If your goal is zero dropouts, zero tolerance is standing in the way

Educators and administrators who are serious about combating the dropout epidemic “should take a hard look at the policies and practices that push our school children out of classrooms and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems,” writes Linda Burt, executive director of the Wyoming ACLU in the Casper Tribune.

“While educators cite conflicting reasons for the drop out rate — lack of connection, alcohol, drugs, pregnancy, lack of family support — none of them cite the fact that the broad use of zero tolerance policies and the use of police in schools (resource officers) have criminalized behavior previously handled by school administrators and counselors,” Burt writes. “These policies are funneling hundreds of Wyoming children out of the classroom and into the broken juvenile justice system creating a school-to-prison pipeline.”

Burt isn’t alone in pointing to zero-tolerance policies as hurtful to the cause of graduating more students.A new report by Philadelphia's School Reform Commission also suggests that schools reexamine zero-tolerance policies toward violence in order to keep more students in school.

But at the same time, it’s worth remembering that more than one in 20 American students stay home from school at least one day each month because they do not feel safe at school, according to the Center for Public Education. And more than one in 10 dropouts say they left school because they did not feel safe.

Could readmitting students who have committed acts of violence against other students help reduce the dropout rate — or could it make things worse?