Seeing the Toll, Schools Revise Zero Tolerance | Hacker News Reader

Seeing the Toll, Schools Revise Zero Tolerance

nytimes.com

83 points001sky102 comments

As a lawyer who has represented school children in Broward and Miami-Dade disciplinary and IEP proceedings, I have been involved in some outrageous cases. For example in one IEP matter the school refused to purchase a deaf student a ~$50 reading program violating her Constitutional right to free and appropriate education, only after retaining a lawyer did the school comply.

Maybe of more interest to the HN crowd, I represented an exceptional (in the ESE definition) student, who had already been expelled for uploading a script to the school's computer network that shutdown the server on 10 minute intervals. Under the county code his conduct was labeled as hacking and subject to the same punishment as student's charged with hate crimes. The student actually volunteered his free time to work with the school's IT department, he brought the vulnerability to the attention of the IT department, and only did what he did after bringing it to the attention of the IT department and they failed to take action. After 6 months, the student was finally reinstated, only through a technicality that he too was being denied a free and appropriate education. In his case he was 17 in his Sr year, in an IB program where he normally split his time between high school and college classes and was on track to graduate high school with 2 years of college credit, but as a result of his expulsion he was placed in an alternative school where he could no longer take IB classes or his college classes so it was determined he was not receiving an appropriate education.

Personally I was detained in school by the secret service for counterfeiting when I was 14, I received no school related disciplinary action, and as a direct result I am a lawyer who gives back to children in similar circumstances - how many have lost a similar opportunity to learn from their mistakes and allow their mistakes to have a positive impact of their future?

I was suspended multiple times in middle school ("hacking" -- nothing had restricted permissions back in those days) and high school for being stupid and mouthing off to a teacher who wasn't going as fast as I wanted.

I took all of the math available at my local community college ("advanced" calculus, differential equations) in sophomore and junior years of highschool, took AP CS AB senior year, got a 5 on a number of AP exams (CS AB, Chemistry, ...), graduated HS with a 3.9 (of 4.0).

I am really lucky to have had a principal who was able to see past my immature behavior and strike the suspensions from my record for college applications.

As a result I was directly admitted into the CS program at the U of Washington (semi-uncommon), finished undergrad in 2⅓ years, and graduated cum laude with a ~3.85 (of 4.0).

Now I work at an amazing software company hacking on a really cool operating system. I can't imagine I would be in the same place making the same kind of $$$ if a zero-tolerance policy had applied at any point during my K-12 education.

You might be a lawyer but there is no "Constitutional right to free and appropriate education."

Public schools in states accepting federal monies are obligated to provide services to disabled students because of laws like EAHCA and IDEA, not the US Constitution.

there is no "Constitutional right to free and appropriate education."

There is in Florida:

http://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Constitution#A9

"Constitutional" need not refer exclusively to the US Constitution.

Likewise, just because a right is not enumerated in the Constitution does not mean it is not a constitutional right under the federal constitution.

If you're going to pursue that argument, you'll have to point to construction, gloss, precedent, stare decisis, etc.

You don't just get to make crap up.

Edit: The parallel comment here actually does note that unenumerated rights can and do exist:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6842667

Just for example, the right to an attorney in a criminal case...that is not enumerated in the Constitution but comes from case law, Gideon v. Wainwright (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gideon_v._Wainwright), interpreting the 14th Amendment. (Although a Constitutional Right there is additional case law that carves out certain criminal cases where an indigent would not be entitled to an attorney).

Or how about Brown v. Board, you can read the Constitution all day and not find a single thing about the Constitutionality of de jure racial segregation in schools, yet when you read the case law that interprets the 14th Amendment, you will find in Brown 9-0 the Justices held such laws are Unconsitutional and violate the 14th Amendment. Further, it was just a few years earlier SCOTUS held separate but equal did not violate the 14th Amendment. So put less stock into the plain reading of the Constitution and more into the interpretation, which historically has been subject to change.

You're demonstrating my point. Contruction is used to derive a right to representation under the equal protection doctrine of the 14th amendment. Similarly in Brown.

There's a huge amount of Constitutionality (US) which derives from the Commerce Clause: "Congress shall have the power ... To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes". That's 21 words with a tremendous impact.

Unless I misinterpreted your first comment, I made the opposite point. Someone stated there are Constitutional rights outside those enumerated in the Constitution, you asked for some support, specifically saying "you don't just get to make that crap up." So I gave 2 obvious specific examples of Constitutional Rights not enumerated in the Constitution.

