Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/steve-teske/)
Do you remember Joe Clark? The principal portrayed by Morgan Freeman in the movie "Lean on Me"? One could say he was the personification of zero tolerance when it came to principals. During his first year he kicked out more than 300 students in one day for being tardy or absent, and as he put it, for being "disruptive." He would remove hundreds more over the next five years.
Police officers, armed security guards, surveillance cameras and metal detectors are now commonplace at schools across the country. They go hand in hand with zero tolerance polices adopted by school systems in the wake of highly publicized outbreaks of violence. In a new book, Homeroom Security: School Discipline in an Age of Fear author Aaron Kupchik argues that these polices need to be reassessed to include some flexibility and more common sense. Research at four public high schools helped shaped Kupchik’s argument. He compiled more than 100 hours of interviews with students, administrators, teachers and police officers assigned to each of the schools located in the nation’s Southwest and Mid-Atlantic regions.