This 17th edition of "Education Week's" annual "Quality Counts" report takes aim at an issue freighted with emotional as well as policy implications: the impact of a school's social and disciplinary environment on students' ability to learn and on the teachers and administrators tasked with guiding them. National initiatives to improve schools…

Promoting nonviolent school discipline, this handbook describes a wide variety of punitive and preventive approaches practiced in American schools. After introductory passages discussing resistance to change and the declining but persistent use of corporal punishment, part one discusses the following topics under the heading…