Zero tolerance.

• Author: Johnson, Dirk
• Position: Education - Brief Article

If push comes to shove in the high school hallway, don't count on an apology and handshake to end the matter. That's the lesson being learned by students across the U.S. as more and more schools treat misbehavior with "zero tolerance," meaning that all infractions are punished, no exceptions. The result: a hefty increase in detentions, suspensions, and expulsions. The numbers are startling; in Chicago schools, the number of students expelled has jumped tenfold in the past three years.

The get-tough approach was inspired, in part, by the rash of school shootings in recent years. Increasingly, though...