UN-TEACHING PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY
school community and others have traced between Duncan’s discipline reforms and the unaccountable classroom chaos, which her constituent teachers tell her they try and fail to control without administrative backup. This is a national story, I told her: Duncan, his former deputy, and therefore every school principal was determined to reduce suspensions and police referrals. Which meant, in practice, dismantling a system of discipline designed from the dawn of civilization to “disincentivize” the execution of evil. Children are “being taught that the rules don’t apply to the rule-breakers, and that the system is not going to protect them when harm comes.” Some blame President Obama, with whom the buck stopped during the Duncan era. Education Department officials in those days, also known for the creative reinterpretation of Title IX, certainly acted as though theirs was the ultimate authority. DeVos does not operate quite so dictatorially. Duncan’s diktat relaxed the rules. But by now its national effect isn’t any one buck-passing bureaucrat’s fault. From coast to coast and top to bottom, from federal agency to school board to public high school principal’s office, the decay of discipline depends on everyone’s irresponsibility.
the rule-breakers, and that the system is not going to protect them when harm comes.” Their cause is suitably systemic, in answer to Duncan’s goal to change the reality that our children face every single day . Last month, Landers brought dozens of these parents’ and teachers’ testimonies to a meeting at the Department of Education. Betsy DeVos has the “final say,” Landers told us, hopefully, when we spoke after her presentation at the agency’s D.C. headquarters. DeVos didn’t say much, but Landers is still hoping the Secretary will brace for the inevitable backlash and rescind Duncan’s guidance. Parents in Broward County are looking for someone to take responsibility, too. In a meeting with Superintendent Runcie, one father of a shooting victim lamented – “When I was in school, you’d get expelled for that stuff.” The same county official who told Broward SROs to reconsider their disciplinary doctrine had just described to grieving parents Broward’s 2013 policy change, a reflection of Duncan’s priorities and a precursor to his federal guidance. No one knows quite who’s to blame in Broward for the dissolution of responsibility. Broward Teachers Union President Anna Fusco worries an ongoing investigation will find teachers at fault for letting the shooter’s violent threats persist unpunished – when in reality, teachers’ negligence flowed from the expectations of administrators. They knew, she says, that “the principal’s going to deter them, saying ‘don’t document.’” Fusco raised her eyebrows, intrigued, when I described to her the links that Landers’
Alice Lloyd is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard .
68 May 2018
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker