[colechristensen]

The question is: what do you do about children with discipline problems whose parents don't care?

By all accounts, there are many of these kids. A portion of them are special needs and they at least have a path for what people want to do with them, even if special education doesn't have all the resources they need... there's at least an answer to "what should we do?".

But what should we do with the rest?

[etempleton]

In the US it used to be more acceptable to put students in classes based on where they were academically and in terms of behavior. Truly disruptive kids were also usually suspended until eventually being expelled.

Neither approach is considered appropriate anymore. It was a central thesis of No Child Left Behind, which is/was nice in theory, but not in practice.

Now schools are data obsessed. Bad metrics like suspensions, expulsions, etc are avoided because suspensions are correlated to bad test scores and bad future outcomes for students. So schools now measure performance against that. The problem is obviously correlation vs causation, but if that is how you are graded as a principal that is what you are going to work towards to keep your job.

The reality is that if you want good schools you need to cut your losses with the worst behaving kids. Slow learners really aren’t much of an issue because they don’t disrupt other kids learning beyond maybe needing more teacher attention.

[hospadar]

> The reality is that if you want good schools you need to cut your losses with the worst behaving kids.

This kind of attitude is a wide-open door for racist and classist attitudes to penalize kids of color, kids from poor homes, kids with unsafe or unstable home situations. Suspending and expelling kids almost always makes things worse for those kids.

There are HUGE racial and gender disparities in the rates of suspension and expulsion[1].

Anecdotally, I know a lot of educators and child social workers who are strongly opposed to suspension & expulsion as a punishment or a "solution". None of them cite "metrics obsession" as their reason, but rather the fact that the kids who are getting kicked out of school need more support, not less.

Maybe it seems fine to kick [other people's] kids out of school "for the good of the many", but happens next? What if parents loose their job because they have to stay home for childcare? What if folks end up homeless because they can't pay the bills? What if those kids end up in prisons (that our taxes pay for)? Just from a financial perspective, school is an EXTREMELY cost-effective early intervention compared to prisons, inpatient mental health, welfare systems, etc. Well educated folks often end up making money and paying into tax systems rather than drawing from them.

[1] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/raceindicators/indicator_rda.as...

[hackinthebochs]

>There are HUGE racial and gender disparities in the rates of suspension and expulsion[1].

Because there are huge racial and gender disparities in problem behavior. The bleeding hearts don't seem to care about the kids that suffer in a classroom that is being constantly disrupted by these problem kids, many of those suffering being underprivileged minorities. Whatever the solution is to these kids that "need more support not less", the cost shouldn't be borne by the kids that come to school everyday wanting to learn. This idea that society must endlessly prostrate itself to the least privileged is a failed ideology.

[HDThoreaun]

There are huge racial and gender disparities in all sorts of things. More than half of black children are in single parent households compared to 20% of white children. You can't just look at racial outcomes and determine discrimination without asking whether priorities and choices are also different between the groups.

[gotoeleven]

Au contraire! I can and do look at racial outcomes and determine discrimination without asking whether priorities and choices are also different between the groups because I have good intentions in my heart and my race card is not yet maxed out!

[etempleton]

I don’t disagree with you. All of what you said can be true and not change that 1 or 2 kids in a class can derail it for the other 20.

So pragmatically, with limited resources, how should those resources be spent? On the 20 kids with a moderate to high chance of succeeding or on the 2 kids with a very low chance?

From a societal ROI perspective it is pretty obvious.

[red-iron-pine]

> The question is: what do you do about children with discipline problems whose parents don't care?

This is relevant point to the military thing. If you screw up at school, your military parents will be called -- and it may impact them directly. As in, Sgt. X, your kid keeps picking fights, and we're going to punish them, and you, for it.

Which means the parents care -- a lot.

[HDThoreaun]

It's a very important question. I don't have the answer. What I do know is that forcing underprivileged students to attend schools that cause them to fear for their safety or even life is inhumane. Charter schools are solving that in my district.

[dwater]

Based on your previous comment, the remaining 3/4 of students are all murderers, criminals, deviants, disabled, or with parents who aren’t concerned with their education; or some of those 3/4 of students are somewhere in the middle but had their educations diminished by the removal of the better behaved students.

[HDThoreaun]

Well no, most of them are in the wealthier areas and don't have to worry about the violence the poor schools experience. There certainly still are deserving students stuck in failing schools and I think that's a tragedy. I don't see why that means we should undo a program that has been helping though.

[chung8123]

You don't let them hold the classroom and the rest of the kids that want to learn hostage. Not every problem has a 100% solution.

[tomohawk]

Maybe find something more effective than public schools at turning them around. Their track record certainly indicates a different approach is needed.

Just because the kids happen to be in government run schools, that doesn't mean that an effective intervention into their lives can be performed there.

Schools should be about education, not solving all of society's ills. It is intolerable that one child who disrupts the education environment should be able to prevent so many others from learning. Take the child out of the situation so the others can learn and then figure out what's going on.

[parineum]

> But what should we do with the rest?

The answer to that question is _something_ but I think the real question is "who is 'we'?"

[colechristensen]

Children's public education is an _everybody_ problem. How these bulk problems are handled is something everybody should agree on instead of acting like it's somebody else's problem.

[black6]

The parents. Offloading the responsibility of raising children is a large part of the problem.

[chowells]

Absolutely 100% incorrect. If the parents aren't willing or able to raise their children, someone has to. "Throw them away" is not a moral, ethical, or utilitarian answer.

[9530jh9054ven]

Why isn't it an answer?

At least from a purely utilitarian point of view, cost of educating and raising a child is exorbitant (teachers, food, clothing, shelter, etc) compared to euthanizing them (1 to 5 bullets, executioner pay, and burial costs). Benefits are going to be somewhat iffy; yes they could turn out okay but it's just as likely they could turn into criminal offenders that will chew up resources of the criminal justice system which is quite a lot more expensive.

I will emphasize that this is strictly from a utilitarian point of view. I make no comments on the moral, ethical, and legal issues.

[HDThoreaun]

I think you missed the "imprison them for 2 decades" part of euthanizing them in your consideration. It's fun to just make up how you think things should ideally work, but we're bounded by how things actually work.