Yes, Schools Are Replacing Consequences with Restorative Practices — No, It's Not Working
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder confirms what many educators experience daily: schools are systematically replacing discipline consequences with restorative practices, and it's failing.
Key Takeaways
- This is happening everywhere - Schools across the country are eliminating consequences in favor of restorative approaches
- It's not working - Violence, disruption, and teacher turnover are increasing in schools that have made this switch
- Both are needed - Restorative practices can complement consequences but cannot replace them
Transcript
So a lot of people have said I have restorative practices wrong, that what's happening in schools that I'm describing is not what restorative practices should really be all about.
And I recognize that restorative practices have a long history outside of education.
What I'm talking about specifically is the use of restorative practices instead of progressive discipline.
In schools, you know, when a student gets sent to the office, trying to handle that with restorative practices instead of progressive discipline, when it is a discipline situation, does not work well.
And the reason we know this is because thousands of schools in multiple states, many states, probably schools all around the country, but in some states by law, have been experimenting with restorative practices for years now.
And I shared in my previous video on this that we knew as early as 2019 that this was not working.
And we've gotten thousands of comments now on my videos about restorative practices as a replacement for progressive discipline.
And not a single person has said, Hey, we're doing this in my school and it's working well.
What a lot of people have said is I believe in this.
Oh no, this is such a good thing.
I believe in it.
And if you want to believe in it, great.
My question is where are the schools where this is working well as a replacement for progressive discipline?
I don't think there are any, I would love to hear from you if this is working well in your school.
But I'm gonna tell you in advance, I'm on guard.
I'm watching out for cases where the evidence that it's working is a reduced suspension rate, because here's what's happening.
Schools are adopting restorative practices in order to get their suspension rate down, but then they're fudging the numbers by also prohibiting suspension.
And if you ban suspension, it's not too much of a surprise that your suspensions are gonna go down.
The real test is, does it improve behavior?
Does it improve the learning environment?
And that's how we know if it's a suitable replacement, right?
Like I would love to eliminate consequences that take students away from learning or cost money to implement or disruptive in some way.
If there was some kind of magic wand we could wave and solve that problem some other way, like that's, that's very appealing.
I like that idea, but I think we have to not be naive about this and act like it's working when we know it's not.
And I think the people that I trust more than anyone else to say whether it's working, are not the central office administrators who are collecting data.
They're not the state legislators who are passing mandates that we not suspend kids.
The people I trust the most to say whether it's working or not are teachers.
And teachers have been saying over and over and over again, this is not working.
We got rid of suspension and behavior got worse.
We got rid of consequences and behavior got worse.
A lot of people are asking like, what should we do instead of restorative practices?
I think it's pretty simple.
I think we go back to the consequences that have always worked.
One of them is suspension.
I've got an article on suspension if you want to hear my full argument on that at principalcenter.com slash suspension.
But let me know what you think.
Are restorative practices working in your school as an approach to school discipline?