Another report of an attack on a Philadelphia school teacher initially made me want to write this post as an update my earlier post on two other attacks. But that post -- "School of hard knocks" -- has now moved so far down on that even though it's still on the blog's front page, I don't think most readers would see it.

Or am I wrong? Are there readers who would actually scroll past 8000 words they've already seen just to check to see whether there's been a recent update to a two day old post?

I didn't think so.

Anyway, in the latest incident reported by the Inquirer, a teacher was attacked by eighth grade girls:

Smith, who had been teaching eighth-grade science and history at de Burgos since early November, said he was attacked Thursday afternoon when he told a student to stop making crank calls from the classroom phone.

It was 2:50 p.m., and students were getting their coats and preparing for dismissal when the eighth grader was making calls.

When Smith told her to get off the phone, he said, she whacked him across his left eye with the receiver.

As he attempted to restrain the girl and hang up the phone, Smith said, she grabbed his tie and choked him. As he struggled to break free, she grabbed a dictionary and hit him in the back of the head.

Smith said that as he was starting to pass out, three other girls jumped on him. Security officers and other teachers arrived and pulled off the students.

Ted Kirsch, president of the union that represents 18,000 teachers and other employees, said the union was considering asking to have legislation introduced in Harrisburg to make it easier to remove violent students. The union also may seek stiffer penalties for administrators who try to skirt state law by underreporting serious incidents. (Emphasis added.)

"The administration doesn't want to do incident reports because they don't want people to know," said Marie Barnett, who taught 12th-grade English at Germantown High for more than a decade and attended yesterday's meeting. "We need help."

The PFT plans to meet with state lawmakers this week to request better-enforced and stricter penalties for abusive students and administrators who "sweep it under the rug," Kirsch said.

Reached by phone later in the day, city schools spokesman Fernando Gallard said the district "aggressively mandates" the reporting of all incidents.

He pointed out that Philadelphia's is the only district in the state with a safe-school advocate, whom he said teachers could approach in confidence.

"We are not afraid of labeling our schools as 'persistently dangerous,' " Gallard said.

BINGO.

"Persistently dangerous" is in fact an official term -- well known and much dreaded by school administrators:

"It is the Scarlet Letter of the education community," said Kenneth S. Trump, President of National School Safety and Security Services, in describing the "persistently dangerous school" component of the No Child Left Behind law. The law allows parents to transfer students if schools are determined to be "persistently dangerous" based on definitions created by each individual state.

Another NCLB irony. Well meaning regulations intended to make schools do more about violence are in fact creating an incentive for them to do less.

Sheesh.

It's as if violence has become an unintended consequence of safety.

Pennsylvania's standards certainly ought to put the fear of God (and fear of the School Board) into any administrator dumb enough to report dangerous incidents. The state's "Approved Standards for Persistently Dangerous Schools" can be found here, beginning with the definition of the term itself:

"Persistently Dangerous School" shall mean any public elementary, secondary, or charter school that meets any of the following criteria in the most recent school year and in one additional year of the two years prior to the most recent school year:
(1) for a school whose enrollment is 250 or less, at least 5 dangerous incidents;
(2) for a school whose enrollment is between 251 to 1000, a number of dangerous incidents that represents at least 2% of the school's enrollment; or
(3) for a school whose enrollment is over 1000, 20 or more dangerous incidents.

Student Opportunity to Transfer

(1) Except as provided below, a student who attends a persistently dangerous school must be offered the opportunity to transfer to a safe public school within the LEA, including a charter school.

(2) A student who attends a persistently dangerous school may apply to transfer at any time while the school maintains that designation.

Human nature and the nature of bureaucracy being what it is, it's understandable that administrators want to do as little as possible about the problem even without additional reasons.

So why -- why -- would the government give these do-nothing educrats an actual incentive to do nothing?

What's going on?

Is there some hidden cabal of diabolical fiends who spend their time drafting legislation cleverly contrived to achieve precisely the opposite effect of its stated purpose?

Or is it just that there's no escape from the Law of Unintended Consequences?