Schools around the country that use so-called zero tolerance policies and station police officers at school have seen a steady rise in the number of suspensions, expulsions and arrests for minor nonviolent offenses, but little improvement in academic achievement or higher graduation rates. The widespread criminalization of teenagers for minor offenses --the majority of whom are young people of color -- has led many schools administrators, city lawmakers and even law enforcement officials to question the approach.

As the New York Times notes, several large school districts, including Los Angeles, Baltimore, Chicago and Denver, have reconsidered the punitive approach in favor of providing counseling and behavioral support for students.

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“A knee-jerk reaction for minor offenses, suspending and expelling students, this is not the business we should be in,” Robert W. Runcie, a school superintendent in Broward County, Fla., who is reforming his school's use of zero tolerance, told the Times. “We are not accepting that we need to have hundreds of students getting arrested and getting records that impact their lifelong chances to get a job, go into the military, get financial aid.”

“What you see is the beginning of a national trend here,” noted Michael Thompson, the director of the Council of State Governments Justice Center. “Everybody recognizes right now that if we want to really find ways to close the achievement gap, we are really going to need to look at the huge number of kids being removed from school campuses who are not receiving any classroom time.”

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