Readers Write (March 27): School discipline, 'a letter to my liberal friends'

Katherine Kersten's March 18 commentary "Mollycoddle no more" used the term "war zones" to describe some public schools, which surely overstates the case to heighten journalistic impact. Nonetheless, the development of good student decorum and excellence in student instruction and achievement are matters deserving highest priority attention by all of us, including our elected officials in St. Paul.

Child-centered organizations like the nonprofit "Think Small" urge all of us to think really big about the return on investment of preschool education for young children in harm's way, ages 1 to 4. Critical intellectual and emotional/psychological functions in human development occur in the brain through life experiences at this early time of life. They play out immediately, in later years and likely in the whole of life.

Kindergarten teachers see with a clear eye that many 5-year-old pupils coming from homes in poverty are not ready to soar academically. They often struggle in human relationships, too.

Nor is "catch up" as simple as it sounds. For children growing up and living in the midst of poverty-stricken homes and neighborhoods, the past and present continue to interfere with school efforts to provide a better present and future hope. The "achievement gap" — and now the "decorum gap" — are not fixed with a wand and wishful thinking.

The home and school must both be fully enlisted and invested in this effort! Where better to start this partnership than at the beginning, the first four years of life — before what is still changeable becomes too fixed and resistant to better choices and options.

To such ends, a financial litmus test for scholarships may need to be a part of state legislation to keep costs within reason. However, one additional component in such legislation must be provision for a liaison person to strengthen the home/school partnership. A child's parent is the first, best and only lifelong teacher.

The writer is a retired educator, superintendent and adjunct professor.

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Kersten's commentary attempts to justify school suspensions and expulsions by comparing exclusionary discipline with good parenting. I challenge her to find a parent who believes their children's behavior improves when they are excluded from their home and cut off from their family. I challenge her to find a parent who thinks excluding their kids is a better punishment than addressing their behavior and establishing guidelines and boundaries creatively. Improving student behavior effectively, and disciplining students without denying them their constitutional right to a public education, must be our goal. It's simply common sense.

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Kersten was right to criticize federal officials for encouraging the breakdown in school discipline in St. Paul. She described federal pressure to "equalize racial discipline rates even if it means eliminating behavior standards." That pressure is from the Education Department, where I used to work. Its January 2014 guidance wrongly claimed a school's "neutral," "evenhanded" enforcement of school discipline rules could violate federal law when more black than white students violate the rules, resulting in higher rates of discipline among blacks.

That claim ignores the Supreme Court's decision in Alexander vs. Sandoval (2001), which ruled that federal law does not ban such nonracist practices — even if they result in racial disparities or "disparate impact." It also contradicts a 1997 court ruling, which struck down a rule forbidding the Rockford, Ill., school board "to refer a higher percentage of minority students than of white students for discipline." That rule was declared an unconstitutional racial quota.

Regarding "A letter to my liberal friends …" (March 20) by Rosemary Warschawski: What provoked the Star Tribune's opinion editors to reprint this brief brush with lucidity and reason? Is there an awakening going on in the editorial section?

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To my conservative friend Rosemary,

I have read your letter and both agree and disagree. Your summary seems to cover all of the main differences in conservative and liberal ideologies, and I generally agree with your comparison. I would suggest we could expand upon this, perhaps by discussing Jonathan Haidt's "The Righteous Mind," but in the end we will probably simply agree to disagree, as you suggest. Dealing with ideology (or Haidt's fundamental values) is easy because it is based upon our personal views and not objective truth. Facts, on the other hand, all have objective truth, and that is where we disagree.

Your letter describes various liberal actions, policies and legislation, then describes all of their deleterious consequences as fact. Your letter asks me to accept these facts as truth — affirmative action is destroying education; taxes are destroying our economy; the makers are being pushed out by the takers; we are being forced to accept social values with which we disagree, "and on and on." All of these facts may as well have come from the Fox News playbook — all facts must be consistent with the conservative ideology. The facts as you describe them are grossly exaggerated and false.

If you only wish to discuss ideology, that is fine. However, if you wish to discuss facts, then I suggest that we each first complete all of the necessary background investigation on each factual issue so that we might have an intelligent conversation in that regard.

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I am going to skip that part of Warschawski's article that explains to her liberal friends what she thinks we think. Rather, I want to address her glass-half-empty look at her place in America's economic life.

I have no reason to disbelieve her when she claims that she pays almost 50 percent of her income in taxes. If that is true, her take-home income — take-home — must exceed $400,000 per year. She claims she could keep a lot more of the "fruit of her labor" if only her government didn't give all that money to "strangers who haven't worked as hard," who have made morally offensive choices, who "live off [her] work."

Rosemary, I would like to introduce you to people I know, hundreds of them, who work twice as hard as you do, and who take home maybe $20,000 in a good year and do not whine that people like you take home 20 times what they do and do not work 20 times harder than they.

More to the point, how much of that $400,000 that goes to the government out of the fruits of your labor goes to the people I know? Five percent. A Christian is supposed to give 10 percent. Rosemary will vote her conscience. So will I. I am glad mine is not hers.

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Warschawski pleads the cause of "conservatives," who she says feel beleaguered by "liberal" policy initiatives emanating from Washington. I respect her desire to avoid the extremes of left and right that we see today and to regain the center, but in her view, what does that center look like? Aside from a complaint about the taxation of small businesses, which probably has some merit, her laments are very general. President Obama came to the presidency with they objective of overcoming partisan divisions. However, Warschawski fails to remember the hostile and disrespectful response by those on the right. For example: The repeated attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which has reduced the uninsured population by millions; the destruction of unions and collective-bargaining rights; the refusal to respect the overwhelming scientific consensus about human-caused climate change; an indifference to environmental concerns and the well-being of future generations manifested by efforts to block EPA regulations; efforts to disenfranchise poor and elderly voters by means of voting restrictions and ID requirements; opposing a reasonably progressive tax system and reforms which would help toward reducing the federal debt; a desire to dismantle or "block grant" entitlements instead of enacting positive solutions that would preserve Social Security and Medicare for everyone; a refusal to pass reasonable immigration reform, and the refusal to vote on the president's Supreme Court nominee.

As Warschawski stated, those on the right also need to genuinely move toward the center as well.