Schools' zero tolerance policies fail students

The Orange County Register ^ | October 18, 2013 | David Whiting

[Fiji Hill]

With a 4-point grade average, a schedule stuffed with honors classes and a mission to Africa already behind her, Catelyn Meador doesn’t seem like the typical teenager who would get suspended for bringing a weapon to school.

Like hundreds of thousands of minors caught up in zero-tolerance policies since the craze began two decades ago, Catelyn is serving a sentence that, rather than teaching her something, only hurts her academic future.

Already, the 17-year-old has had to drop AP chemistry and was told last week that the make-up math work she did while on a 5-day suspension won’t count. Fortunately, the teacher reconsidered.

Still, Catelyn’s punishment bars her from attending school functions until mid-February. That means no homecoming dance, no football games, no father-daughter dance. But never underestimate the power of a forgotten pen knife.

[Hugin]

“Rather than increasing school safety,” the National Association of School Psychologists reports, “zero tolerance often leads to indiscriminate suspensions and expulsions for both serious and mild infractions.

Zero tolerance isn't about making schools safe, it's about making administrators safe from lawsuits. If they let her go, then suspend some young Trayvon who threatens students with a buck knife they will be called racist and sued.

[lightman]

The failed Soviet Gulag has found new life in US.

[Forgotten Amendments]

Check the comments below the article. America is dead.

[Chewbarkah]

“Catelyn is serving a sentence that, rather than teaching her something, only hurts her academic future.”

It should have taught her a lot.

[SampleMan]

Isn't it interesting that tolerance itself is a virtue to the Left, with just a few exceptions, where they are militantly intolerant.

17-year-old boy shouts obscenities at teacher, and that's OK, just a cultural tolerance issue. But a 5-year-old boy points a finger and says “bang, well now, that is grounds for expulsion.

[FlingWingFlyer]

Only a group of brain dead morons who brag all the time about their being the most “tolerant” creatures on the planet would come up with this moronic “zero tolerance” BS. “Zero tolerance” programs are the commies’ way of throwing common sense out the window.

[MeshugeMikey]

Amazing the lack of beheadings, stabbings and slashings they experienced back years and years ago when pen-knives and quill pens were “standard issue”

I never used a Pen Knife...on an old Quill Pen.....but my grandfather did..

we’d all be a lot poorer if Zero Tolerance had been the watchword..back then.

[MeshugeMikey]

the Founders.....USED...Pen Knives....

ah ...no ....I doubt the zero tolerance ninnies know that