“Positive Discipline Doesn’t Sound Like Discipline”: Experiences with Restorative Justice Implementation

ABSTRACT

Restorative justice is an increasingly common discipline policy, as schools grapple with historic inequities in traditional exclusionary discipline. This mixed-methods study examines the implementation of restorative justice in 28 intentionally diverse charter schools in five jurisdictions in the U.S. Qualitative findings suggest a range of factors at play during implementation including capacity, buy-in and how intent is interpreted. They are reflected in our quantitative results where we find that suspension rates in the sample schools are lower in only three out of five jurisdictions and that reductions may serve to decrease racial/ethnic gaps in only two out of five jurisdictions.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The Diverse Charter Schools Coalition, created in 2014, is a membership organization for charter schools deemed diverse by design based on a review of documents from the nominated charter school including mission statement, diversity data, goals and strategies (e.g., student enrollment preferences and family outreach strategies).

2. This paper is part of a larger study that examined a wide range of practices and outcomes among intentionally diverse charter schools, including student recruitment, teacher professional development, education program, teacher recruitment, and academic outcomes. The data reported here is limited to data related to student discipline practices and outcomes.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Walton Family Foundation [2017-1213].