In our school district, that would probably get you suspended, but just because we don’t install FireFox, and students are not allowed to install software on the systems. So the suspension would not be for using Firefox per se, but for installing unauthorized software on a district computer.
Then these folks should have the login-account privvys setup correctly. They probably have the kids logging in as root/admin...and they deserve what they get.
We need more information. This part makes me think he was suspended for not doing his web-based work. Since the teacher didn't see IE he thought the assignment wasn't being performed. There are a lot of people out there who still think IE=WWW, and unfortunately some of them are teaching our kids.
Still, the student should have closed the browser and then gone to the administration to tell them the teacher is a moron.
That alone speaks volumes about the competence of the school administrators. If you don’t want students installing software, don’t put install privileges in their accounts.
This sums it up for my school as well. They can't install their own programs. No one knows where they came from and if the teacher isn't familiar with it, he/she can't judge if it is harmless or not.
The IT dept. at my son’s,now college junior, high school hated his computer class because he and a couple of other kids could figure out system problems and get the network back to running correctly before the ink had dried on the IT work order.
Someone needs to tell this kid about Portable Apps. They are programs that run off a USB drive, so there's no need to install it on any computer. All Open Source (ie free as in beer) and has just about any program one could need including Firefox and Thunderbird.