Name: Morgan Craven
Age: 32
Title: Director, Texas Appleseed’s School-to-Prison Pipeline Project
Town: Austin, Texas
Her challenge: Make sure little kids won’t be suspended from school, but taught better behavior instead.
How she’s making a difference: Craven works for Texas Appleseed, a nonprofit that works to change unjust laws and policies in Texas. She leads the organization’s School to Prison Pipeline project, which looks to improve zero tolerance disciplinary procedures that advocates say are more likely to put a child on the path to prison rather than better behavior. Right now, that means changing policies and laws that allow elementary children to be suspended.
Shockingly, in some schools a pre-K student who is just 3 years old can be suspended for for minor, and often age-appropriate, behavior. It’s a practice that disproportionately impacts children with disabilities and black children. “Here in Austin, for example, Black kindergarteners are only 7 percent of the kindergarten student population, but they account for 50 percent of out-of-school suspensions,” says Craven. “That means these very young students are being sent home for up to three days at a time, are not in class learning with their peers, and are up to 10 times more likely to be held back, drop out, and have contact with the justice system.”
How she got here: “When I first moved to Texas, I worked as a legal aid attorney in San Antonio,” says Craven. “I represented children in special education cases when they were charged with crimes in school. I really love working with and for youth because I think we need to give them every possible chance to succeed in this world. So many of these kids have their own struggles, and school should be a place that nurtures and supports them, not a place that sets up unnecessary barriers. I took the job at Texas Appleseed because I wanted to move from representing individual children to doing policy work so that I could be part of changing harmful systems that are impacting millions of kids in Texas.”
How she’s winning: Texas Appleseed created a data-heavy report, Suspended Childhood, that looked at the state of school suspension and its effects. With it, Craven and her team organized successfully pushed for policy changes in Houston, Austin, and Dallas—three of Texas’ largest school districts. Last month, school boards in Dallas and Austin unanimously approved policy changes that will dramatically reduce the use of suspensions before children reach the third grade. Now she has her sights set on a bigger goal: Enacting statewide change to keep all young children in Texas in school by limiting excessive punishments.
Why she cares: “My two sons, Sammy and Sidney, are smart, wonderful young people who I know will do amazing things in the world,” says Craven. “My husband and I are vigilant when it comes to their education and we have the resources to ensure that they can access certain opportunities. A lot of children, especially children who look like my sons (who are black and Latino), don’t have those opportunities and that really bothers me. A child’s address, skin color, access to food and healthcare, socioeconomic status, parents, and many other factors over which they have no control, can impact their ability to freely define and attain personal success. Changing the way children are treated in schools does so much to combat these deeply entrenched, harmful systems that can limit children. My sons remind me how sweet and smart kids are and why we all have a responsibility to support them however we can.”
Do your part: Craven says you can start getting involved by simply taking the time to understand the problems that are impacting people in your community. Talk to public officials and attend local meetings. “Your presence matters to policy makers,” says Craven.
