Student arrests test rules of a post-Columbine world

"The fact they were all arrested is what concerns me most," he says. "We're not talking about 16-year-olds: They're 6 and above. Educators should know the difference. You can't deter 6-year-olds through criminal sanctions, life doesn't work that way."

Since the 1999 shootings at Colorado's Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., in which two teenagers killed 12 students and a teacher before committing suicide, the number of weapons confessed to in American schools has fallen. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last year that 6.1 percent of high school students admitted they had carried a gun, knife, or club on school property in 2003, down from 6.9 percent in 1999.

At that level, Schwartz says, educators acted responsibly. "The reaction to Columbine was appropriate. We don't want guns and knives in our schools, and kids who bring weapons to school should be arrested and dealt with appropriately."

But, he cautions, the Columbine massacre has little to do with a 6-year-old's use of scissors or, as happened in Texas, a teenager's decision to bring a Korean pencil sharpener to school. "It's like a virus has hit Florida," he says. "Zero tolerance runs amok."

Philadelphia, too, has seen its share of incidents. Last month, city police arrested and handcuffed 10-year-old Porsche Brown when a pair of eight-inch scissors was found in her art bag. The school district later apologized to her mother, and said their reaction was a waste of police resources.

In another Philadelphia example, a 16-year-old class president and honor student was suspended for a year when a four-inch penknife was discovered in his pocket. The boy said he had forgotten the knife was in the pants, which he'd been wearing over the weekend.

To Russ Skiba, director of the Indiana University Institute for Child Study, zero tolerance amounts to "policy by anecdote": "There's nothing to show it improves student behavior, other than somebody saying, 'Well, it works in our school.' "

Schwartz's group is calling for school boards to rethink zero-tolerance policies, while lawmakers in Texas want to take things a step further. A bill introduced by Republican Jon Lindsay that reached committee stage this week would require that "a student's intent be considered" in any reaction to an incident.

State Senator Lindsay points to a 2003 case in which which 13-year-old Sumi Lough of Katy, Texas, was disciplined for bringing a traditional Korean pencil sharpener - a two-inch blade that folds into a handle - to class. School officials removed the girl from her post as president of the student council and rescinded her membership in the honor society.

School boards, cautions Lindsay, "must not be allowed to hide behind zero-tolerance legislation."

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