Students Need Consequences, Not “Restorative Justice”

Jennifer Weber, Carolyn D. Gorman:

More than two decades ago, in 2003, Johanna Wald and Daniel Losen argued that suspensions and expulsions were funneling children—disproportionately black and Latino boys and students with disabilities—out of schools and into the justice system. They called it the “school-to-prison pipeline.” The phrase stuck, changing how schools discipline children.

Associating discipline with racism and diminished life prospects for minority youth, school districts increasingly responded by reducing suspensions and replacing them with mental health-oriented approaches like “restorative justice,” social-emotional learning, and “trauma-informed” practices. In Los Angeles, for example, the school board voted in 2013 to end suspensions for “willful defiance” after years of advocacy from CADRE, a Los Angeles parent organization, and the ACLU of Southern California. Similar reforms spread nationwide as educators and advocates viewed exclusionary discipline as the problem.