As far as the Commerce Clause that is not a Right but a Power, but again it supports the same point...just because the Constitution does not enumerate a power to the Gov does not mean the Gov does not have that Constitutional Power. The Commerce Clause is a good example, maybe the most obvious is Marbury v. Madison where the SCOTUS gives itself the right to Judicial Review.

There's advocating a right out of thin air, and there's constructing a right out of existing doctrine: the Constitution, statute, court cases, "gloss" (prior court interpretation of all of the above).

See: legal construction:

http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Construction

Gloss is somewhat more ambiguously defined: http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/gloss

And I absolutely agree with you on Marbury v. Madison. That established the precedent of the Supreme Court to exercise judicial review and rule on constitutionality, which wasn't itself an enumerated power of the court:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison

However, neither Construction nor Marbury give the court sui generis powers -- at least not usually, nor without a great deal of discomfit. I seem to recall a case (Learned Hand? Oliver Wendell Holmes?) where some pretty broad leaps were made.

My understanding as not a lawyer, is that there exist constitutional rights that are not listed in the constitution such as the examples will_brown listed. Those examples have court cases now establishing that 'Yes indeed these are constitutional rights', however the cases did not make them constitutional rights.

You seem to be saying that the court cases are required for any right to exist if I follow what you are saying. And that I believe is false.

My apologies if I merely did not follow what you were saying.

Edit: I believe if I am misunderstanding you others might as well so clarification might not be a bad thing.

My understanding as not a lawyer, is that there exist constitutional rights that are not listed in the constitution

I've noted that in an amended edit to one of my ancestor posts above.

I'd still maintain that well-formed rights should be based on precedent and/or law and/or intent. Though situations such as education (equal protection, commerce, copyright?), abortion / right to life (two opposed "rights"), etc., push the boundaries more than a bit.

Can I contact you about another youth in a similarly bad situation? Your profile doesn't have your email ID...

> Contruction is used to derive a right to representation under the equal protection doctrine of the 14th amendment.

Well, no, Gideon found that the right to counsel found in the 6th Amendment was incorporated against the states by the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment, not the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th.

But, sure, its a bad example of a right not enumerated in the Constitution, since the right to counsel is a right expressly enumerated in the 6th Amendment (and not, there, expressly limited in applicability to federal cases, though that's the way it had always been applied), and the prohibition on deprivation of due process by the states is again expressly enumerated in the 14th Amendment.

> Well, no, Gideon found that the right...

I'll take your word for it. Jurisprudence isn't my metier.

Some of the Founding Fathers specifically opposed enacting a Bill Of Rights because lack of enumeration might be construed as not being a right, distracting from the main point that the government is not empowered to limit that which, tautologically, it is not empowered to limit. In http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa84.htm Alexander Hamilton contends that a BoR is pointless in that the Constitution strictly delineates the limits of governmental power, and anything not within those limits is by practical definition a Constitutional right insofar as the government has no delegated power to limit it.

So what you are saying is that the bill of rights itself lays out a recipe which tells polticians what to start regulating and limiting to get themselves more power to turn the US into a tyrrany. The excuse is that since it's in the constitution the government can regulate it, even though it it stated otherwise.

What I'm saying is that they Founding Fathers feared the BoR would be construed as being such a recipe when it plainly was not intended that way. Willful abuse of logical fallacies is common, needing only a pretext to build them on. The BoR was intended as an emphasis of what was not allowed, addressing key concerns; alas, the malicious point at it and contend that because it does not include every right to the point of encyclopedic completeness, anything not covered must not have been intended - which is obviously absurd, yet proves persuasive to the easily confused.

> Likewise, just because a right is not enumerated in the Constitution does not mean it is not a constitutional right under the federal constitution.

Or, to put it in the words of the Constitution itself, "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

The idea that enumeration of rights would serve as limitations on fundamental rights under the Constitution to those expressly enumerated was a concern with the whole idea of a Bill of Rights that the Ninth Amendment was adopted to resolve.

I tend to cringe whenever someone invokes the 9th amendment, because it's always used to justify "rights" that whoever is invoking it completely made up. All the 9th amendment says is that the Bill of Rights is a non-exhaustive enumeration. Invoking it is appropriate when someone says: "there is no right to X because it's not in the Constitution." However, it does not help you bootstrap a right that isn't found in the common law, case law, or somewhere else.

Any specific instances of 9th Amendment BSery you can think of?

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_Amendment_to_the_United_S....

I tend to take a pretty originalist stance on the 9th. All it means that what the founders would have understood to be the "rights of Englishmen" in 1789 are still the "rights of Americans." In turn, those rights were defined by case law, tradition, and long-standing practice.

Thanks. Yeah, there's the whole English Common Law thing as well.

