Walter Williams has something to say about school violence toleration. Here are the final parargraph:

I say it's cruel and unreasonable to permit school thugs to make schools unsafe and education impossible for everyone else. Short of measures to immediately end school violence, parents at the minimum should be able to transfer their children out of unsafe failing public schools. Or, do you believe, as the education establishment does, that parents and children should be held hostage until they come up with a solution?

I love that last line, "...do you believe, as the education establishment does, that parents and children should be held hostage until they [the education establishment] come up with a solution?" I think the same phrasing, i.e. "being held hostage", applies to the whole public system.

When a school's administration is failing, they whine that they need more money and favors, and that the children can't be allowed to go anywhere else because that would jeopardize the school itself; that is nothing more than hostage-taking for the benefit of the administrators and the organization. I say the **children** are the important part of that situation, not the government education system -- let the parents save their kids from failing schools with vouchers.