Racial discrimination story, anarchy in a middle school

This is a very disturbing story on many levels. It is not only disturbing for the abuse that this teacher suffered, but also because her students' behavior was excused because it was part of their black culture. I suppose that it is that second part that bothers me by far the most. I don't think that we do kids any favors by excusing this type of behavior by simply saying this is the culture that they live in at home. If these kids are going to be able to function in the world as adults, they must learn what the boundaries of appropriate behavior are. You can watch a news clip of the story here.

I was also surprised that this teacher's middle school students were primarily 14, 15, and 16 with some 13 year olds. Even if the middle school goes up to 9th grade, these events apparently happened in the fall so a lot of 15 and 16 year olds were just starting 9th grade. The one document that I found indicated that middle school only goes to eighth grade.