Recently in Schools Category

Kendrick Castillo - only days from graduation - acted fast inside of his British literature class at a suburban Denver school Tuesday afternoon. And he paid with his life.

When a gunman burst through the door at STEM School Highlands Ranch, barking at students to stay in place and not move, Castillo, 18, rushed the shooter. It was a quick-thinking move that fellow students said gave them a chance to bolt for safety or take cover under desks.

"Kendrick lunged at (the gunman), and he shot Kendrick, giving all of us enough time to get underneath our desks, to get ourselves safe, and to run across the room to escape," senior Nui Giasolli told NBC's Today on Wednesday morning. Other students helped Castillo tackle the shooter, classmates said.

Many people in America today are concerned about the effects on society of the sanctions imposed for misconduct over the whole range from petty offenses to mass murder.  One of the most widespread and misguided notions in the country is that we should deal with the problem simply by watering down the sanctions rather than taking measures that will actually reduce the number of instances of misconduct.

We often hear about the "school-to-prison pipeline," and the people expressing concern about this often advocate weak responses to serious offenses by students.  Max Eden writes in the City Journal that one recipient of this misguided leniency was the notorious school shooter in Parkland, Florida.

Each time we have one of these horrific mass shootings, many people shake their heads and ask, "What on earth could make somebody want to do something like this?"  In most cases, the perpetrator is dead and did not plan to survive the attack.  This time we have a living perpetrator, so perhaps we will learn more.

I suspect that a strong desire to be in the headlines is part of the motivation.  Too many young people place too much emphasis on being "famous" and have lost the distinction between being famous and being infamous.  There is even a television series titled, "Murder Made Me Famous."

In December 1941, President Roosevelt famously declared that the 7th was "a day that will live in infamy."  He didn't say "fame," and everyone knew the difference.  The perpetrators would go down in history, but as villains, and that was universally regarded as a bad outcome for them.

There has been a shooting at Aztec High School in northwestern New Mexico.  Moriah Balingit reports for the WaPo:

The San Juan County Sheriff's Office said the person believed to have opened fire at Aztec High, a school of about 1,000 students near the Colorado border, is also dead. No one else was injured, the sheriff's office said. The Navajo Nation Office of the President and Vice President, which oversees territory not far from the school, had previously released a statement saying 15 people were injured.

The FBI and New Mexico state police were investigating.

Once upon a time, when American education was run by people with sense, it was understood that learning to be a good citizen was part of education, along with academics and phys ed.  An environment with fair rules that are fairly administered and where breaking them has adverse consequences develops in children a healthy respect for the norms of behavior and for the rights of others.

Katherine Kersten describes in the City Journal the disastrous effect of St. Paul school giving control of school discipline to ideologues who believed that "disparate impact" in school discipline was the result of teachers' biases and that dramatically reducing standards of behavior and frequency of discipline was the solution.  In fact, it produced anarchy.

St. Paul's experience makes clear that discipline policies rooted in racial-equity ideology lead to disaster. This shouldn't be surprising, considering that the ideology's two major premises are seriously flawed. The first premise holds that disparities in school-discipline rates are a product of teachers' racial bias; the second maintains that teachers' unjustified and discriminatory targeting of black students gives rise to the school-to-prison pipeline.

Paul Sperry has this article in the New York Post:

New York public-school students caught stealing, doing drugs or even attacking someone can avoid suspension under new "progressive" discipline rules adopted this month.

Most likely, they will be sent to a talking circle instead, where they can discuss their feelings.

Convinced traditional discipline is racist because blacks are suspended at higher rates than whites, New York City's Department of Education has in all but the most serious and dangerous offenses replaced out-of-school suspensions with a touchy-feely alternative punishment called "restorative justice," which isn't really punishment at all. It's therapy.

"Every reasonable effort must be made to correct student behavior through...restorative practices," advises the city's new 32-page discipline code.

Except everywhere it's been tried, this softer approach has backfired.