School Discipline Makes a Comeback

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is working hard to
bring back common sense and local control regarding
school discipline. Toward the end of 2018 the Education
and Justice Departments officially rolled back the
Obama Administration's guidance on school discipline.
What this means is that the measure, supposedly intended
to address the "schools-to-prison pipeline" for minority
students, i.e. school districts employing suspensions a
wee bit too often, especially when it's black students
getting the timeouts. Suspensions, the Obama regime
figured, do long-term harm to the suspendees, therefore
schools must limit them along with other traditional
discipline measures in favor of "restorative" means
which stress dialogue over punishment (think
restorative justice; yes, that great crime-mitigating
--- HA! --- idea of the lefties).

The upshot of the Obama initiative was that schools were
incentivised to be lax on discipline problems, including
not reporting dangerous students to the police. This all
made for classroom environments hostile, rather than
conducive to learning for students who want to avail
themselves of educational opportunities at their local
public schools to pave the way for college and good
careers rather than lives of crime. But left-wing critics
of Devos' idea claim that it "would make it easier for
schools to discriminate against children." Utter nonsense.
Secretary DeVos is merely eliminating a horrible policy
that has used race to impose a "one size fits all" mandate
on schools across the country with a wide range of both
students and problems.

Schools should have options other than suspensions and
expulsions to handle troublemaking students, but they
should come from the local schools' teachers and principals,
and the parents as well, not from far-removed bureaucrats
who cannot see what is happening at the local level and
don't care about the consequences of their policies.


MEM