Throughout recorded history, slogans have been an important part of our public life. From political rhetoric and propaganda, to social movements and awareness-raising campaigns, their usage has overcome historical periods, cultural barriers, ethnic affiliation, political systems, party allegiance or personal taste. Arguably more than any other…

Zero tolerance policies in urban schools increased the disparities in urban school discipline for Black youth in comparison to white youth. Restorative interventions continue to be a popular response to deviant student behaviors; however, exploring the impact of restorative interventions in reducing harsh discipline on Black youth should be a…

Education is widely seen as a force for good, associated with hope and optimism about better individual and social futures. By contrast, and controversially, this paper argues that education and education policy in recent decades has been far from benign, as evidenced in the growing alienation of significant numbers of teachers and students and,…

Root causes of disproportionality in exclusionary discipline are multiply determined. Teachers' perceptions and implicit biases, enacted within the contexts of schools as racialised organisations, shape how educators interpret and respond to student behaviour. Focusing on the referral phase of the disciplinary process, this systematic review of…

Most studies of No-Excuses charter schools are distributive in nature. They answer a question of distributive justice: do these schools adequately close the academic achievement gap that exists in America between white and Black or Hispanic students? When discussion of No-Excuses schools is limited to their distributive worth, critics of…

This study sought to understand how state-level policies inform and promote the implementation of restorative justice in education (RJE). A content analysis of 60 laws revealed that definitions, structures, and supports varied greatly, causing us to question whether policies support a systematic implementation of RJE and how policies can prevent…

As protests flared in 2020, Black students took to Instagram to voice their experiences at 'no-excuses' Charter Management Organizations (CMOs). Such schools have presented a discourse of high achievement and social justice. Yet, in the span of a few weeks, hundreds of posts on Instagram offered rarely heard counter-narratives of the experience of…

From Colorado and Connecticut to Florida and Texas, school shootings have struck the U.S. education system. In response, there has been a proliferation of policies, programs, and practices to make schools safer. We term this phenomenon the fortification of schools. Fortification entails prioritizing and instituting various structures, resources,…

Research using school discipline and infraction data has contributed to public policy conversations by helping elucidate the effects of and disproportionate experience of school disciplinary outcomes. This research brief presents results from an analysis of the public availability of such data from state departments of education. Findings suggest…

Recent studies note how the US school reform movement is premised on a policy-making agenda that aims to redress what it sees as the complacent approach of educators who have, as reformers suggest, made poverty an excuse for low achievement levels in economically disadvantaged schools. An increasingly significant pedagogical approach employed to…

Student removal became an increasingly utilized form of discipline since the implementation of zero-tolerance policies during the early 1990s. Evaluative studies have consistently found negative relationships between student removal and academic success. Majority of cases regarding student removal are for minor and non-violent offenses and…

The criminalization of school discipline and its resulting consequences for students, particularly students of color, has been widely studied. While results from previous research have shown racial and gender differences in punitive school experiences like suspension, school-based arrest, and school-based referrals to juvenile justice systems,…

Long-term effects associated with the use of zero-tolerance policies and lack of restorative discipline strategies used with expelled students in a local Lower Rio Grande Valley school district revealed that students' lives were impacted negatively by educators who practiced a one-size-fits-all approach to school discipline. Marginalization of…

In the wake of increased behavioral issues in the peri- and post-COVID environment, schools have resorted to zero-tolerance policies that imposed uniform and predetermined punishments for even the slightest infraction. In this article, the authors argue that these policies represent a failure of imagination that installs punitive policies that do…

School violence, and particularly, school shootings, remain a serious concern among parents, community members, educators, and governmental leadership at the local, state, and national levels. While school shootings periodically dominate media coverage of school safety issues, schools are among the safest places for students in the community. This…