SOME GOOD EDUCATION NEWS, FOR A CHANGE – AT 11:31 A.M. ET:   It has finally occurred to educators that "zero tolerance" policies for school discipline aren't working and are often grievously unfair.  From Fox: 

So-called “zero tolerance” is out and grownup discretion is back in at schools around the country, after years of policies that punished children for everything from playing cops and robbers at recess to chewing a Pop-Tart into the shape of a gun.

Educators from New York to Los Angeles and at numerous districts in between are rethinking policies intended to render classroom justice blind, but which produced dozens of cases in which kids as young as kindergarten paid dearly for behavior that would have been addressed by a simple scolding in a different era.

“We need discretion in imposing punishment,” said Elizabeth Rose, longtime New York public high school teacher and author of the memoir “Yo Miz!: 1 teacher + 25 schools= 1 wacky year.”

“Zero-tolerance policies forbid persons in authority, like teachers and school administrators, from exercising discretion or changing punishments to fit the circumstances, she added. “Basically, you are taking the authority away from trained education professionals and the people who know their students best.”

Among the cases of educators imposing punishments that did not seem to fit the crime that made national headlines in recent years:

In 2013, a fifth-grader in Fawn Grove, Pa., was suspended for pretending to shoot an imaginary bow and arrow.

Also in 2013, a 6-year-old boy from Canon City, Colo., was accused of sexual harassment and suspended for kissing a girl on the hand.

In 2012, a 7-year-old boy in Anne Arundel County, Md., was suspended for gnawing his Pop-Tart into the shape of a gun.

“Zero tolerance policies expose the totalitarian ambitions of school administrators,” said Cevin Soling, director of the documentary “The War on Kids” and author of “The Student Resistance Handbook.”

Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner last month signed into law a comprehensive revision of disciplinary policies, banning fines and fees for transgressions in public schools. New York City’s Department of Education has also moved to curtail automatic school suspensions for minor violations.

COMMENT:   A move in the right direction.  Obviously, we have to be careful.  Removal of "zero tolerance" should turn into an assault on all discipline.  I am suspicious of changes in New York City, where the dream of the current mayoral administration is to return to the failed educational policies of the 1960s. 

We'll follow this.  I can't wait for the pushback from special-interest groups.

September 27, 2015