By now, most people in this country have heard of the Jena Six - the black male high school students in the town of Jena, LA, who were charged as adults with crimes ranging from aggravated battery to attempted murder for their involvement in a schoolyard fight.

And most have probably heard horror stories about the events leading up to the fight: a racially hostile environment for black students at Jena High School, attacks by white students and adults upon black teenagers, and threats from the district attorney against black students who protested the hanging of nooses from the "white tree" at the school and other forms of racial harassment.

In this tense racial environment, Jena high school student Mychal Bell, who was initially charged with attempted murder, was convicted of aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy by an all-white jury, and at one point faced a possible sentence of more than 22 years. Yet, the white students responsible for harassing and attacking black students escaped relatively unscathed. And, although a Louisiana appeals court reversed Mychal Bell's convictions, finding that the criminal court lacked jurisdiction to try him as an adult, he has been in jail since December of last year, unable to post a $90,000 bail.

The Jena Six situation has once again exposed the sinister, yet complicated phenomenon we have come to call the School to Prison Pipeline and highlights the role that race plays in denying educational opportunity.

In the last decade, the punitive and overzealous approaches of law enforcement and the criminal justice system have seeped into schools. Remember Ja'eisha Scott, a five-year-old kindergartner in St. Petersburg, Florida, who was handcuffed and hauled off in a police car from her elementary school for a temper tantrum? Increasingly, school districts are removing children from educational environments and funneling many onto a one-way path toward prison. Throughout the United States, children are being suspended, expelled and even arrested on school grounds at alarming rates for minor misconduct.

While the Pipeline harms children of all races, in many school districts black and brown students are affected in overwhelming numbers. Black male students in particular, often demonized as predators, have felt the brunt of the School to Prison Pipeline. As the Jena Six example demonstrates, both intentional and unconscious racism contribute to the phenomenon at every stage.

We must remember that Jena is not an anomaly. Following decades of segregation and unequal resources, the School to Prison Pipeline is just the latest means through which the black community has been denied quality education.

Although they have only been accused, and not yet tried or convicted, most of the Jena Six young men have missed a significant amount of classroom time after their arrest and expulsion from school. On the verge of receiving diplomas, some of them are still locked out of opportunity today, including Mychal Bell, who has been behind bars for nine months.

In order to change these kinds of outcomes, we must begin to dismantle the School to Prison Pipeline. And we can start by demanding fairer school discipline practices and an end to ongoing racial discrimination in education. So, as people flock to Jena, Louisiana to protest the prosecution of the Jena Six, remember that we must demand justice not only in the courts, but also in the schools.

Click here to contact the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

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