"Have you called his parents?"

Not all kids are assholes, but imagine that you are dealing with one who is.

As their "teacher", you are entirely responsible for getting the recalcitrant to perform adequately on the annual Standards Based Assessment. If you cannot, you have failed.

All the while, you have no real power to provide meaningful consequences for sometimes even the most egregious misconduct.

There are administrators within reach, whose job description reads, enforce discipline policies. If it does not, why not?
They have the power to administer meaningful consequences.

There are those, I among them, who think that "calling parents" as the answer to discipline problems is simply naive. How many parents of an "asshole", don't know they're raising an asshole?

Parents are the part of the dynamic over which we have the least control. If we can't even control what goes on with a kid at school, how can we possibly assume that we can control what happens outside of school?

Administrators, some of them at least, would like to step away from dealing with upset parents. They like to insist that teachers "make parent contact", before they will assume any responsibility at all for a disruptive student.

Teachers need effective interventions on site, at school.

Teachers and EAs can remain 100% involved in the positive aspects of education. There are more than enough kids with legitimate learning needs to fully occupy their full attention.

If teachers are expected to teach and are given the responsibility of dealing with complex emotional, psychological, socio-economic, ethnic, and societal problems manifest belligerently, they are denied the opportunity to succeed with either student.

Teachers, EAs, and a teachable moment are lost whenever an
adult has to leave a learner to attend to a non-learner.

Children, by they very nature, push limits. It is actually a very effective learning strategy.

If they go too far, it is the responsibility of authority, to tell them to step back. If their answer means no, it is no longer the "teachers'" responsibility.

The problem at that point, becomes the problem of someone
with the time and the tools to get the kid back on track.

Use teaching expertise to teach and to identify problems.
Use the most appropriate resource, to solve the problem.

It stands to reason, if you want students to excel,
you don't hold them back.