One of the myths conjured up by the soft-on-crime “justice reform” crowd is that there is a “school-to-prison pipeline” that unfairly incarcerates kids for minor infractions. It follows — by the thinking of the justice reformers — that schools should go easy on discipline lest more kids are sent down that presumed pipeline.

It’s a myth, in part, because justice doesn’t move swiftly enough to serve as a “pipeline” to anywhere. And the juvenile justice system, though far from perfect, isn’t exactly like sending kids to the state pen, anyway; it’s more about getting wayward youths back on track.

But the most egregious aspect of the school-to-prison mythology is that it recasts perpetrators as victims — to the detriment of all of their peers in school.

There’s no doubt most teens unruly enough to break adult laws while in school probably come from a troubled background in one sense or another. And they need the right kind of intervention. But coddling them by keeping them in class — as the justice reformers advocate — is reckless. Easing up on discipline on campus only makes matters worse. It all can pose an imminent threat to the basic safety of classmates, faculty and staff.

A graphic case in point was the 2023 shooting of two administrators at Denver’s East High School by a student who was attending class there — despite being placed on probation and expelled from another district on weapons charges.

Now, troubling data from some of Colorado’s 178 school districts makes the case anew that the justice-reform mindset — minimal consequences for bad behavior — has taken hold at schools across our state. It is undercutting both safety and achievement.

The data was analyzed by Colorado’s Common Sense Institute, which concluded in a press statement last week, “chronic absenteeism, substance abuse violations, and violent incidents remain widespread and are strongly correlated with lower academic performance” in some of the state’s largest school districts.

In the first comprehensive analysis of student discipline data made public under Colorado’s 2022 school safety law, the institute looked at the correlation between student behavior and academic performance in Colorado’s 21 largest school districts. It found, “Districts with higher rates of behavioral incidents and chronic absenteeism tend to perform worse on standardized tests.”

Among the details in the institute’s findings:

Chronic absenteeism affected over 28% of students statewide in 2023-24, with rates as high as 43% in Pueblo’s School District 60 and 40% in Aurora Public Schools.

Colorado’s Springs’ Harrison School District 2 reported 389 “behavioral” incidents in general per 1,000 students — nearly triple the average of the 21 districts analyzed.

Aurora Public Schools reported the most third-degree assaults — specifically, fights — with 27 per 1,000 students. That was 44% more than the next-closest district.

The implications extend beyond school safety.

Common Sense looked at SAT scores for each district in its data analysis and, as stated in its report on that data, “Districts with high absenteeism and behavior violations — like Pueblo and Aurora Public Schools — rank among the lowest in academic performance.”

“The findings are clear: school safety isn’t just about immediate well-being — it’s also a leading indicator of academic performance,” Cole Anderson, CSI’s deputy director of policy & research and co-author of the report, said in the institute’s press statement.

Anderson added, “A disruptive environment impacts every student, and if we want to close achievement gaps, we have to take school culture seriously.”

In other words, it is the school-to-failure pipeline our policymakers really should be worried about.