The current case demonstrates the complexities of utilizing Youth Court as a restorative practice in an urban high school, by focusing on the complexities it presents for one student in particular. In this case, there are reasons why Youth Court clearly is not working at this particular school site as intended. However, more importantly for…

Drawing on data from a year-long multi-case ethnography of three secondary urban public schools implementing restorative practices, the current piece examines how principals negotiate restorative practices despite conflicting pressures to maintain order and compel obedience. I frame my inquiry through Sergiovanni's (2000) concept of…

Increasingly, district leaders are turning to a community-based alternative to suspension called restorative practices (RP's). While they correlate with lower suspension rates, Black, Latinx, and Native students continue to be more frequently and harshly disciplined than their White peers (Office of Civil Rights, 2014). The Kirwan Institute (2015)…

How can restorative justice, an increasingly common alternative to zero tolerance discipline, serve as an opportunity to both close the racial discipline gap and promote more critical awareness of structural inequality? Using Knight and Wadhwa's (2014) concept of critical restorative justice, I analyzed interviews with youth leaders and staff at…

Urban school leaders are under increasing pressure--in some cases, under threat of federal investigation (US Department of Education, 2014)--to use alternative models of non-punitive discipline, known generally as positive discipline practices such as restorative discipline (American Psychological Association, 2008; Anfinson, Autumn, Lehr,…

Restorative practices statistically replicate racial inequality in discipline, even while reducing overall school suspension rates and improving school climate. To understand why, the researcher conducted a year-long, multi-case ethnography examining restorative practices at three public secondary small schools in New York City. All three school…