James Norman, M.Ed

Not every kid deserves to stay in the classroom. Some students have earned their way out of it. It is not cruel to admit this. What's cruel is forcing 25 other students to sit in the room while one kid makes learning impossible. And every teacher knows what kid I mean! Some are experts in low-level disruption, but others constantly talk, make noises, refuse to do work, roam the room or hallways, etc. Worse, there are kids in school who regularly pick fights, bully others, and make threats to the safety of students and staff. Yet, we keep them in. In these situations, schools are held hostage by their worst students. When that happens, we're no longer in an instructional environment; we're in the business of crisis management, with the kids who actually want to learn getting ignored while teachers put out a thousand little fires. This results, de facto, in the removal of kids from education, just not the ones who deserve it. We essentially force the good kids out of the education they deserve by making them to sit in chaotic classrooms, wasting day after day. It also results in teacher burnout because they are tasked with tolerating failure instead of being supported to fix it. We're forcing good people out of the profession, people who may, under different circumstances, raise reading and math scores and help prepare our students for a useful and fulfilling citizenship. "Every child has a right to an education"? Yes. But no child has a right to steal one out from under everyone else. Maybe it's time we consider what it takes to lose that right.