Giving Compass' Take:

• School discipline reform across the United States has shown that aggressive discipline measures profoundly disrupt students' academic achievement and other less severe approaches (such as restorative justice) may also harm student success.  

• Teachers are another voice that is taken into account when analyzing the efficacy of school discipline reform. Many educators that have implemented changes do not believe that it works. How can educators utilize this evidence to move forward with education reform? What is the next direction, and how can funders help?

• Read about educators and classrooms that are shifting discipline standards. 

Last month, New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza announced that he would soon unveil further, sweeping changes to the discipline code of the nation’s largest school district.

This promises to be another big step in the wrong direction for the district’s 1.1 million students, given the data suggesting that his predecessor’s reforms to sharply curtail school suspensions have done substantial harm: from rising student perceptions of violence and disrespect, to a troubling rise in bullying, to a dramatic increase in teacher assaults, to a rise in violence and other indicators on state data, to the first killing in decades in a city school — to a local state legislator warning that students are fleeing public schools because of chaos in the classroom caused by a lack of discipline.

Given that Carranza expounds a philosophy that holds objectivity to be a key pillar of “white supremacy culture,” no amount of data is likely to shake his convictions. But hopefully other school leaders across America will take seriously the burgeoning evidence suggesting that limiting suspensions and implementing so-called restorative justice may be doing more harm than good.

Taken as a whole, the academic literature suggests that modest efforts to reduce suspensions may be pursued with minimal effect, that aggressive efforts pose a serious risk to academics and that restorative justice may exacerbate rather than ameliorate harm.

School and system leaders should, of course, take their bearings not only from academic studies but also from the perspective of teachers. Nationwide, a majority of educators express sympathy for the idea of discipline reform. But, as I’ve documented, teachers in school districts that implemented discipline reform under pressure from federal investigations do not believe it works.

Read the full article about school discipline reform by Max Eden at The 74.