"There is no substitute for real leadership," said Mike Dreiblatt, a former teacher and president o Stand Up To Bullying. "Many zero-tolerance policies are nothing more than feel-good, bumper-sticker, no-real-change-in-behavior empty gestures," Mike said.

"A truly effective zero-tolerance policy responds to bullying, harassment and other acts of misconduct efficiently, effectively and in a timely manner. A zero-tolerance policy which truly responds to bullying with a thorough investigation, appropriate intervention and continued follow-through is all too rare."

Pennsylvania schools' zero-tolerance policies drew criticism earlier this year when Madison Guarna, a 5-year-old in the Mount Carmel Area School District in Northumberland County, allegedly told schoolmates that she was going to shoot them with a Hello Kitty toy that makes soap bubbles.

Madison, a kindergartener, initially received a 10-day suspension from school officials and was ordered to undergo a psychological evaluation. The suspension later was reduced to two days, and Madison's mother, her attorney and school officials eventually reached an undisclosed settlement on the matter.

Last month, Harold Jordan, project director at the American Civil Liberties Union's Pennsylvania branch, authored and released a study about the zero-tolerance policy and noted that it's being used against a range of behaviors — including those in which kids are simply being kids.

The study, titled "Beyond Zero Tolerance: Discipline and Policing in Pennsylvania Public Schools," revealed that children are being targeted for dress-code violations and talking back to teachers.

Hardest on minorities

Jordan said African-Americans and students with disabilities are primarily hurt by the policy.

"[Blacks] make up just under 14 percent of the state's public school students but about half of the out-of-school suspensions," Jordan said.

The study noted that students with disabilities were almost twice as likely as others to receive out-of-school suspensions, and black students with disabilities received out-of-school suspensions at the highest rate of any group — 22 out of every 100 were suspended at least one time.

Further, 17 percent of black students were suspended at least once, a rate that's five times that of white students. It also revealed that one out of every 10 Latino students were suspended at least once, ranking Pennsylvania among the highest Latino suspension rates in the nation.

'Suspending a lot of kids'

Jordan said the report excluded charter and private schools, and data were extracted from reports by the state Department of Education, the federal Department of Education, Pennsylvania State Police and the state's Commission on Crime and Delinquency and after a slew of Right-to-Know requests.

The results ultimately show that the students as well as schools pay a high price because of the measures, Jordan said.

"They tend to become disengaged from school, even when they return, or they tend to drop out more than other students," he said. "Those schools don't necessarily become more peaceful places, and less violent places, just because you're suspending a lot of kids."

A total of 10 out-of-school suspensions were issued during the 2011-12 school year for every 100 students in public schools around the state, according to the ACLU study. That marked an increase from the 2009-10 rate of nine out-of-school suspensions per 100 students.

During the same year, 166,276 out-of-school suspensions were given out in Pennsylvania's school districts and about 1 out of every 15 public school student — or 6.51 percent — were suspended out-of-school at least once in 2009-10, the year for which the most recent data are available. The national average stands at 7.4 percent.

'One size fits all'

Psychologists and others said administrators are overlooking the fact that children are regurgitating what's being fed to them through various media and, for the most part, they are not a threat to safety.

"Most school board policies provide options and flexibility for administrators," said Kenneth Trump, a school safety consultant and president of National School Safety and Security Services in Cleveland, Ohio, which specializes in school security and emergency preparedness training, school security assessments and crisis services.

"What you see is poor decision-making and poor implementation of the policies, rather than the fact school administrators are handcuffed in terms of their discretion," said Trump, who, like others, noted that the recent rash of school violence, including the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy, has only served to reinforce zero-tolerance policies.

"I think people are afraid because of the striking and dramatic events that have happened in schools and that have been reported by the media," said Susan M. McHale, director of Social Science Research Institute, director of Children, Youth and Families Consortium and professor of Human Development at Penn State University.

"The people who study youth violence often talk about the fact that school violence is phenomenally rare compared to street and gang violence," McHale said. "The cases we've seen in schools are horrendous but disproportionately small compared to other violence. This one-size-fits-all method of punishment is not "» the most effective way to get kids to show you their best and to trust and believe in adults."

Taking it too far?

The state's zero-tolerance policy was instituted in 1994 and required all states to mandate a minimum one-year expulsion of any student caught with a firearm on school property.

Like some other states, Pennsylvania expanded the zero-tolerance policy to include fighting, touching and other offenses such as talking back to teachers and administrators.

However, there are several reasons the policy simply doesn't work, said Christopher Emdin, an urban education expert, associate professor at Columbia University and a Caperton Fellow at the WEB DuBois Institute at Harvard University.

"While the idea of zero-tolerance for bullying appears to make sense by letting youth know that it's not condoned, too many anti-bullying initiatives impose too harsh a punishment that does nothing but demonize the bully," Emdin said.

"Common practices like isolating the bully from the general population or automatic suspensions are never a good situation."