Giving Compass' Take:

• Matt Barnum reports on a study that revealed restorative justice's role in successfully improving school safety, but black students' test scores were negatively impacted.

• The policies didn't help middle school students, according to the study. How can the practices be adjusted to properly respond to this age group?

• Learn more about restorative justice. 

In one Pittsburgh elementary school classroom, students started the day in a circle, explaining how they were feeling as others listened intently. Some were happy, but others were sleepy or sad.

“Let’s remember those who said they’re tired or frustrated so we can help them out today,” the teacher said in closing.

A similar ritual for a group of sixth-graders in another class didn’t go as well. Asked to share their week’s high and low points, students talked over each other. When the teacher shared her own low point, a student yelled, “I thought your low point would be teaching us every day.”

Those experiences mirror the mixed results of two dozen Pittsburgh schools’ move to new discipline policies known as restorative justice, according to a comprehensive study released last week. It appears to be the first randomized trial — the gold standard in social science research — of restorative justice in schools, a practice that has taken hold across the country.

The study finds that the move accomplished a key goal of school discipline reformers by reducing the number of days students were suspended, especially for black students.

Teachers also reported their school environments felt safer, rebutting critics who claim that reducing suspensions means chaos in the classroom. That was a key argument U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos used to back up her recent decision to revoke Obama-era rules aimed at curbing suspensions of students of color.

But Pittsburgh’s changes came with notable downsides, raising questions about the tradeoffs that come with new ways of addressing misbehavior.

The policies appear especially unhelpful in middle school grades, where they didn’t reduce suspension rates but did hurt test scores. The shift did not boost student learning on the whole, and black students in particular actually saw significant reductions in test scores.

Read the full article about the impacts of restorative justice by Matt Barnum at Chalkbeat.