Parent Defending Education has a new report and a warning “about the widespread adoption of “restorative justice” disciplinary practices at schools, saying that the new policies may lead to dangerous and disruptive classrooms.”
With the massive increase in school districts using Restorative Justice/Restorative Practices coupled with the unprecedented behavioral chaos being seen in schools, we have begun to track the school districts that use “Restorative Justice” or “Restorative Practices” as an official part of their discipline policy and/or code of conduct.
New Hampshire is in the report, but only one school publicly promotes restorative justice as a discipline policy. Manchester. In the section titled LEVELS OF INTERVENTIONS/ SANCTIONS, Restorative Conference is listed as a response to the first three levels of conflict. What is a Restorative Conference?
“Restorative justice is a philosophy for student discipline where reconciliation between the offender and the victim is the ultimate goal,” the report explained. “In many school districts, restorative justice has REPLACED exclusionary discipline in schools, so the response to a violent action in class is not a suspension or expulsion, but to clear the classroom and have a restorative conference.”
According to Parents Defending Education, it is making matters worse.
“Restorative justice has proven to be a disaster for school safety and school culture,” Erika Sanzi, the director of outreach for Parents Defending Education, told The Daily Wire. “Are there minor infractions for which it can work? Sure. But in an effort to juke the discipline statistics and feel good about themselves, school districts have allowed their schools to get out of control in terms of defiance, disruption and even violence. It can’t continue.”
We’ve reported on numerous incidents in New Hampshire schools where, despite state, local, and district anti-bullying policies, students get harassed and even assaulted, with schools doing little or nothing, whether that includes punishing the victim. The result is an escalating culture of violence and disrespect at institutions that do not want children to go anywhere else.
Billy, just beat your ass. How about we sit down and share our feelings?
Teachers are often helpless to control kids, and kids know it. The result is that students and faculty are in harm’s way, and based on the videos on the internet, they are harmed before any meaningful action is taken to protect anyone but the perpetrators.
Ultimately, everyone has suffered through this for almost nothing, given the declining proficiency scores in many districts.
The public school experiment is a failure, but one so well funded and lawyered up that fixing it no longer seems possible if you happen to be someone who thinks it can or should be saved. Instead, it needs to be starved, first of attention and then funding. The first is not as easy as it sounds (paradigms and all that), and the last seems almost impossible, but nothing worth doing was ever easy.
