Dave Huber at The College Fix argues that maybe we’ve gone a bit too soft on public school kids, and that, just maybe, police intervention is warranted:

Schools resort to police too often … for ‘routine’ discipline?

A recent article at Education News.org caught my attention: “Police: Schools Start Path to Criminal Justice System.”

For many teenagers across the country, a visit to the police station is replacing a visit to the principal’s office.

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, police have made about a quarter billion arrests in the last 20 years as tactics change to focus on a zero-tolerance policy toward small crimes. Almost one out of three Americans have a file in the FBI’s master criminal database.

These arrests are now starting at the school level. Parents and school officials, concerned by increased drug use and school shootings have caused a greater level of police presence on school grounds, allowing school administrators to now refer minor crimes to the police, turning from traditional school discipline methods of detention into a smaller version of an adult criminal-justice system.

Judith Browne Dianis, executive director of the Advancement Project, says that, for example, “Talking back to the teacher can now be called disorderly conduct, and a fight may end with assault and battery charges.”

After some twenty-five years in education, I’ve yet to see or hear of a student who talked back to a teacher charged (via the police) with disorderly conduct. The only way such should happen is if the talking back involves a refusal to leave the classroom, and/or explicit threats of violence towards the teacher or other students.

And, why shouldn’t someone who starts a fight (possibly) be charged with assault and battery? Especially if the victim of the assault is injured?

Welcome to the real world.

To be sure, we’ve all heard of the anecdotes of school officials going way too far in disciplinary matters, ridiculously so in some cases. Unfortunately, we’ll never be able to sort out the moronic school administrators from the sensible ones until such instances come to public attention.