California to Redesign Prison Education Programs
With California suffering severe financial crisis, it seems inevitable that the California’s prison education system would be hard hit. This past spring, state officials decided to revamp and redesign the prison education classes statewide, after a myriad of complaints that the programs are poorly designed and could leave inmates ill-prepared for life after release.
According to a draft report by the California Rehabilitation Oversight Board, ongoing problems include “increased class size, reduced time in class, administrative paperwork, student turnover, wrongly assigned students, inmate homework and elimination of some vocational education programs.”
California prison teachers often struggle with enormous class sizes, with as many as 150 students per class and only three hours of classroom instruction per week. A proportion size of that ratio, makes effective teaching and attention to students needs very difficult.
