Restoring Power: Student and Adult Experiences with Restorative Practices

Background and Purpose:

Exclusionary school discipline practices such as suspensions and expulsions have increasingly drawn criticism for being harsh, unnecessary, detrimental to positive school climate, and subject to biased implementation. For example, Black students represent 27% of students referred to law enforcement nationwide, and 31% of students subjected to school-related arrests, even though they represent only 16% of school enrollment numbers. Exclusionary practices also affect school completion and college attendance rates: one suspension in the ninth grade is associated with a two-fold risk of dropout. Restorative practices are gaining national attention as a potential solution to high rates of disproportionate exclusionary discipline practices. The voices of students, however, are rarely part of school decisions about discipline or implementation. This study seeks to address this by including both student and faculty perspectives to answer the following questions: 1) How do various discipline approaches affect overall school climate? 2) What are the differences and similarities between these stakeholder experiences?

Methods:

This study uses a grounded theory approach with line-by-line gerund coding. It takes place in three selected schools: one K-8 charter school, one traditional high school charter, and one alternative setting high school charter. Each school was selected because they are currently implementing, or have recently implemented, restorative approaches and other alternatives to exclusionary discipline. This study includes a convenience sample of school administrators, counselors, social workers, general education and special education teachers, and students in the three New Orleans area schools. Most participating students identify as African American, which is reflective of the population of the schools. All study participants have experienced both zero-tolerance discipline and restorative practices.

Results:

Results show that student perspectives on school discipline policies and school climate differ from adult perspectives. Adult participants tend to favor restorative approaches for social emotional factors. However, they often prefer structured, traditional discipline practices for classroom management, revealing a desire to maintain existing power structures over students, even in higher grades. Many students feel powerless in either type of discipline system, and see little value in restorative approaches outside of school settings. Almost every participant heavily stresses the importance of relationships to school climate and behavior regulation. This suggests that the relationship-building aspects of restorative approaches can be positive factors in personal and academic growth.

Conclusions and Implications:

This study identifies similarities and differences between adult and student perspectives on various types of school discipline policies at selected charter schools in the New Orleans area. The preliminary results indicate that regardless of differences in school discipline preference, there is wide agreement that relationships are central to not only the success of school discipline efforts, but also to overall school climate. This has important implications for equity in education in several areas, including curriculum, hiring and retention, teacher education, and of course, school discipline policies. Future research would benefit students, school staff, and social workers in school settings by focusing on both student and adult perspectives on building, restoring, and transforming relationships to improve equity and justice.