Trevor W. Gardner - Discipline Over Punishment: Successes and Struggles with Restorative Justice in Schools

Discipline Over Punishment

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham Boulder New York London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Gardner, Trevor, 1975- author.

Title: Discipline over punishment : successes and struggles with restorative justice in schools / Trevor Gardner.

Description: Lanham, Maryland : Rowman & Littlefield, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016023167 (print) | LCCN 2016032090 (ebook) | ISBN 9781475822250 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781475822267 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781475822274 (Electronic)

Subjects: LCSH: School discipline. | Restorative justice. | Problem youthEducation. | Problem youthBehavior modification.

Classification: LCC LB3012 .G37 2016 (print) | LCC LB3012 (ebook) | DDC 371.5dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016023167

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

This book is dedicated to my son, Omari, who keeps me grounded in the possibility and necessity of a more just and equitable world;
And to the students at Hilltop High School (San Francisco), Thurgood Marshall Academic High School (San Francisco), East Oakland Community High School, City Arts and Tech High School (San Francisco), Envision Academy (Oakland), and ARISE High School (Oakland) who have taught me more than I could ever teach them about education, justice, humanity, and our way forward.

The book you are about to read is a meditation on years of dedicated classroom practice. It is a reflection on the limitations of prevailing modes of discipline policies ushered in by the siren call for school safety and zero tolerance. The gap between the promise of safe schools and the life-altering consequences, for some of our most vulnerable students, is vast. These policies have revealed themselves to be an utter failure, making schools a less than safe space for many. Upon closer scrutiny, the very laws designed to protect children from violence have been a form of violence themselves, systematically revoking educational rights and opportunities, in most cases for little more than making an adult angry or defying their authority rather than committing crimes that endanger their classmates or school community.

This text is also a call to the community of educators, dream keepers, policy makers, and others to help imagine beyond our current crisis to envision a school system that is just in design and practice. One that values and cultivates the talents, interests, and innate brilliance of each and every child who walks through the schoolroom doors. It is a declaration that we can no longer countenance the systematic disenfranchisement of significant portions of our student population, our emerging majority. Enough is enough. We can do better; we have to do better.

Why restorative justice practices and why now? Restorative justice practices are nothing new; in fact, elements of these practices can be traced back to ancient times. They are currently gaining greater visibility, as increasing numbers of educational institutions are scrambling to identify and adopt more effective models for addressing issues of discipline and a healthy school climate. With scant evidence that zero tolerance approaches to school discipline actually deliver safer or drug-free environments, and mounting evidence that these practices are in fact discriminatory in outcome, there are additional incentives to alter policy and practice (Skiba et al. 2006; Skiba and Knesting 2014; Krisberg 2005; Fabelo et al. 2011). The real threat of lawsuits also makes these approaches more attractive.

After decades of get-tough policies, the pendulum seems to be swinging in the opposite direction. Some of this may simply be the vagaries of change, the episodic redirection in the cycles of school reform, but we would be remiss not to recognize the growing national confrontation with our legal system. An increasingly diverse legion of activists and concerned citizens are in the streets responding to police violence in communities of color. The killing of young black and brown bodies, seemingly too many to remember, seems endless and unrelenting. Many people have grown tired of the lack of legal accountability for the law enforcement agents and vigilante citizens who continue to surveil, control, and violate communities of color. The words, To Protect and Serve, fall deaf on too many ears.

The emergence of critical texts, like The New Jim Crow, Between the World and Me, States of Delinquency, and the reemergence of classics such as The Child Savers and others have sparked a larger national conversation about fairness and justice. Research studies and investigations, such as the Ferguson report, suggest the racialized patterns of impact are in many respects extensions of past practices gussied up to be more palatable, but ultimately designed to deliver the same results. Revelations of patterns of prison sterilization and human-created catastrophes like the Flint, Michigan, water crisis remind us that the journey toward a truly inclusive and functional interracial democracy is ongoing.

The emergence of social media, the prevalence of handheld recording devices, and a growing presence of in-place surveillance cameras have allowed the average citizen and, in particular, disenfranchised communities to become producers of their own media. New avenues to curate and present alternative perspectives and imagery of lived experiences, too frequently denied or discounted in the mass media, have provided enhanced voice, visibility, and credibility.

In the critical race theory tradition of legal story telling, these new media tools democratize the opportunities to introduce alternative and counternarrative. Stories that demonstrate cries for justice are born out of lived injustice. Experiences that many Americans have been able to shelter from and ignore are more difficult to discount.

The demographic transformation of our nation also contributes to calls for reform. Indeed, it ensures this chorus for justice will continue. The current moment is ripe with possibility; there is real potential of developing coalitions across communities often at odds with each other. The emergence of movements like Occupy, #Blacklivesmatter, and similar organizations speaks directly to these possibilities. The very emergence of counter and alternative historical narratives make clear our histories are intertwined, as is our destiny.

To pique our sense of possibility and imagination, it might be useful to consider the reformation of school discipline policies as an act of transitional justice. Transitional justice refers to the set of judicial and nonjudicial measures that have been implemented by different countries in order to redress the legacies of massive human rights abuses. Many of the measures used in such processes attend to developing a comprehensive accounting of the events and factors that shaped the patterns of abuse. Among the goals most germane to implementing restorative justice practices in schools are halting ongoing abuses, preventing future abuses, preserving and enhancing peace, and promoting individual and national reconciliation.