George Leef’s latest column for Forbes examines the bizarre results that flow from federal regulations related to public school discipline practices.

Combine an administration that disdains the idea that it has any legal boundaries with the “liberal” penchant for coerced equality and you get some amazingly absurd results.

A case in point is the recent cave-in by public school officials in Minneapolis to the Department of Education regulations I wrote about here, regulations that threaten schools with loss of federal funds if they punish “disproportionate” numbers of students from certain groups.

The “proportional discipline” rules are beginning to bite. After all, bureaucrats don’t just make rules for the sake of keeping busy – they demand obedience.

Public school officials in Minneapolis have agreed that the superintendent’s office will review all suspensions of “students of color,” meaning black, Hispanic, or American Indian. There will be no corresponding review, however, if the student has white or Asian ancestry. That racial double standard is intended to help the system avoid trouble with the Education Department officials and their manic insistence on group equality in discipline.

With the superintendent reviewing all “minority” suspensions, it will be easier to comply with the agreement between the Education Department and the school district that it will reduce the “disproportionality” between suspensions of students in the two groups: a 25 percent reduction by the end of the current school year, a 50 percent reduction by 2016, 75 percent by 2017, and by 2018 to have achieved the Department’s goal of perfect group equality.