I am shocked, shocked!

/obligatory

Sorry, apo, but doesn't "institutionalization" virtually imply abuses of authority, together with craven unwillingness to stand up to it?

/obligatory

My mother is a special ed. teacher in Massachusetts, and when I showed this to her she said she knew about the school that had special dispensation to use shock therapy (it was a "big deal" for them to get it in the first place), but she was shocked (ha ha!) to hear that they used it for punishment. She thought it was for extreme cases of self-destructive behavior in children too low-functioning to be helped by other treatment. The article is pretty vague but it sounds as if the former student who made the prank call knew that the night staff would go for it, so it certainly sounds like using the shocks as punishment is common practice there. (Or maybe the former student was just recreating the Milgram experiment.)

Anyway, one of the school's goals is to minimize psychotropic medication, so they should at least get credit for that.

Sorry, apo, but doesn't "institutionalization" virtually imply abuses of authority, together with craven unwillingness to stand up to it?

No, unless "virtually" is doing an awful lot of work in that sentence. In fact, I'm not really clear what you're suggesting.

The institution in question is a school "serving both high-functioning students with conduct, behavior, emotional, and/or psychiatric problems and low-functioning students with autistic-like behaviors". Clearly there's something seriously wrong there. But are you saying that institutions with such goals shouldn't exist? (I'm pretty sure your answer on this one can't be less regulation).

No easy answers, M/tch. But we should expect and anticipate problems like this.