PRAISE FOR PUSHOUT
“With sensitivity and an un ! inching commitment to their humanity, [Couvson] presents these girls as astute and at times outspoken readers of their social location.”
Women’s Review of Books
“A superb examination of the policies and cultural practices of our educational and criminal justice systems that continue to fail Black girls today. . . . Essential and impor tant.”
Politics & Prose, Sta Pick
“No one who reads Pushout will walk away from its thoroughly intelligent pages untouched or unmoved. . . . Groundbreaking.”
Patrik Henry Bass of Essence for NY1’s “ e Book Reader”
“Sensitive and eye-opening . . . a must-read.”
Best New Non ction of 2016, East Bay Express, Oakland
“Pushout is for everyone who cares about children, especially teachers, school administrators and policymakers, whose decisions— big and small—shape how black girls learn and live.”
e Washington Post
“[A] compelling study that puts a human face on both su ering and statistics . . . an excellent starting point for much-needed change. A powerful and thought-provoking book of social science.”
Kirkus Reviews
“Timely and impor tant.”
Booklist
“Deeply compelling and vividly written, Pushout is necessary reading for youth workers of all kinds: counselors, teachers, principals, a &er-school program leaders, administrators and school safety o cers.”
Hope Wabuke for Youth Today
“[Couvson] provides sensible solutions to some of the problems she describes, arguing that educators must abandon their stereotypical views of young black women, and instructors at juvenile facilities must want the best for their students.”
Library Journal
“[Couvson’s] work, buttressed by appalling statistics and scholarly studies, is supplemented by two useful appendices . . . and a list of community resources.” Publishers Weekly
“Pushout masterfully sways between quoting [girls’] narratives and dismantling the speci c practices, policies, biases and stereotypes that work against them . . . the girls’ voices feel searingly present.”
Sarah Burke, East Bay Express
“A dynamic call to action . . . Pushout is essential reading for all who believe that Black lives matter.”
Kimberlé Crenshaw, co-author of the reports “Say Her Name” and “Black Girls Matter”
“If you ever doubted that Supremacy Crimes—those devoted to maintaining hierarchy—are rooted in both sex and race, read Pushout. Monique [Couvson] tells us exactly how schools are crushing the spirit and talent that this country needs.”
Gloria Steinem
“ is book is imperative reading, not only for educators and those in the justice system but—perhaps especially—for anyone who
loves and sleeps down the hall from a young, developing African American woman.”
Lisa Delpit, author of “Multiplication Is for White People” and Other People’s Children
“A power ful indictment of the cultural beliefs, policies, and practices that criminalize and dehumanize Black girls in America, coupled with thoughtful analysis and critique of the justice work that must be done at the intersection of race and gender.”
Michelle Alexander, author of e New Jim Crow
“Pushout blazes with the voices of young women ghting for their dignity, safety, and the fundamental right to a future.”
Nell Bernstein, author of Burning Down the House and All Alone in the World
“Finally, a compelling narrative that tells us the heartrending story of how schools are culpable in re-victimizing some of our most vulnerable citizens. is is a must-read for educators, juvenile justice o cials, parents, and the entire community.”
Gloria Ladson-Billings, author of e Dreamkeepers
“[Couvson’s] sharp analysis and the compassionate way she contextualizes these stories will surely compel readers to take action against the injustices that Black girls experience in schools and beyond.”
Beth E. Richie, author of Arrested Justice
“Monique [Couvson] is a fearless and brilliant intellectual. Her groundbreaking work . . . speaks directly and powerfully into the current moment.”
Sherrilyn I ll, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and author of On the Courthouse Lawn
Monique Couvson, Ed.D. (formerly Monique W. Morris), president/CEO of G4GC and co-founder of the National Black Women’s Justice Institute, is the author of several books, including Pushout; Black Stats; Sing a Rhythm, Dance a Blues; and Charisma’s Turn (all from The New Press). Her work has been featured by Time, NPR, The New York Times, MSNBC, Essence, The Atlantic, TED, The Washington Post, Education Week, and others.
