This is our mapping team, busily studying the school system of Prince George’s County, MD, which they attend. Today, they interviewed an impressive and helpful state delegate. She thought the biggest problem in schools is discipline, because that’s what drives teachers out of the profession and disrupts classrooms so that kids can’t learn. Indeed, all members of our team raised their hands to say that their classrooms are often disrupted. Security guards come to remove students hundreds of times each year.

Of course, naming the fundamental problem as “discipline” doesn’t solve it. Some kids are disruptive–the question is what to do about that. If one in one hundred children were out of control, you could remove those few and give them special services. But I suspect the rate is quite a bit higher than that.