I taught at a private high school for one year.  One of my students plagiarized a huge chunk of an essay.  When I talked to my supervisor about it he said to punish her by giving her a &quot;B&quot;.  I eventually took it higher up and had it dealt with.  However, our end of term reports were all proofed by other faculty.  When I mentioned the plagiarism on an end of term report another teach redacted the word &quot;plagiarism&quot; and replaced it with &quot;the unfortunate incident&quot;.<p>On another occasion I had a student who was performing badly. Her mother called me at school and said I should have a talk with her daughter and &quot;say something nice to her&quot;.<p>Basically, I&#x27;ve seen the coddling on both ends, both from the parents and from the institution.  My best guess is that the institution (in this case funded by the parents) is responding to some pressure by the parents but also keeps in mind that current parents are future donors and you don&#x27;t want to damage that cash pipeline if at all possible.