About the Puttkammer Center for Educational Justice
The Puttkammer Center for Educational Justice—a division of the Petey Greene Program—aims to identify and promote best practices in carceral and reentry education, acting as a catalyst for evidence-based research and policy proposals that expand access to high-quality education behind and beyond bars. The Center leads with evidence to drive change in prison education on a national level. The Center’s work grew out of the Petey Greene Program’s proven expertise and network of researchers, practitioners, and experts, while centering the voices and experiences of system-impacted people. The Center serves as a catalyst for research and cultural change, incubates innovative solutions, and builds cross-sector coalitions of researchers, practitioners, and leaders with lived experience of incarceration to promote access to quality education behind and beyond bars.
Our Goals
Turning Ideas into Action: The Center takes academic research and turns it into real-world tools that tutors and students can actually use.
Improving The Student/Learning Experience: Beyond book learning or passing tests, we research the human side of the carceral learning environment—studying systemic factors like test anxiety and digital literacy, which prevent students from reaching their potential. In addition, we are working to develop mechanisms to support a student's life outside the classroom.
A "Think and Do" Tank: We don't just write and publish research papers; we pilot new ideas and programs, like training incarcerated individuals to become tutors themselves ("Inside Tutors"), or bringing hands-on STEM education inside youth carceral facilities.
Providing Expert Consulting: We act as a guide for other organizations that want to support system-impacted people, helping them determine where to start to launch new initiatives or guiding them as they refine existing programs. The Center for Educational Justice focuses on moving the needle from "providing a service" to "changing the system."
Our History
2024
The Puttkammer Center for Educational Justice launches.
We led and evaluated innovative pilot programs testing best practices in reentry education and hands-on STEM instruction for incarcerated youth;
We conducted and published research on blended learning, on the impact of PGP’s tutoring on student confidence and academic achievement, and on narratives of incarceration;
We created and piloted a series of tutor trainings for incarcerated scholars, to support self-organized learning communities inside carceral spaces. Incarcerated trained tutors now collaborate with external tutors to support students in the PGP College Bridge Program;
We delivered lectures and professional trainings at conferences and institutions across the country; we also led a series of webinars on the international landscape of incarceration, with panelists from South America, Africa, and Europe;
We secured more than a million dollars in funding, including $600,000 in foundation grants to support research and pilot program development.
2025
In 2025, we continued on this path, combining research and pilot program development to advance the field of education in prison as a whole and support the expansion of the Petey Greene Program. Our research agenda for 2025 focused on four key areas:
The impact of the PGP’s programs on student confidence and academic achievement;
The role of volunteering in academic settings as a tool to foster advocacy and systemic change;
Self-organized learning communities in carceral facilities;
The need and effectiveness of holistic, individualized academic programs and support services that create a continuum of educational opportunities before, during, and after higher education in prison.
Our landscape analysis and pilot programs have focused on three key areas:
English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL): While there are no comprehensive studies on the number of English Language Learners in prisons and jails, demographic trends suggest that the incarcerated population of non-native English speakers is large and growing. These students are excluded from most educational and workforce development programs. Yet, ESOL programming in carceral spaces remains scarce, despite the great need, and there is a dearth of research on how to apply proven ESOL teaching methods in carceral spaces. To address these gaps in both research and practice, in 2025,
We conducted surveys and a landscape analysis to understand the understudied landscape of ESOL education in correctional institutions around the country;
We developed and piloted a new curriculum and program model tailored to the needs and opportunities of ESOL learning in carceral spaces.
Digital Literacy: Rapid technological advances risk leaving behind reentering citizens. Leveraging increased funding in digital access, the Puttkammer Center has developed, and will soon pilot, and evaluate new programming models that integrate academic tutoring and digital literacy support, while utilizing technology to reach broader swaths of students in rural and underserved areas.
Geographic Expansion: Working closely with the PGP national staff, the Puttkammer Center has supported the geographic expansion of the organization, conducting a landscape analysis to identify geographic areas of need and opportunity, analyzing data from existing PGP’s programs to identify success factors, and designing program models that address the need and opportunities of states beyond the current PGP’s footprint.
Across our research and practice work, the Puttkammer Center centers system-impacted scholars and students:
Formerly incarcerated scholars are part of our steering and oversight committee and provide feedback on research and pilot program design, and are compensated for their efforts;
We secured funding to compensate trained incarcerated tutors who support the College Bridge program;
We continue to prioritize formerly incarcerated and system-impacted people as we expand the Puttkammer Fellowship program. In 2024, half of our fellows were system-impacted. In 2025, at least ⅔ of them will be system-impacted.