Betsy DeVos pressed to toss Obama’s lenient school-discipline directive

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is coming under renewed pressure to uproot the Obama administration’s lenient school-discipline directive, which critics say backfired tragically with last month’s high school shooting in Parkland, Florida.

Senator Marco Rubio, Florida Republican, has urged Mrs. DeVos to overhaul the 2014 “Dear Colleague” letter on school discipline, a joint guidance by the Education and Justice departments that threatened schools with federal civil rights probes unless they reduce law-enforcement referrals, suspensions and expulsions of minority students.

Those policies, embraced at the outset by the Broward County Public Schools, have been blamed for allowing shooting suspect Nikolas Cruz to avoid being arrested or taken into custody despite committing offenses such as assault and carrying bullets to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Sen. Rubio said the guidance should be revised “to ensure that schools appropriately report violence and dangerous actions to local law enforcement,” while others have encouraged Mrs. DeVos to repeal it outright.

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