Keep them away from bad company? Hard problem if many kids are bad company.

Perhaps a hard problem in some theoretical world where we have tried and failed. But we don't even try, what we do instead is tend to try to contain in a very rough way the poor in one place.

In New York City, you are not allowed, essentially, to take disruptive influences out of your classroom. Indeed, if they self-select to not show up, truancy officers will go and bring as many of them back to disrupt the schools as possible.

It would be TRIVIAL to start removing bad company from classrooms in most real public situations. All you would have to do is actually say you were going to do it and start doing it, the low hanging fruit here is rotting on the branches where they are pulled by the weight of the fruit down to the ground.