Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Panel: From Exclusionary School Discipline to Restorative Policies

(Education)

School discipline has increasingly become an issue for policymakers and practitioners alike; however, the research on exclusionary discipline has generally focused on disparate rates of such discipline and the outcomes associated with experiencing such discipline. Utilizing both quantitative and qualitative methods, the papers in this panel expand the research on school discipline by exploring the larger policy and contextual contributors to school discipline and the implementation of recent moves towards restorative practices. The first paper in the panel uses data from multiple iterations of the Schools and Staffing Survey to explore the perceived influence of stakeholders such as state policymakers, district leaders, school principals, teachers, and parents over setting discipline policy. The distribution of influence is compared across school demographics, urbanicity, and across school types. The author finds that principals consistently rate themselves and teachers as the most influential actors on discipline policy and that this influence has increased over the last two decades. Significant differences in autonomy are found between charter and traditional schools. The second paper explores the intersections of neighborhood gentrification with racially disparate rates of discipline in schools. Drawing on national data from the Civil Rights Data Collection and the American Community Survey, the author finds that suspension rates for white and Hispanic students are unrelated to patterns of gentrification. Black students, however, experience some benefit from gentrification, being suspended and expelled less frequently than similar peers attending schools in potentially gentrifying communities that did not experience rapid demographic transformation. The third paper in the panel examines the level of institutionalization of restorative justice (RJ) practices within Chicago Public High Schools (CPS), based on partnerships between community-based organizations (CBOs) and high schools. Using a qualitative comparative case study research design, through interviews with CBO staff, CPS central office officials and multiple school personnel within each school, the author’s findings highlight that schools, irrespective of their type of partnership, appear to be implementing RJ as more of an innovation (program) compared to a logic (deeper infusion). This underscores the major constraints schools are operating under such as budget cuts, minimal training, staff retention and leadership changes. The fourth paper in the panel explores the perspectives of educators tasked with implementing restorative justice practices. The study uses data from a set of semi-structured interviews with educators and restorative justice professionals working in three urban public high schools, each implementing restorative justice practices to differing degrees. Findings suggest that many educators retain substantially incomplete notions of what RJP entail. Additionally, findings identify sources of these misapprehensions, such as changes in RJP over time. The participants in this panel reflect a range of different institutional affiliations while also including both faculty and graduate students. Participants are also diverse with regard to gender and race as well as methodological approach. Two discussants, one an academic with expertise in the area of discipline and the other a teacher in a large urban school district have agreed to serve on the panel.