My conclusion from studies in Education......

In general, the concept of Zero Tolerance is not a bad idea depending how it is enforced and to what extreme.
Let us say two children were fighting at school, in this case, it does not matter which child was the aggressor and which was defending himself due to “zero tolerance”. Rule being: since they were both fighting, therefore they are both suspended. In sense what does this teach children about basic law enforcement? Or consequences of wrong doings? That is not the way it works outside the classroom. If an individual attacks another person, the victim is legally entitled to defend him/herself, as long as the amount of force he/she uses is not out of proportion to the threat of other person.
Weapon control is a sensible act that should be enforced by all schools. I am not going to complain too much on that region. Where I am going to carp is suspending elementary –age children for drawing stick figures with arrows through their heads calling it a “terrorist treat”. Better yet, the sixth-grader who was facing a year’s suspension for bring a kitchen knife to school because his science project required an onion to be cut.
Sometimes it really makes me wonder what is going through these educators’ minds when they see a list of what is considered “dangerous”. Do they honestly think that small six-year-old who is drawing a picture of the teacher with stink marks is going to bring an AKA-47 assault riffle to school the next day? If there is fear in that much intensity, where as a teacher, you can remember at that age when you were doing the same exact thing, I would not bother coming in anymore. Kids will be kids, and clamping down on children who make serious death threats is vital. But since the purpose of "zero tolerance" is to relieve teachers and administrators of the responsibility of making any judgments at all, the idea needs to be reorganized. Outrages are not anecdotal anymore: They are epidemic.