Also by Monique Couvson
Black Stats: African Americans by the Numbers in the Twenty-First Century
Charisma’s Turn: A Graphic Novel
Cultivating Joyful Learning Spaces for Black Girls: Insights into Interrupting School Pushout
Girls, Unlimited: How to Invest in Our Daughters with More an Money
Sing a Rhythm, Dance a Blues: Liberatory Education for Black and Brown Girls
Too Beautiful for Words: A Novel
PREFACE TO THE 2026 EDITION
Since the rst edition of Pushout was published a decade ago, I have encountered many educators who have agonized over whether decisions they made in the classroom might facilitate a path to criminalization and/or other harms. Some embrace alternatives to exclusionary discipline (such as restorative approaches) as an essential part of the continuum of responses available to educators. Others have chosen to anchor their engagement with young people in the principles and values elevated in this book and other research-based e orts that seek to provide more robust equity- and healing-centered approaches to student behaviors. is work is not about making unfounded accusations or simply placing blame. Instead, this work is focused on our collective responsibility in maintaining learning environments that are conducive to the well-being of all children. e e ort to improve learning spaces requires that we do speci c work to understand and confront Black girls’ unique vulnerabilities in them. Society strug gles to reconcile its relationship with Black girls because it strug gles to see Black girls beyond the con nes of tropes and stereotypes that position them for public consumption. When I discuss pushout, I talk about the policies, practices, conditions, and prevailing consciousness—what we think about Black girls— that primes them for future participation in underground economies, such as tra cking of drugs and/or sex. ese, in turn, o&en lead to contact with the juvenile court or criminal legal systems.
What we think about Black girls informs the ways that we respond to their behavior—such as making judgments about whether they are experiencing emotional dysregulation or normal adolescent behaviors. For example, if a teenager is asking questions of an adult, or expressing dissent to a request made by an adult, is that a behavior that suggests a de ance disorder? Or is her brain making meaning of a lived condition or experience, and seeking to feel safe enough to move forward with the request? If a young person is, in fact, being de ant or insubordinate—which is characterized as disruptive behavior—then how do we respond to her such that she understands why the request is being made, how it works in favor of her safety and the safety of others, and her responsibility to be a part of her community of care?
A decade a &er the original publication of this book, the national conversation persists, as Black girls continue to experience disproportionate harm from decisions made in learning environments that render them vulnerable to contact with the juvenile court or criminal legal systems. As girls of every racial group are confronting the rise of authoritarianism and threats to the political landscape that protected their reproductive and other rights, access to education becomes a critical lever in measuring the success and well-being of our children. Time in exclusionary discipline is time away from learning. Time away from learning is time away from investments that grow intellectual curiosity, innovation, and emergent lenses and interventions that shape our collective future. ere is no inherent problem with disobedience among Black girls; all young people grow through adolescence, making some mistakes. e issue is that some children and adolescents are able to work through those mistakes with the guidance of loving adults, while other children are subjected to disciplinary actions that deepen harm. is is something that a ects every child, as all are impacted by the structures and policies we design as adults to respond to young people who may be facing dysregulation or other root causes of negative student behavior.
Much of this requires work prior to the students’ dysregulation or negative behavior. Because we have not invested robustly in this pre-work, we rely on tools that we have constructed to respond to young people, tools that are only responsive to the externalizing behaviors of what is more than likely an expression of trauma or harm in that young person‘s life. But we cannot come to terms with that until we actually understand that Black girls are people with complex ideas and feelings, just like the rest of us. Coming to terms with—and repairing—our own part in creating and sustaining this phenomenon contributes to how we move toward weaving a tapestry of transgenerational healing (healing across ancestral and current generations) not just for Black girls, but for all of us.
In December 2025, I traveled to Ghana with a group that had assembled prior to the inaugural Diaspora District Global Education Conference, a global convening designed to cultivate educational, entrepreneurial, and philanthropic investments centered on the well-being of Black people on the African continent and beyond. A signi cant portion of the African diasporic community claims some ancestry from what is modern-day Ghana, so no trip focused on the education of West African and diasporic peoples is complete without an opportunity to revisit the journey of our ancestors. In Ghana, the Adinkra concept of Sankofa requires that one look to the past to better understand the future. Returning to the lands of ancestors is a spiritual and educational experience, and inevitably prompts more questions than it answers.
