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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]John McWhorter is right in his new book. Any questioning of dei efforts in school is to be met by the chiding of woke scold white allies who squelch dissent from their world view. It’s as if questioning restorative justice, or its impact on preventing or mitigating bullying, is itself a racist act these days. Enjoy the coming push back as people slowly understand that free speech is under threat. The continued infantalization of a broad segment of the population with pandering, condescending “equity” polices will have inverse consequences. Parents will leave public schools if they’re kids are guineas pigs to poorly proven restorative justice programs. They’ll also leave if their children’s class rigor is being diluted in the name fairness. You all seem to have drunk the koolaid. It was only poured in the last few years, and if anyone doesn’t want to drink it, or questions what’s in it, you appear to want them shunned or shamed. Look at the pushback. Look at Virginia polls. It’s not just a bunch of white supremacists scared of slavery talk. It’s parents saying “what the fk are these people doing? Are they going to teach? Or are they going to implement questionable educational polices that lower the bar and make our kids less safe”. So get outside your little arrogant bubbles and actually see things objectively.[/quote]

I'm sorry you feel this way. I hope you can find time to go back through the thread - I feel like many of these concerns were addressed, but happy to respond to any specific worries if you have a particular concern.[/quote]

They weren’t addressed. You threw out a claim to have educational credentials and that your controversial theories were sound because you assert they are sound. The needle has not moved an inch and everyone is still waiting to learn how restorative justice is beneficial.[/quote]

There are a pretty good set of experiential examples that I thought backed up the theoretical practices I diagrammed. Please let me know if you'd like an example of how RJ looks in a situation and I can share my experiences. Happy to help talk through concerns![/quote]

There are many studies outlining the challenges of RJ actually working in schools:

https://hechingerreport.org/the-promise-of-restorative-justice-starts-to-falter-under-rigorous-research/

This was particularly concerning:

The academic performance of middle schoolers actually worsened at schools that tried restorative justice. Math test scores deteriorated for black students in particular.
The number of student arrests was similar at both treatment and control schools. That suggests the restorative justice experiment wasn’t doing much to alleviate the school-to-prison pipeline.

There's a lot of $$ being made by Restorative Justice consultants however. [/quote]

Thank you for sharing the article! It was really interesting and gave me a chance to reflect on my own practice. I am pulling a few things out that I think are important from that study, which comes to a different conclusion than you originally stated.

[i]"The biggest insight from the Maine study was how hard it is for schools to implement restorative justice even after days of teacher training, monthly consultations and visits by coaches. Students’ survey answers revealed that they didn’t experience very much restorative justice in their day-to-day classrooms even after two years of effort.  Restorative justice also requires a high degree of student buy-in. Students cannot be forced to talk about their grievances face-to-face with their classroom enemies. It’s a voluntary process and not every kid wants to talk."[/i]
Much like how it is harder for a brain to learn new languages as you get older, it is the same with mindset around behavior and consequences. I am a big believer in starting these programs out in the PK years so that students have a common language and are building a skill set as they get older (which is when problems tend to become exacerbated). Since these programs are still in their infancy, these MS students were learning a brand new behavior management system, so it makes sense that it would be somewhat rejected

[i]"“It’s not like a suspension where you send a kid out, and [b]you’re done with it[/b],” he said. “With restorative practices, it’s a process. You actually have to sit down, get them in a circle and talk it through. It’s tough. That’s why you have coaches and coordinators. You need some training. You can’t just react.”[/i]
  Training for teachers is essential. I believe the article even referenced that some teachers were trying to implement pieces without a full understanding. I bolded the quote about how being given a suspension is being "done with it" because as soon as that kid comes back from suspension they will still need that restorative component, whether it is a re entry plan or a modified schedule. You can't just return suspended kids to class and pretend nothing happened

[i]"Huang says it’s far “too early” to say whether restorative justice works or doesn’t work in education. “All we have are these two studies now,” he said. In addition to Huang’s Brooklyn study, another study is underway by Center for Court Innovation, also in Brooklyn.

But researchers are already confronting some of the same problems in Brooklyn that the Maine researchers found: control group schools are doing some elements on their own while treatment schools can struggle to adopt the full soup-to-nuts program. That will make it hard to show scientific evidence for restorative justice. It’s like comparing the effectiveness of flossing between a person who agreed to floss every day but doesn’t and a person who didn’t commit to flossing but is doing it anyway.

Not only is restorative justice a challenge for schools to implement, it’s also a tricky thing for researchers to study because too many students and teachers make decisions that are beyond a researcher’s control."[/i]

I pulled this quote out because I think it is important to challenge our assumptions. It seems like you assumed this article declared that RJ is ineffective; I don't believe that is a fair conclusion based on the data I shared. I think that over time, as students begin to develop these skills as their brains are forming, it will be much easier to implement in their teenage years. Thanks again for sharing that article it was really interesting![/quote]

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