The security orientation of prison further hampers WSD. The materials are rationed to inmates, as it is assumed that excess paper and pencils will be stolen by inmates. Because books...