As I stood with intention in the dungeons on the Gold Coast of Ghana, I considered the journey of people from West and Central Africa who were captured and forced into slavery. e dungeons, part of the Cape Coast Castle, held enslaved Africans prior to their abusive journey beyond the coast of West Africa and cemented the heinous dehumanization to which they would be subjected as enslaved people. Enslavement is a critical starting point for understanding the experiences of Black people in the United
States and beyond. Standing on ground that was composed of the blood and other secretions of my ancestors was a reminder of how power and privilege have interacted for centuries with race and gender to shape the opportunities of people in the present.
Mostly dark and dank, the cells re!ect the intentions of those in positions of power to isolate and submerge African people. ose considered civilized and worthy of life walked aboveground, and those whose futures were determined to be disposable were le& to breathe air contaminated by the residue of institutional debris, human waste, and other odors that accompany captivity. is is a social order that I have recognized across time; I see it in the institutions that impact the lives of people of African descent.
As I stared at the brick and stone walls, imagining the anguish of those forced into these spaces, I paused to take in the scent of ancient fear and danger. e facil ity itself was musty from centuries of transformation—from a Portuguese lodge and Swedish fort to the location of human tra cking under the British. e Cape Coast Castle in which I stood revealed much about the complexity of the human psyche and the lengths to which people will go to reinforce a prevailing consciousness related to human value and hierarchy.
Following the abolition of slavery, the castle was used as an ofce space for administrative work associated with maintaining the UK’s imperialist imprint on the region. e facil ity has been apartment housing, a hospital, and a courthouse. It has served as a prison, a post o ce, a burial site, a school, and more. But lingering in its foundations are the questions at the heart of my inquiries on the treatment of Black girls. Was this “just a building”? What makes a building a space for harm or a space for healing? What is our collective tolerance for human exploitation? What is our threshold for unresolved trauma? When does human su ering start to matter? When is it considered worthy of intervention? As I walked through the “Door of No Return,” a door that led to ships intended to transport Africans to an existence of inhu-
mane exploitative labor, I did not linger in the painful memory of my ancestors’ journey from their homelands. I wanted to anchor myself in the energetic present, knowing that historical trauma— the very trauma I write most about—is an opportunity for truth to play a role in healing and reconciliation, as we seek to counter the criminalization of our youth and families.
I had visited other sites of “no return” before the one on the Gold Coast. ese ports of departure remind me of the prevailing consciousness at the root of dehumanization that feeds the adulti cation of our youth. I have also visited ports of arrival in the American South, where enslaved Africans were taken from the boats, hosed o , prepared for the inspection and approval of enslavers, and then auctioned and sold. In fact, the Charleston, South Carolina, port where many Africans arrived into a world of their perceived inferiority is less than two hundred miles from Spring Valley High School, where an o cer made headlines in 2016 for throwing and dragging a sixteen-year-old girl across her classroom. ese are more than just locations, more than places where things “just happen,” some good and some bad. ey are sites of collective memory, unresolved trauma, and foundations for intergenerational poverty and wealth—which also makes them potential locations for healing. ese are the origins and early sites for the reading and treatment of Black girl bodies as disposable and/or for public consumption.
Being in the dungeons was a reminder that the negotiation of power, and institutional framing to reinforce the dehumanization of people with African ancestry, is an old strategy. e age compression and adulti cation discussed throughout this book, where Black girls were stripped of their childhoods and humanity, began here. It was also a reminder of the resilience required to survive and overcome the biases and harsh conditions that inform these circumstances. e challenge is to tell our stories, no matter how di cult, so that we do not repeat and become victimized by such harmful actions but rather learn from them. By exploring the origins of the criminalization of Black girls, the erasure of their
childhood, and addressing their oppression, we create space for responsive and liberatory policies, practices, and conditions. We identify the gaps so that we can ll them.
