A decade ago, the Youth Study Center -- New Orleans’ troubled juvenile detention facility -- would have been unlikely to attract an educational trailblazer.

The roughly 40 teenagers held in the flood-damaged center rarely made it to classes because they were often on lockdown 23 hours a day. The staff had a reputation for incompetence. The building was plagued with bugs and mold.

But this summer, the Orleans Parish School Board turned over operation of the school to the national nonprofit Center for Educational Excellence in Alternative Settings, which is known for its work tackling the academic deficits faced by juvenile delinquents.

A Massachusetts high school that educates teenagers addicted to heroin, alcohol, and prescription drugs has spent the past year teaching them how to stay alive.

“Treat people like dirt, and they will be dirt. Treat them like human beings, and they will act like human beings.”

The creation of the juvenile court was a spectacular triumph of the progressive movement in the late 19th century. Advocating for a separate legal process was a bold statement about the developmental differences between adult and adolescents and, consequently, the mitigated culpability of youth who commit crimes...

Juvenile courts thus began under the legal precedent of parens patriae (parent of the nation); the same precedent that allows the state to remove abused and neglected children from their homes.