Neoliberalism, after decades of reform, continues to steer educational policies around the world. As private enterprise encroaches public education, schools are held accountable, tangled up in an internationally competitive culture of achieving benchmarks that meet technically managed standards. Not only is it academic performance that is audited…

Problem behavior disrupts classrooms across the United States, impacting student learning. Despite the adverse consequences, teachers often exclude disruptive students from school as a punitive and default response to problem behavior. Alternatives to exclusion are becoming increasingly popular in many school districts to improve behavior and keep…

The use of exclusionary discipline practices in schools has continued to increase since the advent of Zero Tolerance discipline policies in the 1990s. Research indicates that these practices are largely ineffective in addressing behavior, and result in detrimental outcomes for students and communities. This study focused on the use of Disciplinary…

Removing students from the classroom and placing them in remote instruction for their behavior is an emerging form of discipline (Jones, 2020). The purpose of this brief is to describe this form of discipline, examine its implications and potential negative impacts, and provide guiding principles for improving behavior through evidence-based…

As advocates for children and youth with exceptionalities, the members of the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) are committed to ensuring a safe and positive climate in school and community settings. This requires elimination of any inherent biases school leaders, teachers, and other school personnel may hold and investing in policies and…

Since the incorporation of student chronic absenteeism rates into state school accountability systems after the passage of the "Every Student Succeeds Act," schools have adopted new practices to improve student attendance and decrease chronic absenteeism. Some of these practices borrow features from behavior management systems such as…

Research suggests that a cycle of misbehavior can escalate quickly from corrections over minor rule infractions to threats of serious disciplinary consequences. There is also evidence that Black youth may be especially at risk for these escalations due to subtle or implicit racial bias, or cultural mismatches that may lead teachers to believe that…

As many schools and school districts across the nation consider replacing traditional behavioral management strategies with restorative practices, this case asks the readers to consider the challenges a school leader may face when attempting to implement school-wide procedural change. In this case, a school leader faced with race-based discipline…

Tasked with ensuring that school environments are safe and orderly, school administrators spend an increasingly inordinate amount of time and energy on managing student discipline. Often, when students commit egregious behaviors or violate school policy, schools resort to out-of-school disciplinary consequences, i.e. suspension, expulsion, or…

Exclusionary and punitive school discipline policies, such as suspensions and expulsions, allow educators to remove students from the classroom for poor behavior or misconduct. However, emerging research suggests that these practices also increase the likelihood that students repeat grades, are excessively absent from school, drop out entirely…

The 2022 Legislature directed the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) to create an advisory workgroup with specific participants to report back on topics related to student isolation and seclusion. This legislative report provides a background on the workgroup, history of isolation and restraint, current practices in the state of…

Consensus among the majority of staff is essential for the development and consistent implementation of the Schoolwide Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (SWPBIS) framework. At the universal level, a shared vision reflects consensus regarding operational definitions of behaviors (rules) and consequences. Yet, decades of research indicate…

When considering the management of student behaviour issues, a substantial body of literature, as well as logical common sense, points to the advantages of whole school policy over the individual efforts of teachers. Less is known, however, about the direct or indirect role school leadership plays in the development of well-implemented whole…

As commonly understood, school discipline seeks to stop misbehavior, teach prosocial behavior, and motivate healthier decision making in the misbehaving student. In practice, the means to these ends often take a punitive path that fosters a self-protective posture, a sense of powerlessness, and a negative attitude that can contribute to an ongoing…

Our purpose herein is to demonstrate how restorative justice continues to unfold globally and we explain how the use of a restorative justice ideology and intervention leads to a common alternative, not only in criminal justice institutions, but also within social agencies, such as elementary schools, and the related social support systems. We…