Posted on 04/30/2025 3:42:26 PM PDT by karpov
Amelia Shulman (name changed for privacy) had been teaching high school students in Georgia for three years when, in 2024, she decided it was time to consider another career. A major factor was administrators’ indifference to classroom disorder.
“Higher-ups at the school—and superintendents at the district level—are really pushing teachers to just take the path of least resistance if a kid is acting out,” Shulman said. “The goal is to have very low numbers of students facing major disciplinary action, but that doesn’t reflect what’s actually happening at the school every day.”
On April 23, the Trump administration moved to change that. The president issued an executive order, “Reinstate Commonsense School Discipline Policies,” to revoke Obama- and Biden-era guidance that forced schools to ignore disorder under the guise of improving “equity” and “inclusion.”
The administration is right to act. Restoring order in America’s classrooms will require undoing years of misguided federal policies that prioritized racial quotas and therapeutic interventions. These policies have eroded academic achievement, endangered students, and made it harder for struggling kids to get the help they need. To succeed, however, the administration will need to respect local control, while overcoming fierce resistance from an entrenched education bureaucracy.
The saga begins with a 2012 report from the Obama administration that found that black students were “suspended, expelled, and arrested” at higher rates than white students. In response, the administration sent a “Dear Colleague” letter to state and local education agencies in 2014, threatening federal investigations if rates of “exclusionary discipline”—suspensions and expulsions—were racially disparate.
The “Dear Colleague” guidance presumed that racial bias accounted for the contrasting discipline rates. “Statistical and quantitative data” explaining disparities would not be enough to prevent a civil rights investigation—even if a school’s policies were race-neutral and implemented evenhandedly.
(Excerpt) Read more at city-journal.org ...
Bkmrk
My sister taught math to middle school and high school kids for 45 years. She saw the destruction wrought by liberals up close. She learned hot to get respect from the kids, even the hard cases. But she saw that many young teachers would last only three to five years before deciding “enough was enough” and quit teaching. It’s a common problem nationwide — thanks Obama, Biden, and all other commie bastards who believe in the “restorative justice” crap that made our classrooms far worse than the old West.
0bummer green lighted black violence in schools by punishing schools that held miscreant blacks accountable for their behavior.
Everyone immediately knew it was open season.
“They can’t touch me”, she said as she gently pushed the dark skin on her forearm, according to my wife.
I ran into a former student who is now a teacher at a local school. Her arm was in a sling and I asked her how it happened. A junior high student grabbed her arm and twisted it. This caused enough damage as to require surgery to correct. Not only weren’t the students disciplined, her administrators highly discouraged her from claiming workman’s compensation.
She said that students openly break school rules and staff are told to ignore virtually any infractions of the rules and asking an administrator to do anything about it results in a lecture telling the teacher that it is up to her to maintain discipline by avoiding any negative comments to misbehaving students.
The school I retired from was not that far gone, but I saw signs of its heading that way when I substituted there.
Plus permissive parents who refuses to discipline their children at home.
BIG factor, IMO.
There will have to be jail-like juvenile education/detention facilities for the real problem cases.
“Plus permissive parents who refuses to discipline their children at home.”
Absolutely right. Worse, those parents think their kids can do no wrong and they will march in and challenge anything the teacher does. The school administrators are weak and will always side with the parents against the teacher.
My sister taught at an exclusive magnet school in Baltimore. The kids boarded at the school Sunday night to Thursday night and went home on Sat & Sun. The toughest problem they had was the kids needed to be ghetto tough on the weekends, but had to become civilized at school. Talk about a hard thing to do!
The school administrators will end up getting fired if they're "too tough".
Unfortunately.
And those parental units who fail to discipline their offspring shouldn’t even be allowed to breed at all.
Exactly.
“ My sister taught at an exclusive magnet school in Baltimore. The kids boarded at the school Sunday night to Thursday night and went home on Sat & Sun. The toughest problem they had was the kids needed to be ghetto tough on the weekends, but had to become civilized at school”
Is this magnet school a public school? This is exactly what Newt Gingrich suggested several decades ago. He was lambasted for it. It sounds like there is a chance for the kids who are in this school.
Two generations of some groups have been raised to believe that every problem they have is “somebody else’s fault.” That is no way to raise responsible, productive adults.
This is the consequence for taking God out of the schools.
Well, kids can learn.
An elementary school teacher I know has seen this first hand. A child acts out and throws a tantrum, and the whole school is affected. The school admin stands around wringing their hands, pleading with the child to calm down. The child knows they can’t touch him/her so why calm down? It’s a form of power. These are 5-6 year olds exercising power and authority over a whole bunch of adults. The likely “punishment” is that the child gets sent to the behavior specialist who provides toys and candy, providing the incentive to do it again tomorrow.
I retired after 25 years from an Illinois inner-city school that is currently referred to as an “alternative school”.
It is what was called a Reform School before that term became ‘too harsh’.
All of the observations so far in this thread are on target.
The situation that the “experts” have created in the public school system is going to take decades to correct after these same experts realize what they have done and decide, if they care to, to fix it.
I’m in favor of a “3 strikes and you’re out” policy. Kick the malcontent out, let his parents take responsibility for educating them. State legislators should pass enabling legislation to set clear guidelines on school discipline.
Are people REALLY in favor of permitting any educational bureaucrat, coach, and other related agents of the government to hit kids?
I suspect there are millions of parents who’d beat such abusers into a bloody pulp.
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