I was told once that "high school students in Texas don't get a diploma when they graduate, they get out on work-release." To explain is this article:

>...a report scheduled for release on Tuesday found that 31 percent of Texas students were suspended off campus or expelled at least once during their years in middle and high school... When also considering...infractions punished by in-school suspensions, the rate climbed to nearly 60 percent...

>Minority students facing discipline for the first time tended to be given the harsher, out-of-school suspension, rather than in-school suspension, more often than white students...

Basically this is the end-result of the post-Columbine hysteria. The education of many of our high school students is at risk because of bad policy and bad school administrators.