A panel of scholars, practitioners, and system-impacted people examined how to increase access to high-quality education for pre-collegiate incarcerated learners. While many colleges and universities have developed prison-based programs in recent years, there also remains a shortage of high-quality programming for the roughly 30% of incarcerated learners who don’t have a GED or high school diploma. Even those with a high school credential often lack crucial skills that are necessary to succeed in today’s workplace and post-secondary education and thus benefit from additional college readiness programming.
Panelists discussed the landscape of pre-collegiate education for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, helped us understand what high-quality pre-collegiate education looks like, and how we can advocate for it.