I got to see one of the exemplifications (as they're called) of the Magna Carta -- apparently a number of abbreviated copies were made, the original is lost. In particular it establishes rule of law (rather than arbitrary decree) and due process. Fairly awesome, in the true meaning of the word, to be in its presence.

That's because the meaning of "right" got subverted. The right used to mean "the government can not prohibit you from doing it" - right to free speech, right to bear arms, right to elect and be elected, right to own property, etc. But these "rights" mean something different entirely - when people say "right to minimal salary" - they do not mean the government should not prohibit you from earning minimal salary. They mean that the government should force your employer to pay you certain amount or fire you. When they say "right to education" they do not mean government can not prevent you from studying. They mean the government should take money from other people and pay for your education (that if they do not support enslaving the educators so that their work for free). When they say "right to housing", they do not mean the government should not remove you from your own house - they mean the government should take houses from other people or take money from other people and build houses using this money and then let you live there. Etc., etc.

I am giving you the benefit of the doubt, though between creating a throwaway for the purposes this comment, the aptly selected name and failure to cite anything of value I am likely wasting time.

Children and Parents have a 14th Amendment (Constitutional) right to Due Process and Equal Protection vis-a-vis Free and Appropriate Education.

Case Law:

"Children of this nation are entitled to a free, appropriate education." Forest Grove School District v. T. A. (http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/cert/08-305)

Legal Article:

"The due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment protect the educational rights of children with disabilities. State law cannot override this constitutional protection." -The Legislative and Litigation History of Special Education (http://wwfinductionmodules-resources.wiki.educ.msu.edu/file/...)

It should be noted that special education is not limited to children with disabilities but includes exception students as well. It should also be noted that not a single State does not take Federal money for children with disabilities.

I am still at loss on how Due Process means people should get educational services for free. I understand why one may want to give these services for free, but I fail to see how it follows from Due Process. I guess that's why I am not a lawyer.

The due process and equal protection clauses don't mean that "people should get educational services for free". It does mean, however, that if the State generally provides these services for free (and, a fortiori, if it, as many states do, adopts a right to such services as a State Constitutional guarantee), it cannot arbitrarily discriminate in who gets such services.

(There are also federal statutory requirements that come into play if, as I believe every state does, states accept federal education funding.)

Thank you for the work you do.

Thank you for helping rational behavior continue.

It's not all bad everywhere though. When he was in elementary school, we were asked to come in and pick our son up one day. Apparently he claimed that he was going to "blow up the building and kill everyone." The principal understood that as a 7 year-old he was probably kidding, but had to make a point that the behavior was unacceptable so he had to leave for the rest of the day. No police being called, no lockdown, no suspension. Just go home and talk to your parents and come back the next day.

(And a bit later, I realized the reason the phrase sounded so familiar is because he heard it in a movie ("Deck the Halls") we had watched a week earlier.)

On the other hand, when a bomb threat was found in the High School in the same district, the entire school district was locked down, kids in the HS evacuated, bomb disposal teams called in and the kid responsible tossed in jail for making threats of terrorism.

Point being is that some school districts do take care to have a measured response to these things.

"Zero tolerance", by normal princicples of interpretation of English, implies "no exceptions to the rules". But that was never what it has meant in practice. The practical meaning, which has caused all the problems, is "stupidly over-broad rules, ignoring obvious relevant distinctions that should have been incorporated into the rules".

If the rule for example is "no drugs", and the "zero tolerance" mantra promotes fearfully over-broad interpretation, then you have students being suspended or expelled or arrested or whatever for having an acetaminophen from a parent or nurse, for a headache. If that's not the intent, the rule needs some intelligent thought at the writing stage - then you could still have "zero tolerance" meaning "no exceptions", yet avoid the outcomes which defy common sense and fairness.

The fact that all this has taken years to penetrate the minds of school officials makes me wonder whether we still have a lot of lead poisoning, or some flaw in the way people are selected or trained for these positions, or something else is badly wrong with the education system.

I disagree; the idea that we can write a complete rule set for humans is something that has tempted humans for a long time, but there's no evidence we can pull it off. How does your rule set handle "Student A sneaks some aspirin into Student B's backpack"? A strict reading says that Student B has some aspirin. Obviously that is not what was meant, but we can't afford to specify all the "obviously"s, and it's probably just plain impossible.

We don't have to have perfect rules, we just have to go from "crazy over-inclusive and treat all violations alike" to "reasonably targeted and allow for severity of the violation".

The basic concept of zero tolerance would handle this fine.

B is a victim. A is a perpetrator. The type of drug sets the punishment. Drugs would normally mean recreational drugs. Aspirin is not recreational, so A doesn't need punishment for carrying this drug. But medical drugs, even aspirin, need cautious use and A should be told about the risks of handing out medication to other people, and about the stupidity of sneaking stuff into other people's bags.

