Michael J. Petrilli: Charter schools aren't for everyone

A reasonable compromise to allow every child to learn to his/her capabilities.

Addressing this challenge — enabling serious learners to learn, without denying serial disrupters opportunities to resume learning — takes smarts (finding better approaches to school discipline) and guts (making some hard choices). Unfortunately, today’s shrill debates are encouraging little of either.

Everyone agrees that suspensions and expulsions should be rare. Kids who are repeatedly suspended or expelled are more likely to lag academically, drop out of school and end up in the criminal justice system. The direction of causation is hard to untangle, but, still, overly harsh discipline is worth curbing.

But what the school-discipline reformers never talk about is the impact that disruptive behavior has on classmates.