To establish effective school discipline policies, educators must understand the nature of and reasons for misbehavior, social and legal attitudes toward the school's disciplinary function, acceptable responses to disciplinary problems, and the components of effective policies. This booklet's first chapter considers the need for discipline in schools and recent trends in student behavior and national concerns about violence. The second chapter examines the changing role of the school and the application of tort law, criminal law, parental responsibility law, state constitutional law in the school setting, and local initiatives for safe schools. Chapter 3 distinguishes between criminal and noncriminal behavior, reviews appropriate sanctions for each, and discusses the school's responsibility for keeping records and developing responses to patterns of misbehavior. The chapter also defines terms used to describe criminal acts. Chapter 4 presents 10 rules to follow when developing student-discipline regulations. The fifth chapter selects typical regulations from 713 secondary-school student handbooks to provide a model code of conduct. The special problems of disciplining students in special education are considered in the sixth chapter. The final chapter lists student handbooks from around the United States; books discussing student discipline; and relevant films, filmstrips, and videotapes. (LMI)