In 2010, I was asked to lead a study that examined the decisions and conditions impacting girls who were in contact with the juvenile court in a mid-Atlantic city that has historically had a large African American population and was known for its challenging neighborhoods and school systems. While conducting the study, I held a series of interviews with members of the judiciary, the probation department, social workers, the county and school police departments, and other advocates who worked along the carceral continuum that characterized young people as delinquent. Most conversations were aligned with what I had come to expect.
With the warden of the juvenile detention facil ity, I entered the conversation as I had with others, small talk about life in the city. A &er we shared exchanges about the question of the unique experiences of girls in juvenile hall, I asked him to share more about his observations there. He began by sharing information that was typical for a warden. Stories of con ! ict, abandonment and neglect, substance use disorder, and poor education were sprinkled among assertions about identity, sexuality, how girls were negotiating expectations versus their realities, and how all of these combined to impact his job as the warden. en, during our conversation, he said something that has always stayed with me.
“Like, the other day,” he began, “there was a white girl in here who I had to protect.”
I remember looking up from my notepad to ask, “Why did you have to protect her?”
“Well, she’s the only white girl in here,” he said.
“But . . . why did you have to protect her?” I repeated.
He looked at me as if to say, You know why. Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t, but as a researcher, I certainly couldn’t speculate about what he was thinking. I wanted him to explain how he was com-
ing to the decision to uniquely protect this one white girl in his juvenile detention facil ity.
We stared silently at each other until he nally said, “I’ll never live it down if something happens to her in here.”
I imagine that, as a Black man, he was acknowledging the different standards by which people experience institutions based upon racial identity. I imagine he was also subjected to a di erent level of scrutiny as the primary decision-maker for this facil ity. He was concerned about her safety uniquely because he was also concerned about his own.
When I probed him about whether he was also concerned about the safety of the other girls—all Black—in the juvenile detention facil ity, he shrugged and said, “Yeah, of course. But you know, nothing can happen to that one girl.”
e idea that the safety of Black girls came secondary to the safety of white girls was not a new phenomenon. It was born of the dehumanization baked into the soiled !oor of the slave dungeons in West Africa. It was woven into the “peculiar institution,” a reference to slavery and the mindsets and traditions of the antebellum South and its northern conspirators. at does not mean it is irreversible or that it has to be sustained, but understanding its roots provides a unique opportunity for correction and repair. I focus on Black girls in this book and in the broader conversation about the reach of the carceral system in educational settings because we o en fail as a society to honor their humanity in consciousness, policy, and practice. Black girls face a unique vulnerability on the issue of school discipline—the data have con rmed it. ey are the only group of girls who disproportionately experience exclusionary discipline across the spectrum of discipline at every educational level. According to the latest reliable data on school climate, which include a comprehensive collection of data on decision points we use to measure the use of exclusionary discipline in schools, Black girls continue to face disproportionate impact.
e racial disparities among girls are greater than the disparities among boys. According to an analysis by the Georgetown Initiative on Gender Justice and Opportunity, Black girls are 4.2 times more likely than white girls to experience a suspension, while Black boys are 2.7 times more likely than white boys to experience a suspension. e National Black Women’s Justice Institute found that Black girls with a disability are subjected to physical and mechanical restraints at seven times the rate for Black girls without disabilities, and nearly twice as o&en as white girls with disabilities. Black girls with disabilities also experience increased vulnerabilities to criminalization: ey are arrested in schools at 1.8 times the rate for Black girls without disabilities, and they are three times more likely to be arrested on campus than white girls with disabilities. I share more about these disparities and their impacts in the chapters ahead, but what is important to note here is that any contact with the juvenile court increases the likelihood of deeper involvement with the criminal justice system. Girls with access to education are signi cantly less likely to enter the juvenile court or criminal legal systems, which is why I have elevated this as freedom work.
“Des Moines settles suit a &er o cer takes teen to the ground.”
AP News1
In 2020, the Des Moines Police Department entered into a settlement agreement with regard to the use of excessive force a &er police were accused of falsely arresting and pepper spraying a seventeen-year-old girl.
