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Zero tolerance = zero brains, part 2,356
An entirely nice female student, who has to travel though rough areas of Detroit, gets suspended from school for an entire year after she is found with a pocketknife that was a quarter inch longer than the school rules allowed.
I can't help but wonder if what we are seeing is "cracking down on the aggressive thugs in school might be difficult or dangerous, so let's crack down on the decent students."
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You can either have zero-tolerance and get idiotic results like this, or you can have administrators with discretion and get disparate impact discrimination suits. Turns out on average teenage boys behave worse than teenage girls, lousy students behave worse then good ones, and if we say anything comparing the average behavior of racial groups, then we jump from disparate impact to straight-up malign intent and the principal might as well be wearing a sheet and hood.
Oh, you can also have administrators with discretion and have utter chaos, if they choose not to enforce the rules on anyone. No expulsions, no suspensions, no nothin', just one big happy rainbow family with lots of big happy rainbow dysfunction and no discrimination lawsuits. The sense in which the result can be called education is rather attenuated, but at least we're not discriminating.
Suspension for 180 days (i.e. 1 school year) is pretty standard for weapons in school. In this case, it's a state law, and the local school officials have no latitude. I believe the state law sets the blade limit of 3 inches.
I discussed this with my wife who is ex-school board in CT. The student has a couple options besides the alternative HS. She can go to a private or parochial school, or she can bag HS altogether and take the courses she needs at a local community college. She can certainly get accepted by a good college without an HS diploma if she has the courses.
Decent students pose zero threat.
School thugs are scary.
Who is easier for a p*ssy school administrator to go after?