CONSEQUENCES: Unsafe spaces: Throw rocks at the teacher, get ‘Tiger tokens.’

Lax discipline policies are creating classroom chaos, writes Neetu Arnold, a Manhattan Institute policy analyst, in City Journal. Teachers, citing “chronic student misbehavior as the top source of stress and burnout,” quit.

Parents, worried about their children’s safety, turn to homeschooling, private or charter schools.

“Restorative justice” often gets the blame, writes Arnold but it’s far less common than Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), which has been around for decades. PBIS “masks its anti-punitive bias behind uncontroversial goals” such as collecting data and setting clear behavior expectations. It’s not overtly political. The idea is to reward positive student behavior and avoid punishments. Schools have lots of discretion on how to use it.

The U.S. Department of Education has urged schools to use PBIS as an “equitable” way to reduce racial disparities in discipline, she writes. The easiest way to do that is to reduce discipline.

Unexpectedly, they get more of what the tolerate.