The zero tolerance policy has handled the situation appropriately. A not-zero-tolerance policy would have said "Bah, we've got better things to worry about than that" and not done anything to A.

Unfortunately, what zero tolerance means in most implementations is that B gets no opportunity to explain that they're a victim, and thus B is expelled from that school. And if A is caught they're also expelled.

This is (arguably) the difference between civil law and common law systems — the former seeking to codify correct rules in advance, the latter to adapt rules correctly to new circumstances.

Which is one of the advantages to a jury trial in criminal proceedings, so that a defendant's peers can evaluate the circumstances surrounding the alleged crime. Traditionally judges in the USA have considerable leeway in sentencing as well, though mandatory minimums and "three strikes" laws have eroded that.

In schools, "zero tolerance" rules take away the leeway of administrators to make punishment proportional and humane. Going down the road of making better rules that can be perfectly enforced is exactly the wrong direction.

My personal experience is no exceptions to the rules means massive petty corruption. He's a mostly good white kid; don't look at the contents of his "cigarette" too closely. I'm not going to look in your backpack because I don't particularly want to have to have you arrested, but god help you if I ever have to talk to you again about smelling beer on your breath...

This is usually the hidden story behind draconian enforcement. The kid didn't get busted for having a tablet of tylenol, she got busted using tylenol as a weapon for disrespecting a teacher, being the wrong race (not necessarily black, in some schools white is the wrong race), etc. The real purpose is if everyone is inherently a criminal all the time, then everyone can be punished as much as any tin pot dictator desires at any time. That's the true purpose of the rule. Or the true educational lesson for the kids.

Of course it's hard to tell if allowing arbitrary exceptions also allows the same kind of problem. "I'll give you a warning because [you're white and] you're normally a good kid and one mistake shouldn't ruin your education"

Yeah. I landed on the privileged end of this. I think my white privilege saved my ass in highschool.

Being the sort of "exceptional" kid that people like @will_brown talks about helping saved my ass on numerous occasions. In the post-Columbine crackdowns in schools, I use to come and leave highschool as I pleased. The administration was terrified of doing anything to 'gifted' kids because a few years earlier the parents of a gifted kid got a lawyer and apparently gave them quite a scare. I probably spend less than 25% of my senior year actually in the classes I was suppose to be in, spending the rest of the time either playing quake under the pretense of "gifted seminar", or knocking around town under the pretense of taking college classes. Had I been a 'regular' kid, I would have surely been expelled.

Getting declared "gifted" can give you massive amounts of privilege.

> Of course it's hard to tell if allowing arbitrary exceptions also allows the same kind of problem.

As illustrated above, there are always arbitrary exceptions, because the people can informally let kids off the hook. The problem is that the punishments are so high. Why can't zero tolerance use less drastic punishments?

"Why can't zero tolerance use less drastic punishments?"

You seem not to have read my post. The reason it exists is to allow the arbitrary destruction of kids lives, preferentially as a weapon against minorities, undesirables, the poor, often all of the above. You're treating the primary purpose of that feature as if its a bug. Like asking why the "rm" command takes the drastic effect of deleting files.

For example, one reason why it might exist is so if a teacher gets called a bitch, the cops would laugh at a teacher who tried to report that as assault, but if the teacher can label a girl as a drug dealer and get her expelled and prevent her from graduating or getting on the middle class treadmill in general, because of the girl's monthly cycle and some advil in her purse, well, we'll see who's the dominant primate and who gets the last laugh in that argument. Its NOT a bug its an intentionally inhumane feature, correctly implemented.

Its possible to do a really efficient and effective job of being evil. I don't really know how to rephrase it more clearly? Its like the anti-google motto or something?

I agree. The general mechanism is to push "control" of the situation and the punishment outside of the actual agents who are enacting punishment: under "zero-tolerance", it is no longer the arbitrary agency of the teachers and administration, but laws that "force" them to take these actions.

In situations where there is no "zero tolerance", there are still arbitrary and gross executions of power, but the agency behind this power can at least be (more) clearly traced to the actors behind it.

In many ways, teachers are people who never grew up past high school. They can't wait to go back and do it all again, but as the ultimate popular kid.

> You seem not to have read my post. The reason it exists is to allow the arbitrary destruction of kids lives, preferentially as a weapon against minorities, undesirables, the poor, often all of the above. You're treating the primary purpose of that feature as if its a bug.

I didn't respond to your post. But you are wrong about the reason "it" exists. The school administrators that create the zero tolerance policies are usually not the same people that are on the ground enforcing the policies. It might be used as a weapon by the teachers on the ground, but they aren't the ones creating the policies.

