Just two years ago, at age 16, Florida honors student Kiera Wilmot was expelled, arrested, and booked on two felony charges after a school science experiment went awry.

“She just wanted to see what happened to those chemicals in the bottle,” one teen told a local news station in the wake of the incident in 2013. “Now, look what happened.”

“A young African-American woman, an aspiring scientist, made an error in an experiment that landed her in handcuffs. This was drastic and harsh, the kind of discipline that Black girls and teens face every day due to a rush to criminalize them.”
—Judith Browne Dianis, Advancement Project

On Monday night, Kiera joined “Clock Kid” Ahmed Mohamed and about 300 other youths for the White House Astronomy Night, aimed at promoting careers in science and innovation. And on Tuesday, Kiera, her mother Marie, and her sister Kayla were in the nation’s capitol to draw attention to how students of color are unfairly criminalized and pushed out of schools.

Civil rights advocates say that stories like Kiera’s and Ahmed’s are not atypical.

But while their experiences have drawn widespread attention, “the plight of other students caught up in the school-to-prison pipeline often goes unnoticed and under-reported,” according to the Washington, D.C.-headquartered Advancement Project, which promotes racial justice through legal and grassroots tactics. In fact, citing statistics from the African American Policy Forum, the Advancement Project notes that “such is disproportionately the case with Black girls, who are suspended from school six times more often than their white counterparts around the nation.”

“Kiera’s experience is indicative of a larger school discipline crisis,” said Advancement Project co-director Judith Browne Dianis at a press conference on Tuesday.

“While every child should have the opportunity to succeed, children of color are often punished unnecessarily,” Dianis said. “A young African-American woman, an aspiring scientist, made an error in an experiment that landed her in handcuffs. This was drastic and harsh, the kind of discipline that Black girls and teens face every day due to a rush to criminalize them. Too often the impact of the school-to-prison pipeline on girls of color is swept under the rug, but Kiera’s story, like so many others, shows girls face life-changing consequences too.”