There s a disturbing wave of violence against teachers in the nation s largest school district. According to United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, student assaults in New York City against teachers have risen by a dramatic 26% this year alone, from 690 at this time last year to 869 this year. Even worse, assaults by elementary school students have risen a whopping 53%, from 254 to 388 incidents. Every assault against a teacher is unacceptable, but some cited by Ms. Weingarten have been positively horrifying: witness the 6-year old who hit two teachers and a social worker over the head with a chair as they sought to prevent him from strangling one of his peers. Yet police statistics are way at odds with the union stats, largely because schools don t always report these incidents to the police, but deal with them internally. Mayor Bloomberg is reporting a 6% drop in school crime over this same period.