One loud, misbehaving student can ruin the class for the other n-1. Idealists want to dream that there are no bad kids and it's all the fault of the patriarchy, white supremacy or worse. They may be correct, but work won't commence until everyone is sitting still.
Wouldn't it be productive and moral to find ways to help all 31, perhaps by putting misbehaving kids in special classrooms where they can receive specialized help?
If you don’t help that kid, the other 30 will spend their whole lives sharing a society with an adult who didn’t get help. That’s an unfair drain on their life too (increased crime, policing costs, etc).
Putting the disruptive kids in the same place as everyone else means the incentives are right to do something useful to help them.
From what I know of this sort of program, it seems to be a sincere attempt to help kids, not merely brush them off into a corner to forget about them. I don't know how often it's successful, but I think in that school district at least it's well motivated. From what I know of it, it seems like a much better system than allowing those kids to disrupt normal classrooms.
For these students who are deeply troubled, there must be healing before there can really be learning.
I was a teacher for fifteen years. The writer of this article started about the same time I got into the profession, so has nearly 20 years of experience.
The first thing you need to do with any class is manage behavior. This can be tricky in your first couple of years, but after a while it just becomes part of who you are. You're more confident in the classroom, you have a reputation in the school, you can recognise and shutdown disruptive behavior before any of the other kids have realised something is about to kick off. At that point your classroom changes, and you can practice what the author calls "Reality Pedagogy", or any other type of pedagogy you like.
Believe me, having observed and mentored plenty of student teachers over the years, the first thing you need to tackle is behavior management. Once that is established then you have the opportunity to be the "captain, my captain" teacher, or whatever you like really.