Once when I was riding passenger with a friend, a cop pulled him over and told him that he was getting a ticket as part of their new "zero tolerance" policy: anyone caught exceeding the posted limit by more than 10 mph was going to be ticketed. I sometimes wonder if cops say stupid things just to identify the smart asses out there (I kept my mouth shut).

Why is that a stupid thing to say?

Before the zero tolerance policy cops had discretion whether to ticket or not. After the policy they must issue a ticket to anyone going X over the limit.

Zero tolerance would be 65.0001 in a 65 zone means ticket, but the humorous psuedo-zero tolerance is +10 so 74.9999, although nearly 15% out of tolerance, is OK

Throw on some error bars to your speedometer and whatever it is the cop is using to track your speed (not a radar gun unless they are state police, in some states), and 10mph over is probably reasonably close to the lowest amount they can nail people for without significant false positives.

The philosophical point of "zero tolerance" is error bars and "reasonable" don't exist.

Consider a draconian zero-tolerance drug policy in an office place, where they can demand a piss test at will.

Does "zero tolerance" imply that they will disregard all standard laboratory procedures, disregard the margin of error on the tests, and fire you even if the lab tech points out that the test technically returned a negative since the result was below the margin of error? No, "zero tolerance" isn't, literally interpreted, a statement about how the test will be executed. It is a statement about what happens after the test returns a positive.

Of course in practice "zero tolerance" means "we are going to do whatever the hell we want, and then wash our hands of responsibility". That is how "zero tolerance for guns" can turn into "nail this kid to the wall for eating a poptart".

Because it's a "zero tolerance" after "10 mph tolerance" policy.

Yes. Again, why is that stupid?

Before the policy cops would have had discretion for people travelling at any speed. After the zero tolerance policy they now have zero tolerance for people travelling over 10 mph over the limit.

You're sort of right. If he'd said "we have zero tolerance for anyone going over 10 mph," it certainly wouldn't have been as funny. Instead, he proclaimed proudly that "we have a zero tolerance policy" and then explained it only applied to people going 10+ mph over the limit in the next sentence.

There's a difference between using the phrase "zero tolerance" to describe what happens in a certain situation and using the phrase "zero tolerance" to describe your policy when it has tolerance built into it.

(I un-downvoted your first post)

So now the limit is effectively 10mph faster than what is actually posted.

No, the limit is what is actually posted. If you drive between what is posted and what is posted + ten you might get a ticket - it's up to the cop.

If you drive over what is posted + ten you will get a ticket. In the past it was up to the cop.

New policy: All crime is now illegal.

> Because it's a "zero tolerance" after "10 mph tolerance" policy.

And....

The US has a zero tolerance alcohol policy over 0.08 after a 0.08 tolerance policy.

If that's your entire point its not a very compelling one.

And is that policy billed as a "zero tolerance for drinking and driving policy" or a "zero tolerance for drunk driving" policy?

There is a law against drunk driving that mentions a 0.08 threshold. There is a law against speeding that doesn't mention 10mph leeway.

The problem with the education system is similar to that of a corporation, or politics. Nobody who sees the need for changes has the authority to make those changes, and those in authority do the bare minimum needed to keep their jobs.

I was expelled or "asked to leave" from several high schools (in Broward County) when I was growing up about 12 years ago. Ironically, it was never for drugs or misbehavior, but instead for being too smart for my own good. The offenses were always minor: a "dangerous" amount of "knowledge of school computer systems". Pushing a chair across the room "in a violent manner" (fast enough to make it clang into the wall). Strange electronics diagrams that they could not decipher (an FM transmitter project kit from RadioShack). Having a website with links to VisualBasic AOL proggies and punters that "could be slowing down the Mac network".

What it took me years to figure out was that nobody wanted to deal with a special case. Nobody wanted to take the time to help you or understand you. They have thousands of kids to deal with. They're happy as long as everyone is towing the line and they'd much rather get rid of you (or pass you) than educate you. And I can sum up the motivation in one sentence:

There is zero incentive for educators to help troubled kids.

"There is zero incentive for educators to help troubled kids."

Brevity is overrated; none the less strike out "troubled".

Not so fast. There are incentives for teachers to help talented, excelling individuals who have no problems. It makes the teacher and the school look good, especially for local and national government programs that reward teachers/schools with good results. You could say this is much more relevant in universities where millions of dollars may hinge on the ability of a student to develop something the school can shop around.

Actually, there is one incentive for teachers to help troubled kids: High school and college sports. The sports brings in the money, and so they need to make sure the kids don't completely fail out so they can keep bringing in the dough. Other than that, though...

