would fail to do anything about abusive students (assaults, indecent exposure are the 3 cases I personally was involved with). So instead of a school infraction, the students now have juvenile records.

The referrals for behavior are usually attributed to cultural differences. The kids have their own culture and it's racist to expect them to act in accordance with school culture.

Even after 10 or 11 years of being exposed to it.

Again, we think that somehow skin color is the guiding factor in culture and behavior. It's a pervasive misunderstanding.

In a linguistics course in which you take pains to point out, with examples, that language and culture aren't racial attributes, but merely correlated with race, kids nod and spew the right answer for test.

Then you hear them talking and they ask why a 3rd-gen Japanese-American is learning Russian and not "their" language, "Japanese." Why the grandchild of Central American immigrants is studying Chinese and not "his" language, Spanish. "Don't you want to know your own culture?" As though the kid doesn't already know *his* own culture--it's his great-grandparents he doesn't know.

Similarly with this. You penalize a student for acting inappropriate and it's racism because it disproportionately impacts blacks. In many cases, it's a low SES/family education problem., one that disproportionately impacts blacks and Latinos. Go to in-school suspension and there'll be a smattering of kids from all SESs for a variety of infractions--most commonly tardies. But the kids referred for honest infractions of the rules are almost all low SES. Blacks, Latinos, whites, and all low SES. Disproportionately black and Latino, but not that far off from proportionate if you look at SES first. After that you get "black culture" and "Latino culture" overlays.

pushing my son to the ground causing him to hit the back of his head on concrete is a cultural that I just don't understand? We just pulled him out of the SF School District because he endured one assault after another school and district administrators gave us one assurance after another that their methods would turn the bullies into angels. I gave up on their BS when, on the last week of school, one of the precious snowflakes chased him down, cornered him on the playground and hit him in the eye.

I was bullied constantly in a Southern California school district growing up. Moving to Mississippi was the best thing my family ever did for me.

It is fortunate that the judge in the Homeschooling case a couple of years ago backed down from pressure. You have the option of getting your child out of the situation (it would be better to correct the situation, but many school districts are incapable of such for whatever reason).