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As regular readers know, I’ve been reporting and commenting, for many years, on bizarre and racialist efforts to prevent schools from imposing discipline on the most disruptive and criminal students.  This was a signature policy of the Obamites, often running under the banner of “restorative justice.”  It relied on a surface reading of statistics: Black kids are suspended far more often than white kids.  Of course, white kids are suspended far more often than Asian kids, and males are suspended far more often than females, but Obamites didn’t bother to look into why Black kids are suspended more often.  The mere fact they were—and are—told them schools are irredeemably racist–facts didn’t matter–and the only remedy was to make it impossible for Black, and other favored minority victims groups of, kids to be disciplined or suspended.

credit: wordcrunch.com

The results, as one might imagine, have been horrific. Rampant criminality, students and teachers assaulted and seriously injured, complete disruption of learning opportunity, inmates running the asylum.  The Parkland killer was a Hispanic who benefited from just such a program, in fact, a restorative justice program specifically lauded by the Obamites. Because of that program, serious mental health issues and crimes that would have sent a white kid into the criminal justice system were ignored, and many died.

In August of 2016 I wrote St. Paul Schools Change Course: Establish Safe Environments—Naaaah!  An excerpt:

Consider the logic of “senior Saffiyah Alaziz.” By not arresting violent criminal juveniles, students are somehow protected? Well, certainly juvenile criminals will be protected from the consequences of their crimes, and if they’re not identified or arrested, the number of violent criminals in the “school-to-prison pipeline will surely be dramatically reduced. Social Justice cracktivists like Alaziz and Silva would surely consider that a good in and of itself. What, however, of their victims?

From where will come their protection?

Unless we are willing to concede that schools should be inherently unsafe cesspools of crime and violence, where no student can be certain they won’t be beaten, robbed, raped, or killed at any minute, and where the very idea of order and quiet in classrooms conducive to instruction and learning is illegitimate, we must recognize that Alaziz and his philosophical fellow travelers are not only wrong, but dangerous

We reduce the ‘school-to-prison pipeline’ by ensuring that juvenile criminals understand that their crimes will be detected and that punishment will be swift and harsh. We reduce it by making schools safe, and removing drug-dealing, violent criminals. This, however, takes time and effort, and adult spine stiff enough to point out that it is not race that is being punished, but criminal behavior. Apparently such spines are in short supply in St. Paul…

In that article, I also quoted the invaluable Katherine Kersten, who has been doing excellent reporting and analysis of this story line for many years:

credit: betterparenting.com

Who’s going to “deal with” these infractions, if not police? The last time a teacher tried to stop a fight at Central High, he ended up in the hospital with a traumatic brain injury.

If anarchy in St. Paul schools is to end, kids’ behavior must change. But the folks whom the Pioneer Press calls ‘advocates’ of ‘a gentler, more lenient approach to law enforcement in the city’s high schools’ reject that notion.  It’s cops’ behavior that must change, they say:

‘Chauntyll Allen, an education assistant and community organizer, said SROs aren’t properly trained to work with students. The officers get the same fundamental ‘Beyond Diversity’ training other employees get, but Allen said they need additional training in de-escalation, cultural relevance and dealing with children with traumatic life histories.

In April of 2016 I wrote: Racism In The Public Schools: Dead Or Alive?  I quoted Kersten again:

The most dangerous places in St. Paul, Minnesota, these days may not be the city’s tough East Side or Frogtown neighborhoods, but its public schools.

At Como Park and Humboldt high schools, police have been called to quell riots involving dozens of students. At Central High School, a teacher was body-slammed by a student and hospitalized with a traumatic brain injury. ‘Classroom invasions’ by students settling private scores have become a fact of life.

At elementary schools, meanwhile, out-of-control kids overturn chairs and attack their classmates, as teachers stand by helplessly. A teacher caught in a fistfight between two fifth-grade girls was knocked to the ground with a concussion.

Public schools should be among our communities’ safest places. Why do St. Paul’s schools increasingly resemble Lord of the Flies?

The transformation dates from 2011, when superintendent Valeria Silva launched her ‘Strong Schools, Strong Communities’ initiative. The plan sought to engineer a dramatic reduction in the suspension rate for black students, who here, as nationally, are far more likely to be suspended than white students.

credit: regroup.com

The Media and Socialists—I know: one-in-the-same—would have us forget that prisons are not only for punishing and reforming criminals.The reform part particularly tends to be ineffective. They would also have us forget that the people in state and federal prisons are felons, who usually have committed many, many crimes, leaving a bloody trial of innocent victims in their wake, before being sentenced to any significant term in prison.  The most important value of prisons is they remove criminals from society, and when they’re behind bars, they’re not preying on honest Americans.

The same principles apply in schools, and the problems are of the educrat’s and politcian’s own making.  The “accountability” movement has forced schools to keep kids in school at all costs, lest any child be “left behind.”  This means no “child” can fail.  Oh, many fail, and fail badly, but schools are forced to just pass them along, keeping them in classes as they, at best, do nothing at all, or as is usually the case, are disruptive, keeping other kids from full access to education.  And in schools particularly into “restorative justice,” schools resemble second rate dystopian novels, where crime is rampant, gangs stake out turf, drugs are dealt, kids have sex in the hallways and bathrooms, little or no learning occurs, and adults pander to juvenile criminals who in years past would have been expelled long before they could destroy the educational opportunity of others.

For good teachers in such places, school isn’t a matter of teaching, but mere survival.

Fortunately, the Trump Administration has been rolling back this kind of insanity.  Not enough, and not fast enough, but there is progress, as Foxbaltimore.com reports:

School districts across the country now have more control over how they discipline students, which could lead to more transparency concerning school safety.

Over the past year, Project Baltimore has heard from students, parents and teachers with stunning accounts of what’s happening inside our schools. We’ve heard time and time again that violence is out of control and schools are sweeping it under the rug to appear safer on paper. But that could soon change.

‘Now that that’s off the table, school districts can finally listen to parents and can change their policies,’ says Max Eden from the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. He says, for years, schools were motivated to downplay violence and avoid documenting it.

Eden points to federal guidelines from 2014 when, then Secretary of Education Arne Duncan came to Baltimore to promote a new national initiative called the Promise Program. Data showed minority students were by far more likely to be suspended or expelled. Schools were put on notice to cut suspensions and other forms of discipline or risk losing federal funding. The move was celebrated as school discipline data quickly improved.

Eden is referring to a Obama Administration letters of “guidance,”that were very thinly veiled threats of lawsuits and withholding of federal funds if schools didn’t stop disciplining their most disruptive and criminal students, most of who were Black.  Who coulda thunk this:

But Eden says the guidance had unintended consequences and students were simply not disciplined, leading to the classroom chaos Project Baltimore has spent the last year documenting. But now, that 2014 guidance has been rescinded by the Department of Education, under Secretary Betsy DeVos, putting the power back in the hands of local school districts.

‘Now, if they say no, we want to discipline in these ways and hold these offenses accountable and make sure that we report everything to a T, they don’t have anything to fear from federal government when they do that anymore,’ says Eden.

It’s a start.  In Democrat controlled cities, where school officials still treat their teachers as 1950’s racists, there will be little or no improvement.  But in the rest of the country, it is at least possible.  The rest is up to local parents holding school board member’s feet to the fire of running competent schools rather than racist social experimentation laboratories.