> There are incentives for teachers to help talented, excelling individuals who have no problems. It makes the teacher and the school look good, especially for local and national government programs that reward teachers/schools with good results.

The incentives are actually reversed in the era of NCLB, where the most important measure isn't how good the best results are, but what proportion aren't meeting the minimum standards for their grade level. This provides incentives to: 1) Improve the performance of the worst performing students if it is cheap to do, 2) Get the worst performing students out of the system if it is not cheap to improve their performance, 3) Avoid accelerated promotion of students that are performing at a higher grade level and not challenged, so as to make the percentages look better.

> Actually, there is one incentive for teachers to help troubled kids: High school and college sports. The sports brings in the money, and so they need to make sure the kids don't completely fail out so they can keep bringing in the dough.

As I understand it, for the most part, high school and college sports bring in money (if at all) for the sports program, not the school at large.

> Nobody wanted to take the time to help you or understand you

On behalf of several ex-teacher friends, a minor correction -- there are teachers who care, and go out of their way to help the special cases; but the system treats them just as badly as it treats the special kids themselves, so they tend not to stay in that career for very long.

But then that's even worse.

Nice recent interview on NPR with their sports reporter Mike Pesca and a former teacher of his:

"Remembering when a teacher had his back"

http://www.npr.org/2013/11/24/246984890/remembering-when-a-t...

"I always thought — I never questioned it — I always thought you had my back," Pesca tells Sheehan.

"Back then, I would say that school was enjoyment for you, and maybe not necessarily the classes," Sheehan recalls, laughing. "For a lot of teachers you were problematic, so part of my job was really to keep you from being thrown out of that school. That passion is kind of what drove you in school."

It was the same passion that drove Pesca to push the boundaries, he says. Sheehan remembers a problem-solving program in nearby Katonah, in which gifted students were given a problem to solve and then present in a skit. Pesca's skit: "The Top 10 Things We Hate About Katonah" — a sort of David Letterman-esque spoof.

"The guy running that program practically wanted to have you arrested," Sheehan says. "That night, I did have your back."

Yes I wondered as a dyslexic how I woudl have fared in today's schools. I was in the small group who had reading ages well above the norm who where allowed to read by our selves in a corner.

These days certainly in the UK all the effort is put into the borderline kids to get them from a D to a C as the number of C GCSE's is a key metric

People may be interested in the UK documentaries "Educating Essex" and Educating Yorkshire".

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/educating-essex/4od

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/educating-yorkshire/4od

I was fortunate in that, when I was recognized as a special case in elementary school (in Broward County), my parents were well-enough known at the school that I was able to get special arrangements. It was also 1988 and thus before public education administration really started going south. I also was not the type to push rules, which no doubt made things easier as well.

Still, as an "exception" I got lumped into the ESE bucket with every other kid, regardless of reason, that did not fit the mainstream path.

s/troubled//

> If that's not the intent

The cynic in me says that it is the intent. Public schools needed a blunt instrument to simply beat the notion of blind obedience to authority into thick adolescent skulls, and they got it through zero tolerance policies. Now it seems that it's unsustainable, so they'll need another way to subjugate the future generations.

Again, just my cynical side... being the product of zero tolerance policies, myself.

> Public schools needed a blunt instrument to simply beat the notion of blind obedience to authority into thick adolescent skulls, and they got it through zero tolerance policies.

Punishing teenagers for violating drug laws or damaging property is "beating the notion of blind obedience to authority into thick adolescent skulls"??? What do you think is going to happen to them when they turn 18?

> What do you think is going to happen to them when they turn 18?

This is why we have jails.

My high school administrators approached underage drinking like a secret police force.

There were skilled interrogators, effective emotional manipulation, good-cop-bad-cop routines, physical intimidation, etc. There was an administrative employee built like a tank who would be sent to (very publicly) collect suspects from their classrooms for interrogation.

They made plea bargains (which they sometimes didn't honor) for informing on others.

They performed social engineering attacks to increase their signals intelligence capabilities - give us a look at your Facebook account (or just hand over your password), identify these (pseudonymous) Tumblr URLs, etc. and we won't destroy your future by calling your college and having your admission rescinded.

They made deals and adjusted punishments based on whether or not you would identify photographs.

When there were reports of drinking on one of the international class trips (to a country with a low drinking age) they rounded up and interrogated everyone from all of the foreign trips. A good portion of the senior class confessed and was suspended. Because some people ordered wine with dinner in France.

If a party was busted by the village police, they'd brethalyze and ticket every single person, then notify the school - which would kick them out of their current extracurricular activity for the remainder of the season/play.

