WHOM THE GODS WOULD DESTROY THEY FIRST MAKE MAD: One interesting attribute of the Obama Administration’s education policy was its schizophrenia. On the one hand, it pushed schools into adopting tough anti-bullying policies (at the behest of the “LGBT community” part of its political coalition). On the other hand, it forced those same schools to lighten up on discipline (at the behest of the “civil rights community” part of its coalition). Well … uh … that’s a bit of a contortion: Stop the bullies, but don’t punish them.

The strategy doesn’t seem to work too well. And alas, the Trump Administration has not yet done anything to change that.

(By the way, neither policy is supported by law. If you want to know why the school discipline policy is unsupported by law, read the final version of my article (with Alison Somin) on school discipline. It explains not just why the Obama Administration’s policy is misguided, but why it is beyond the scope of the Department of Education’s authority.  On bullying, I have this Dissenting Statement from the Commission on Civil Rights report that cheered on the Obama anti-bullying policy from a few years ago.