I don't know how we've managed to so severely nerf teachers' authority to conduct their class and deal with troublemakers. I've got a daughter now, and the classroom is like Lord Of The Flies now vs. how it was when I was her age in the '80s. My kid reports that one or two kids act out basically all day (maybe trauma from growing up in a broken home?) and the rest of the class barely gets through classwork. So they all get tons of homework to make up for basically chaos during school hours.
From my perspective as a former secondary teacher, it's parents. At the least sign of their kids being in trouble (or failing), many parents will come up to the school (that they often never visit otherwise) and proclaim that the teacher is wrong and shouldn't be punishing little Johnny. And schools give in because they're worried about lawsuits and having to deal with parents, so the teachers get thrown under the bus and can't punish the kids.
Thankfully the last school I worked at did back the teachers - at least to some extent - but it was so annoying having to deal with parents who never showed up to parent-teacher conferences, never contacted me (or answered my emails/calls!) come up as soon as their kids got sent to in-school suspension for misbehaving or for having too many missing assignments or getting a bad grade.
There's also an anti-punishment trend prevalent in education research. Which I truly get, but sometimes kids need to know the limits and you have to do something with the bad ones so the others can actually learn. It's a lose-lose situation (and part of the reason why I left, though I really do miss it and am considering returning, though maybe at international schools).