I turned 18 and went to college. We were taught about responsible drinking - extensive lessons on consent, standard drink sizing, alcohol poisoning, etc. And we were told that administration and the university police are concerned only with safety and noise. RAs know about parties in the dorms (in fact, they have to be registered and neighbors are given a chance to veto if they have a test the next day or something) and do not care. The university police shut down apartment parties for noise complaints but make no inquiries as to the ages or intoxication of the partygoers.

So, to answer your rhetorical question: that. That is going to happen to them when they turn 18. Authority will stop caring about bullshit.

Wow that sounds horrible. Where did you go to school at?

If you just shut up and said nothing, was there anything they could do to you (assuming there isn't photographic/video evidence)?

The local Catholic High School started a program every week they randomly drug/alcohol test a portion of the student population. I was really surprised when no one took a look at the false positive rate. Using reasonable assumptions on high school drug abuse rate along with the false positive rate used for similar tests, I discovered that significantly more people who test positive will have never used the drug.

Suburban upper-middle-class district in the Midwest.

Most everyone went into the office planning on shutting up and saying nothing; only a few actually managed to do that. But no, absent other evidence, they only punished those who confessed.

When they turn 18 they will be allowed to choose where they spend their time and what they do with it and who they spend it with, which is likely to reduce both the need to self-medicate and the chance of getting caught doing so.

"God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board." — Mark Twain

Good.

When I was in highschool, I consistently found security holes in our network. I even got naughty and abused some of them for pranks, and for installing Quake on every computer on the network (lunchtimes became far more interesting, had at least 40-50 people in the LAN!).

I was caught multiple times (and turned myself in a few, with bug reports). My IT coordinator wanted me hung, drawn and quartered, but my vice principle made him give me admin access to our secondary servers running Suse Linux. If he'd followed the rules to the letter, I would've been expelled, "zero-tolerance" could have seen something even worse. I learned my lesson(s), and it started a lifelong fascination with Linux, and the schools network was more secure for it. A better outcome, I think.

it started a lifelong fascination with Linux

indeed, a far worse punishment... ;)

Considering that that year I completely hosed my computer at least 5 times trying to get Slax running off a HDD in dual boot (back in 2005), and now I tinker with it daily... Yeah you'd be right ;)

I hereby sentence you to virginity!

It's funny, you know, because the most attentive lovers I know of are all programmers.

Probably the practice at being patient while debugging cranky and seemingly whimsical systems.

I treat my lover the way I treat my mission critical config files: carefully and with patience?

When in doubt, use brute force? Oh, no, that's only with UNIX.

fsck, finger, mount, grep.

It's not all fun an games when your issue requiring attention is dismissed with a WorksForMe...

I'd bet a dollar that your principal read 'How to Win Friends and Influence People' --- your story would fit perfectly with the many examples of positive discipline in the book.

I have a theory about zero tolerance or other types of blanket policies such as mandatory minimum sentencing. They are a way for the management class to divest liability or responsibility for decisions. If there is no room for discretion, there is no real decision to make, and no way to be wrong.

You see this sort of thing in large organizations of all types but government is the one everyone has experience with.

I don't really know that that's a "theory". That's just how you scale, isn't it? "Common sense" works for a company of 25 people when the founder is directly involved with hiring and training of every person. It fails though when you employ 50,000 and the CEO turns over four times in a decade. Putting in "policies" and requiring adherence to these policies is a way to keep the train moving even when the CEO is fired/arrested/etc. "Just follow the SOP and you'll be fine."

> They are a way for the management class to divest liability or responsibility for decisions

I'd also say they are a way for bureaucrats to blame the victim. Someone's complaining that they were attacked? Kick them out of school for being in a fight. That will shut up the people who want to fix things.

The goals of Zero-Tolerance policies have nothing to do with student outcomes and everything to do with legal outcomes. If you expel Johnny, but only suspend Jane for the same infraction; Johnny's parents are going to sue. Conversely if if you don't expel Johnny for drawing that picture of a gun, you'll be sued if he ever becomes violent.

The most insidious thing about Zero-Tolerance is how it sharply outlines the differences for 'connected' students. A direct contradiction of it's goals. Before policies like these, a school board member's kid might get a preferential slap on the wrist in lieu of expulsion. Now that lower punishment isn't an option, anything they do wrong is invisible entirely.

