No, Robert, first we observe the nonsense that takes place in government schools. Second, we avoid all government schools like we avoid plague and disease. Third, we find schools that have NO government involvement whatsoever and send our kids there so that they are not subjected to the nonsense. Fourth, our kids receive an education. Fifth, we did even deeper into our pockets (because the government schools get to keep our money no matter what they do) and support those schools. Sixth, hopefully, our kids learn to avoid the nonsense in government schools when they have their own kids. Repeat the process for each generation.

First, we look at the numbers, which are rather dramatic.

Second, we discuss causes and solutions.

Third, discussion gets heated and there are very sharp differences of opinion sprinkled with ad hominem.

Fourth, since consensus can’t be reached and fighting isn’t productive, no action is taken.

Fifth, we go back to work, keep our heads down, collect our pay and try not to return to the first step again, looking at those numbers.

I started teaching 35 years ago. In my first month, I wondered aloud why, in an off campus education forum, that in a school with a less than a 5% black population, that the only kids sitting on the bench in the office, day after day, happened to be black.

I got called into the principal’s office the next day during my lunch. The two counselors were there and so was the vice-principal. They told me that the blacks in our school have come a long way, that what I was saying could set off a fire-storm in the community, that it was a hell of an insult to imply that they were racists, that I lacked the knowledge and understanding of the socio-economic factors involved, that if I didn’t have something nice to say about the school, that I should say nothing at all, that I did not yet have tenure.

I thought my teaching career was over. For days I shook with fear. But they never did get around to firing me. I think it was due to pure laziness.

Sadly, after 35 years, the numbers I quoted above are still the same. Exactly the same.

“Seems to me that illiteracy, administrative systems, parental apathy, and inadequate teacher training (or lax policies accepting various forms of alternative teacher licensure) are a direct result of institutional racist and classist policies.”

This is just the typical patronizing racism of the left. People can’t be responsible for their own actions and consequences because they’re incapable of making their own decisions because of “institutional racism”. Do you want to define what institutions are racist? How about pointing out what individuals or what actions are responsible for this racism. Sorry but besides being an idiot you’re a racist idiot who insults every persons academic achievements by trying to deny their accomplishments.

It’s about culture, not race. Our leaders, political or otherwise, should be talking about it in these terms. I get a knot in my stomach and feel utterly revolted when we have conversations about race without discussing the culture context. Arne Duncan and others like him are, it seems to me, working very hard to avoid talking about this issue in anything approaching a reality based perspective. If he wants to help black boys he should be honest about the culture they embrace and stop trying to blame shift.

The kid who threatened my daughter has no father–but that’s okay according to practically everybody–and his older brother turned out okay. His mother is beside herself–says my daughter–and had found marijuana in the kid’s room.
As regards understanding the kid’s situation: Some people are just buttheads. That’s a fact.
However, one of the lessons the world should teach to keep people out of trouble is that your personal situation is not an excuse for bad behavior. In fact, counter productive behavior can get you killed no matter the reason you were having a bad hair day. Learning to do the right thing, in several senses of the word, despite having a bad hair day or bad hair year, is a survival skill.
If you demonstrate you can’t do it, something must be done and that first means safeguarding others.
Personally, I don’t want my daughter or any of her colleagues or the students at the school used as punching bags in order to polich up our compassion badges.
A negative sanction gets most people’s attention.
The cost of having somebody in the criminal justice system is generally not netted against the cost of having him not in the criminal justice system and preying on the rest of us. Recent rape/murder case in California in point.

You seem to think that kids turn criminal because they are not educated. How about the possibility that they turn criminal and are not educated despite the system’s attempts to do so (recall that losing a kid means losing money) for the same reason. IOW, the lack of education is a symptom of a basic problem and not the cause of his becoming criminal. Further IOW, would you mean that tying him down and forcing him to learn–how?–would not keep him on the straight and narrow.
Yes, I know that such and such percentage of criminals were school dropouts. It’s an article of faith that criminality was caused by a shortage of education. And it’s a logical stretch, too.
I think this punk needs a serious negative sanction and then an opportunity to learn in an alternate system where his buttheadedness is guarded against and so he can’t hurt anybody, and he can learn why it would be a good idea not to do that again, from the perspective of personal benefit. We can work on his better nature, if any, after the rest of his surroundings are protected.
Now, in your list of bogus arrests, you don’t have things like wearing a tee-shirt with a picture of your soldier uncle (armed) on it, do you? The plastic gun hat decoration? The plastic cake knife? Stupid administrators is a different subject altogether.