Education experts blasted a recent Department of Justice directive, which they say seems to advocate a racial quota system for punishing school kids for such transgressions as being late or chewing gum in class.

The memo, jointly released by the departments of Justice and Education on Wednesday, urges public schools to ditch so-called “zero tolerance” policies the feds claim disproportionately affect minority students. The letter, which was sent to all public schools, said even well-intentioned policies are discriminatory if they end up being applied in greater proportion to minority children.

“Schools … violate Federal law when they evenhandedly implement facially neutral policies and practices that, although not adopted with the intent to discriminate, nonetheless have an unjustified effect of discriminating against students on the basis of race,” read the letter. “Examples of policies that can raise disparate impact concerns include policies that impose mandatory suspension, expulsion, or citation (e.g., ticketing or other fines or summonses) upon any student who commits a specified offense — such as being tardy to class, being in possession of a cellular phone, being found insubordinate, acting out, or not wearing the proper school uniform.”

Experts interviewed by FoxNews.com said punishments should be meted out to school kids who break the rules – without regard to their race. And some say that if minority children are more likely to violate school rules, then going easy on them for disrupting class will only hurt their better-behaved classmates – who are also likely to be minorities.

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