There are so many issues with the education system that it is nearly impossible to unpack them all and keep them all straight but I want to tackle one of the issues here.
First some backstory:
Some of you met my dad. He, my brother, and I watched the Buckeyes play in all (then) 14 B1G stadiums and I'm so glad we took those trips together because he isn't around anymore. Anyway, we met
@FearlessF in Lincoln, ran into
@Roaddawg on the USS New Jersey while on our Rutgers trip, and visited countless others on these various trips.
My dad's mother owned a gift shop starting back in the 1940's when it was EXTREMELY rare for a woman to even work outside the home, let alone operate a very successful store. After High School and a three-year stint in the Marines my dad came home and worked in the Gift Shop. As a side job he drove a School Bus because they were looking for drivers and he had a Military Truck Driver's License that apparently transferred over (he had driven 2.5 and 5 ton ammunition trucks while in the Marines). After a few years (this was roughly 1961-1965) he got too busy for the bus driver job so he quit to focus on other things.
Unfortunately my grandmother (whom I never met) was or became an alcoholic so the situation at the Gift Shop became untenable for my dad. He became a travelling salesman selling the giftware to gift shops like the one he had grown up in. My dad always said that he was good at it because he could REALLY understand his customers since he had grown up in a store just like the ones they were operating.
After I was born (1975) and in preparation for my brother's arrival (1980) my dad had a "Cat's in the Cradle" moment and decided that he didn't want to be a travelling salesman away from home when his two boys were growing up so he quit that and went back to patching an income together from driving a bus and managing rental property. At first he mostly managed other people's rental property but over time he acquired more and more of his own until eventually he was exclusively managing his own rental property (like 40 years later).
Anyway, I mentioned above that his first stint driving a school bus was roughly 1961-1965 right after he got out of the marines. His second stint driving a bus was about 1980-1985.
Sorry for the lengthy backstory but it was to get to this:
My dad many times complained about the degradation in discipline in the ~20 years between his first and second stints driving a school bus. When my dad drove in the 1960's he literally had the authority to simply drop a kid off. That sounds crazy today but I'm completely serious. The usage of "literally" in the previous sentence is 100% accurate. If a kid was causing problems on the bus my dad (and all bus drivers) in the 1960's had the authority to stop the bus, eject the kid (by force if necessary), and take the rest of the kids to school. It was the troublemaker's problem to figure out how to get himself to school.
When my dad was in his second stint driving a bus in the 1980's things had changed DRAMATICALLY. Discipline in the 1980's was a lengthy process. If my dad had a troublemaker on the bus he was supposed to file a report. The report would pass up the Transportation Department chain of command eventually reaching the Transportation Supervisor. Then it would get turned over to the Superintendent's office then get passed down the chain of command to the troublemaker's principal. Eventually a meeting would be scheduled with the principal, the bus driver, the kid, and the kid's parents.
All of these steps in the process at least partially explain the explosion in the number of administrators as noted above by
@847badgerfan .
As my dad explained it, by the time the meeting was scheduled he didn't even remember what he was mad at the kid for and then when the meeting happened the parents invariably took the kids' side and the principal would ultimately just tell the kid not to do that anymore. Part of the problem was that the administrators typically treated each report as a first-time incident because it was "new to them". Realistically, however, most drivers were obviously telling a kid to stop, then giving a warning or three, then eventually filing a report so actual reported discipline issues were only a small fraction of the total discipline issues and they were almost all at least third offenses.
In short, there was effectively no discipline on busses in the 1980's because the drivers were powerless. A very few drivers (who the others referred to as OT-whores) would consistently file discipline reports because they'd get OT for attending the eventual meetings. The rest of the drivers basically just ignored anything short of serious violence. It simply wasn't worth their time and trouble to file reports on anything much short of murder.
My dad once pointed out that while he found this frustrating it had to be much worse for the teachers. At least in my dad's case he was simply a HS educated guy with a special driver's license so it made SOME sense that he maybe shouldn't be in charge of discipline for kids but teachers have at least a bachelors degree so it is insane to give them years of training in dealing with kids then effectively tell them that they can't do the thing that they are trained to do.
On a fundamental level this all grew out of a 1975 SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States) case titled "Goss vs Lopez". Prior to that schools were generally seen as what is referred to as "In Loco Parentis". Parents are generally given wide latitude in handling their kids and "In Loco Parentis" translates (roughly, I don't speak Latin) as "Standing in place of the Parent(s)". Thus, if my brother or I watch each other's kids, when we are doing that we generally have similar rights/responsibilities to the actual parent because we are simply standing in place of the parent. Historically it was the same for a School District.
Back when my dad was driving a bus in the early 1960's the School District as a whole and even down to the level of he as an individual driver were legally "standing in place of the parents" so they had more-or-less carte-blanche to handle discipline as they saw fit.
Goss vs Lopez established that students in public schools have a right to due process. Thus, they cannot be disciplined without a "due process hearing" and since they are nearly all minors their parents have a right to be there so discipline is massively delayed.
One problem is that even if this system actually functioned as intended the delay introduced in between misbehavior and consequences severely diminishes the effectiveness of the discipline. Kids learn from actions leading to consequences. They don't learn well (or at all) when there is a weekslong delay between their actions and the consequences.
Now I should say that I'm sure there were excesses the old way. That said, I think we've swung WAY TOO FAR the other way and lost all concept of discipline in schools which a number of the teachers in the article linked in
@Honestbuckeye 's original post complained about.
A second issue wrt discipline is that something changed in our society at large. Years ago when my dad was driving a bus in the 1960's parents pretty much universally cooperated with the authorities (Teachers, Principals, and even Bus Drivers) and presented a united front to counter an unruly child. Even as late as when I was in school (1980's) this was at least generally true (at least in my suburban schools) although even then there were some cracks in it. Today it seems that parents have flipped 180 degrees and are pretty much universally opposed to the authorities in matters of discipline. Today's unruly children are thus presented with two sides rather than a united front.