“Charlotte student su ered brain injury a &er o cer slammed her, attorney says.” Charlotte Observer 2
In 2025, a freshman girl at West Charlotte High School in North Carolina was slammed to the ground by a police o cer attempt-
ing to break up a ght, resulting in a subdural hematoma, according to the family’s attorney.
Incidents of adult violence against Black girls make headlines, suggesting that people do see them and are concerned with them as an indication of something that has gone wrong. Yet they are still regarded as isolated. Acknowledging and responding to the conditions that impact Black girls requires us to counter the idea that those girls are insigni cant; it requires us to recognize the factors and circumstances that make them disproportionately vulnerable to harm and consider why these conditions exist and how they are systemic, not isolated. It forces society to confront not just one of its most long-standing, deep-seated biases, but multiple ones, simulta neously . . . and that is di cult work.
e work of identifying and revealing the conditions that impact Black girls, at the intersection of their identities, is work that involves an analysis of how oppression manifests itself in our society. It requires us to explore the interpersonal, structural, cultural, and internalized ways in which we accept or reject dominant ideas about girlhood, speci cally Black girlhood, and the extent to which we are willing to take responsibility for our own actions that are part of a tapestry of harm—even while many of us believe ourselves to be part of a tapestry of healing.
For decades, Black girls have been disproportionately overrepresented across the juvenile court continuum.3 Education is a critical protective factor against contact with the juvenile court or criminal legal systems. Incarceration, conversely, is a costly endeavor for taxpayers and survivors of crime and a devastating experience for the human psyche, o&en worsening the root causes and conditions that lead to incarceration in the rst place. Investing in the systems and structures that prevent the !ow of individuals into the criminal legal system bene ts an entire society.
e work to center Black girls in the conversation about the criminalization of young people in schools is an active invitation to interrogate systems of harm that operate outside the public gaze
and understanding of educational institutions. It is not to facilitate the erasure of other students. When we bring into focus students who experience disproportionate harm, it allows us to build systems that are responsive to every student. When we explore what is not working well, we innovate strategies that strengthen all students.
Over the past decade of speaking about this book in the context of my broader inquiry into the criminalization of Black girls, I have consistently been asked variations on the following questions: Why do you focus on Black girls?
Why has society had such a di cult time acknowledging the conditions of Black girls?
What does society at large receive from your investment in Black girls?
I have found, over the years, that these same questions signal a thinly veiled desire to shi & the focus away from those at the center of my work.
e question “Why do you focus on Black girls?” for example, reveals the bias that underscores our core challenge when seeking to center Black girls in the conversation about school climate and discipline. Frequently embedded in the question is a silent “only” or “exclusively”: “Why do you (only) focus on Black girls, or why does this book (exclusively) focus on Black girls”? is re!ects two problematic assumptions: First, that my research focus on Black girls is irrelevant to the narratives and experiences of other populations, and second, that serious inquiries into the plight of Black girls require an extraordinary level of justi cation.
e assumption that research on Black girls is irrelevant to the experiences of other populations ignores that not only are we all connected in a common human experience, but that we are also all impacted by what happens to those who are most vulnerable to harm. Former South African president Nelson Mandela, a human rights leader and anti-apartheid activist, once re!ected that “the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed,” o er-
ing that “I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else’s freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. e oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.”4
In Sing a Rhythm, Dance a Blues and in other contexts, I discuss the proverb which states that “until the lions have their own historian, the story of the hunt will always glorify the hunter” as a relevant framework from which we may situate this inquiry about Black girls in schools. But I’ve always been struck by the fact that the story of “the hunt” is not only about the hunter and the lion. e story of the hunt impacts the !y on the lion’s tail, the antelopes or zebras, even the terrain. We’re all impacted by the story of the hunt. We’re all impacted by the story of an experience that only some might characterize as a story of “the hunt.” Perspectives, and institutional responses to these perspectives, matter. Black girls are worthy of inquiry, and their experiences in educational institutions should matter to all of us.
