Teaching Public School in 2006

The Education Wonks has a post about violence perpetrated against teachers in public schools today. Check out this post. This blogger says in part :

...Here's one more reason why it's getting ever more difficult to attract talented young people to teach in our nation's public schools:

A Beaumont High School [St. Louis, Missouri] student is charged with assault after allegedly hitting a teacher at school.It was the second alleged assault on a city teacher in as many days....

This alleged attacker was only 12 years old; and the female teacher who was assaulted is said to have suffered a concussion. Are you wondering how often assaults against teachers occur? According to this post they occur every single day.

Students are rarely formally charged in these instances unless the teacher is seriously injured. The student, who is often expelled from that district's schools, is free to seek enrollment in other districts for the remainder of the current school year. Amazingly, in most states, the school district in which the assault occured MUST allow the student to re-enroll the following school year.

After you read the post over at The Education Wonks and the article it references, let me know what you think about this issue. I understand that John Stossel will present a segment about public education on ABC's 20/20 tonight . It will be interesting to see whether this particular aspect of public education is addressed.