My wife had one kid scream for 10 minutes yesterday and another throw a chair. Another just sat there and didn't do a thing for 7 hours. The Little House/Christmas Story model hasn't been able to work for a long time.
Did she actually allow this kid to disrupt the entire class for 10 minutes? Isn't there a responsibility to all the other students that they should have a reasonable learning environment?
I remember being sent to the office for a lot less than that.
- Schools in nicer areas are sometimes in the middle of some dumbshit half-implemented (the other parts made admin uncomfortable) "discipline plan" that the superintendent got sold on at some damn district-paid drinking vacation away from the family... er, I mean, education conference, which may lead to insane crap like letting a kid scream in the classroom for ten minutes (sending them to the office might get the teacher in trouble for not following the plan). Half-implemented plainly-doomed-to-fail admin-driven plans for discipline, or for education approaches to any or all subject areas, are often a factor in stupid crap schools do.
Don't kids get expelled anymore? How the hell could you feel comfortable sending your kid to a school that is so full of violence? That's crazy.
If not, then your wife's experience doesn't say anything about how well the Little House/Christmas Story model works.
Indeed, I would go so far as to suspect that this is likely a failure of the "integrate kids no matter what, and force them to learn at the exact same pace, no matter what" style of schooling that has become so ubiquitous in modern society.