When I rst began writing Pushout, I was interested in exploring a signi cant community of young people impacted by criminalization in schools. It was never my belief that exploring Black girls was somehow antithetical to the serious academic work underway to explore avenues for improving the learning environments for all of our children. In fact, the work to disaggregate data by race, gender, and age, and then situate that in the broader context of racialized, gender-based violence and the sociopolitical environments that frame and inform the work of institutions in our society, is highly rigorous. It requires that we understand the extended epistemological considerations that focusing on Black girls bring to this issue. It requires that we identify the ways that oppression is manifested in structural, interpersonal, cultural, and internalized ways in our society. It requires that we confront our own biases and assumptions about the way violence takes shape in our communities and institutions.
My own exploration of this topic has spanned four books, a
few peer-reviewed academic articles, dozens of opinion editorials, a TED Talk, a documentary lm, and an animated educatorfocused professional development series. It has informed my nonpro t leadership and philanthropic decision-making. In each of these projects, independently and together, I have sought to build community and o er opportunities for us to collectively engage in both the historical and contemporary analyses necessary to tackle this very complex issue. is work is meant to explicitly challenge society’s di culty in responding to conditions that disproportionately harm Black girls.
Indeed, school discipline is not the only thing to negatively impact Black girls. In fact, because Black girls experience disproportionate harm across the spectrum of other issues, they are rendered more likely to experience school discipline. Society’s collective lack of response to these issues, as measured by apathy and the absence of new programming or targeted interventions in the face of routine disparity and harm, is a re!ection not only of the shortcomings of our values as they relate to structuring policies and practices that respond to the needs of all girls, but also of the low priority that is a orded to issues that are perceived as irrelevant to the well-being of society as a whole.
When I am asked what the bene t is to society for us to focus on Black girls, I always express that, rst and foremost, my desire is for us to see them as people, because they are part of our human family. Black girls are worthy of inquiry. Having said that, it is also impor tant to acknowledge that when we understand justice and democracy through the lens of those who have experienced deep levels of marginalization as a function of their intersecting identities (including race, gender, sexuality, and status with the juvenile court system) and the relationship between these identities and the institutions that impact them, we are able to identify how to make these institutions stronger for everyone. Girls who are Black, poor, and disabled, for example, are more likely to at-
tend schools that prioritize suspension and other exclusionary discipline in response to dysregulation. Suspensions lead to loss of learning and increase the potential for participation in unproductive and unlawful activities. is places them further behind in academic outcomes, which impacts the overall performance of a classroom, school, or district. However, as this book o ers, understanding the root causes associated with these behaviors—and developing a range of appropriate responses to improve their behaviors and interactions with others—we can improve outcomes not only for these girls, but also for their learning communities. When no one is le& behind, everyone gets what they need.
Implicit in all of this is the assumption that we are in a competition for attention and services. Understanding that competition is the cornerstone of capitalism, the goal here is not to bolster any system that relies on the exploitation of another. My goal is to ensure the wellness of all people so that they may pursue their lives in alignment with their purpose. My goal is to ensure that everyone, regardless of race, ethnicity, ability, sexuality, gender identity, and so on, can access quality education. My goal is to ensure that the systems we build do not treat any child as disposable, but rather include all in our explicit commitment to preparing the next generation of young people to participate in this global society, as well-informed, critical thinking adults. I believe that expanding our lens to include Black girls is an essential practice in schools’ journeys to become locations for healing and places for learning.
For me, this conversation is about how we create institutions and practices that are fair and just.
I wrote this book to explore Black girls’ experiences with learning and school discipline. I wrote this book to invite a transformation in how we work with Black girls and understand their lived experiences. I wrote this book to inspire educators, parents, policy makers, advocates, entrepreneurs, and Black girls themselves, as well as their peers, to recognize disparity as more than an indicator
of disproportionate harm. I want readers to understand that differential treatment is not benign. Disproportionate impact is not irrelevant. School pushout—the policies, practices, conditions, and prevailing consciousness that render young people vulnerable to future contact with juvenile court or criminal legal system— disproportionately impacts Black girls. And it is something that we still must work toward remedying for learning institutions to better serve all children. is was impor tant a decade ago and is all the more impor tant today.
Click here to learn more about the book.
