BALTIMORE (Map, News) - One more time: Leave some behind. It is triage time in our public schools.

Sure, an exceptional few will make it despite the worst conditions of our dysfunctional system.

A few will never make it no matter how many billions of taxpayer dollars we spend. Most can go either way. Right now we are letting some coddled sociopaths pull those in the majority down.

The Baltimore Examiner’s “Teachers Under Siege” series proves beyond doubt the collapse of our public education system is imminent. Not that it crept up on us.

A year ago Examiner reporters exposed widespread student violence against teachers and administrative efforts to hide it.

Teachers responded. Readers responded. Good students desperate for decent education responded.

The non-responders were those who run our schools.

Baltimore city schools Chief Executive Officer Andres Alonso’s plan announced Tuesday for four new alternative academies for suspended students could be a good start — if he can find teachers willing to work in them.

To succeed, these schools must enforce absolute discipline. Thugs must know for sure it is their last, best chance to avoid death on the street, prison or execution. Suburban schools must adopt similar strategies, fast.

This sorry and sad state of affairs for our children has some roots in the misnamed No Child Left Behind Act. It’s what we get when conservatives and liberals join hands in some simple-minded, warm and fuzzy, feel-good social engineering spasm.

To avoid being declared a “persistently dangerous school” under provisions of the act and face the attendant loss of government money, principals and administrators suppress reports of violence, in one case even delaying calling an ambulance for a seriously injured teacher.

It doesn’t take a Ph.D. in sociology or anthropology to figure out what that causes: chaos.

And it sure didn’t take “students” long to figure out no credible authority would punish them.

That weakness tips even good students toward the wild side. Others who want to learn flee or cower in fear as they desperately try to learn.

The contagion is spreading. The spread is accelerating. Administrators chose to put shamming for federal money above learning, above the safety of students and teachers.

Damage done in a few years will take generations to fix. Some of the parents are worse than the students they send us to educate.

We don’t have time to get all weepy about family decay and socioeconomic factors. Long-term solutions will sacrifice the students with potential and will never get a chance to work. We need immediate, draconian solutions. Too many good students, and even more of the great middle majority who make or break a society, are watching their futures being ransacked by a handful of hooligans.

Get the thugs out. Put them in special rooms, buildings, programs, boot camps or whatever, and punish them severely. Make sure those who choose to harm others know we will punish them. If we refuse to leave a few behind now, we condemn the many forever.

Don't take it from me, read this letter from an anonymous teacher afraid not only of his students, but of the school administration's retaliation.

fkeegan@baltimoreexaminer.com.

Editor,

I am a Harford County Public School employee.  ... The problem (student violence) is not only an inner city one, nor just a high school one.

The school where I work is a Title 1 elementary school with a large population. On a daily basis I see students shoving, punching and threatening each other. I hear them speaking disrespectfully to teachers and staff, including myself. They scream, throw things, kick walls and furniture. Some students are defiant every day. They refuse to follow directions and disrupt the learning of those who do.

Although most elementary school age children are smaller and do not pose a physical threat to their teachers, some are exhibiting behaviors that, without consequences, will escalate into violence as they get older.

In most cases, the children get away with the behaviors I’ve described. The school administration dismisses them. Teachers who do not refer students for behavior issues are praised. Many new, non-tenured teachers do not report offenses to administrators for fear of being reprimanded themselves.

When a substitute teacher is in a classroom, many students are completely out of control. Often additional staff members are called to help try to control a classroom. At the same time, we are told that our suspension rate is too high and must be cut back.

Those in authority do not want to acknowledge the problem. They tell us it is our fault -- poor classroom management.

How many more teachers have to be beaten? How many children have to go to school in fear before something is done?

We’re too worried about our schools looking bad to keep them from being bad.

(I am not enclosing my name and address for fear of losing my job.)

Thank you very much.

                                        A Concerned Teacher