Madison middle school teacher resigns because of the way the district's new discipline policy has worked.

"The behavior policy, implemented at the start of this school year, requires teachers to ask for outside help if they can�t control a misbehaving student."

But Bush says such calls for help often go unanswered by overwhelmed support staff, who are supposed to walk an out-of-control student out of the classroom and �intervene� to get a sense of the causes of the misbehavior. �We call and no one comes," she said. "Teachers have stopped calling.... We don�t feel any hope this system is going to change.�

The Behavior Education Plan, a rewrite of the school district�s previous discipline code, was designed to keep students in the classroom, reduce the number of out-of-school suspensions and expulsions, and close a glaring disparity that sends far more African-American students from the classroom for disciplinary reasons than students of other races and ethnicities.... The new code has sharply reduced the number of out-of-school suspensions, although the racial disparity persists, school officials have reported....

�Just telling a teacher they need to figure out a plan for that student is not realistic because some of these kids have very big needs," Bush said.