Restorative Practices, Discipline Disparities, and Racial Climate

• In Event: Perspectives on Racial Equity Practices: From Design to Impact

Abstract

Objectives: Literature consistently highlights the causes and consequences of school discipline disproportionality (Losen et al., 2015; Skiba et al., 2011). Levers to redress discipline disparities most often focus on state- or district-wide suspension bans and the adoption of restorative justice programs (Anderson & Ritter, 2017; Davison et al., 2022; Hashim et al., 2018a). These studies find significant reductions in overall discipline rates but not in discipline disparities, raising questions about whether these policies can alter schools’ discipline norms that produce racially disparate discipline outcomes. School racial climate may provide insights into schools’ discipline norms and why disproportionality persists despite reform efforts, as it describes individuals’ perceptions of race relations, racial fairness, racial treatment, and experiences of racism at school (Byrd, 2015; Golden et al., 2018). We seek to highlight how school racial climate must become a necessary target of initiatives to redress discipline disparities.

Perspectives: Our theory of action suggests that a more positive racial climate, particularly one about which students from all backgrounds share favorable perceptions, serves as a protective factor for students disproportionately targeted by inequitable discipline practices. We use a critical quantitative approach to hypothesize that discipline disparities will be less pronounced in schools with more positive racial climates and those that implement RP.

Data and Methods: This study uses administrative data on student demographics and disciplinary reports from four Michigan districts from 2021-22 to 2023-24. The independent variables include a series of binary indicators of the race of student i in school j in year t, with White as the reference group. The outcome is a binary measure indicating whether student i received a disciplinary consequence at least once in year t, explaining how much more or less likely students of color are to be disciplined relative to White students. Next, we explore how school racial climate is associated with the relationship between race and discipline using three years of a district student perception survey measuring school racial climate. We also explore the degree to which subgroup differences exist in perceptions of racial climate across and within schools, how any such differences are correlated with discipline disparities, and the degree to which they are moderated by restorative practices.

Findings: Preliminary findings show that White students regard the racial climates of their schools significantly more favorably than their peers and that differences between their perceptions and their peers' are larger when we look within school compared to between schools.. The magnitude of these racial climate differences increases with time. Our results also highlight disparities in who is disciplined, as Black and Hispanic students are significantly more likely to be disciplined than White students.

Significance: This paper examines overall and subgroup measures of school racial climate to highlight how educators can alter within-school practices and processes that form norms that redress discipline and school climate disparities through restorative practices. This work also adds an underexplored and student-focused lens into the possible operation of race, racism, and inequity in schools’ discipline norms.

Authors

• Jerome Graham, Michigan State University

• Kaitlin Anderson, American Institutes for Research

• Tasminda Dhaliwal, Michigan State University

• Dasmen Richards, Michigan State University

• Tiyanna Peterson, Michigan State University