Do Student Suspensions Really Cause a ‘School-to-Prison Pipeline’? Proponents of federal orders to reduce or eliminate school student suspensions are waving a recent study around as confirmation that federal intervention is necessary to stop the flow of suspended minority students into prisons later in their lives. (Photo: Joe Potato/ iStock/Getty Images) Commentary By Jay Greene is a senior research fellow in the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation. Its justification for acting as national school principal is based on the claim that suspending students harms them by excluding them from the learning environment and by stigmatizing them as troublemakers.