Episode description

Max Eden joins Seth Barron to discuss student discipline and suspension policies, and how discipline "reform" has led to chaos in many classrooms.

In January 2014, in an attempt to reduce out-of-school suspensions, an Obama administration directive forced thousands of American schools to change their discipline policies. Proponents of the new discipline rules say that teachers and school administrators have been racially discriminatory in meting out punishments, creating a massive disparity in suspension rates between white and black students. Their claims, however, ignore the significant discrepancies in student behavior.

"We tend to see one of two things happen as suspensions drop: Schools get less safe or school administrators cheat," wrote Max Eden at National Review Online, meaning that the schools separate disruptive students in ways that don't technically count as "suspensions."

Max Eden is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.