One under-discussed problem with "zero tolerance" is the application of the (misguided) principle to that which doesn't even constitute a relevant offense. Suspending a kid for pointing a finger and saying "bang!" under "zero tolerance weapons policies", or for having mundane analgesic for menstrual pain under "zero tolerance drug policies", or for wearing a religious-themed T-shirt under "zero tolerance hate speech policies", etc. is not equal reprimand for violations, it's arbitrary abuse born of sociopolitical bigotry doled out by people suffering a tenuous grasp on reality - demonstrating exactly why they should not be empowered as in loco parentis. Alas, most parents defer to "the severity of the charges" and alleged authority, rather than retorting "you're NUTS" and press child abuse charges.

Thank God. I suffered 7 out-of-school suspensions and numerous other punishments in 6th-8th grades in the US under these policies. In nearly every case, I was the victim in a clearly one-sided assault. I am not going to subject my daughter to the same environment.

Even if zero-tolerance were good in principle, we really need to consider the burden it places not only on the accused, but on the system. We barely have time and resources to prosecute and incarcerate law-breaking adults. And this sounds really banal, but the paperwork and bureaucracy for all those involved is a real pain in the ass. I was recently involved in a drawn out legal process as a victim...and even though the only thing I had to do was show up and testify, it was such a pain in the ass to coordinate my schedule with the court's, who also had to schedule it around the other parties' schedule...which, when you're an adult, basically means missing work, appointments, etc., to wait for hours in the court halls. I imagine it's just as much a burden on the accused, even if they aren't incarcerated...and if the accused in this situation is already having a tenuous time attending classes and staying focused, well, going through the judicial system process -- and even being exonerated -- is not going to help things at all.

The legal system is slow...and that's a good thing. However, it means we need to be cognizant of that reality before readily throwing people (and children) into that grinder.

I'd love for there to be less "by the book" and more communication in general, not just in schools. It's insane how much corporate america relies on "it's in the company handbook" rather than just communicating with people.

I worked at a place where a male employee was caught spending literally hours a day on the Victoria's Secret website. Instead of talking to him about it they waited until the next year's handbook was issued with a new directive about computer use so his manager could say "it's not personal, it's in the handbook".

Special case treatment invites lawsuits by those who do not get special treatment. Lawsuits are bad (expensive) for public school districts already struggling to fund teaching programs. No special treatment, no lawsuits.

Zero tolerance doesn't eliminate special treatment, it actually increases it. If someone breaks a rule, and you know that if you notice it, they will be expelled, you turn a blind eye more often than if you know that more appropriate action will be taken.

While I whole heartedly agree with schools taking the approach of helping kids instead of simply handing them over to the cops to deal with, the problems are much deeper. We have allowed socio-economic and cultural factors go untreated for too long, thus placing more of burden on the school system with having to deal with these kids and their issues - most of which should not have anything to do with schools.

I firmly believe if these issues were treated at the root source, instead of burdening school districts, I bet the kids would have less issues in school and would be more successful academically. We just have to let teachers focus on what they do best - educate our children.

Sure, we have deep-rooted social problems, but right now we are reinforcing those problems via our school system. We will never solve those social problems if we are starting kids off in life with criminal records.

What about the students who aren't smoking weed and spraying graffiti? Why should they be grouped with students who need more than an education and fed a curriculum geared towards the lowest common denominators (students who aren't even prepared to function in a school environment)?

Arbitrary tolerance will fail for the same reason zero tolerance fails. Schools are being asked not just to educate but to parent. In many places they are falling short with the former so why do people believe they can do the latter?

School administrators need to be honest with themselves and with the people they answer to. If parents raise children who lack the basic skills required to function in civil society the burden can't and shouldn't fall on schools.

Great, so what do we do with them?

> Schools are being asked not just to educate but to parent.

I agree a hundred fold that schools are being asked to educate and parent. Latch-key kids do happen and are probably pretty common.

> If parents raise children who lack the basic skills required to function in civil society the burden can't and shouldn't fall on schools.

(emphasis mine)

Yeah, but it will. Now what?

Parents aren't going to step up. Or are they? How do they? With all that parents, both very rich and business-focused; and poor and very busy to make end's meet, that aren't able to properly care or don't want to care for their children, what do we do next? People aren't going to stop having kids for a LOT of reasons, and I don't think they should.

So, what's the next step. We can't just say "this sucks" and not provide some sort of next step. Maybe the first solution isn't sufficient, but what about the second? Third? Four hundred and thirty-second? An amalgamation of several? Unique per student per class?

It sucks, but we have to say more than "this is wrong" in these situations.

[edit: changed school per class to student per class]

> If parents raise children who lack the basic skills required to function in civil society the burden can't and shouldn't fall on schools.

It manifestly can and does, whether or not it should.

And if we build a society which demands, in practice, that even in two-parent families, both parents work outside of the home full-time to provide the necessities of life, we probably shouldn't be surprised that suboptimal parenting often occurs.

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