By Claudia Rowe, THE SEATTLE TIMES, February 2015
SEATTLE — After a decade in classrooms, cheering on young people and believing in their progress, David Levine’s faith finally wilted. Three of his top students had walked into the front office at Big Picture High School reeking of marijuana at the precise moment a donor stopped by with a $1,000 grant for new sound equipment.
Years ago, Levine might have recommended suspension for each young woman. Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time, went his general thinking.
But discipline at Big Picture, in Burien, Wash., has changed. In the process, its teachers have, too.
Rule-breaking now is treated as harm done to a relationship — in this case, the one between Levine and his students — rather than a reason to mete out punishment.
Levine sat face to face with each of the three smokers, explaining what it felt like to have his trust violated. He read them testimony from other teachers, who spoke of their belief in the young women — how they had a chance to go to college, build careers, leave their difficult family lives behind.
By the end of her hourlong conference, 18-year-old Monae Trevino was weeping.
Afterward, she signed a contract setting out ways to make amends: by leading three student discussions on questions surrounding drug use, each of which meant significant research, reading two works of college-level literature and writing a related essay.
“It’s a lot harder than a regular suspension,” said Trevino, who had been kicked off campus multiple times at other, more conventional schools. “You can’t run from anything, and to have people talking good about you, telling you they’re truly disappointed — it hurts. It was kind of overwhelming, actually.”
Trevino’s conference was part of a practice known as restorative justice. The approach has been embraced elsewhere — not just at small schools such as Big Picture, but also across entire urban districts — as awareness grows that suspending kids often does more harm than good.
New research correlates typical zero-tolerance punishment with lower academic outcomes overall, even for kids who never step out of line. Further, the vast majority of suspensions are leveled against students of color, who come back to class more behind and less engaged than ever.
San Francisco public schools began widespread use of restorative practices four years ago. Suspensions have fallen
49 percent.
At an elementary-middle school in Baltimore, office referrals all but vanished in five years.
In Denver, academic achievement climbed steadily after the district switched to a restorative approach in 2006.
So far, such results — mirrored in San Antonio, Chicago and Philadelphia — count only as intriguing case studies. But they have prompted enough interest that random control trials, considered the gold standard for proof of success, are underway in several states.
Restorative justice requires costly training, a significant investment of time and the willingness of teachers to cede some of their authority.
Instead of being sent to the principal’s office, disruptive kids are scheduled for in-depth conferences. To keep everyone honest, a circle of advocates for each party watches, listening as both share their perspective on what happened and why.
“There’s definitely a new level of vulnerability for the teacher,” said Matthew Imperato, who coaches educators in San Francisco on using the approach. “They have to give up a little bit of their power.”
The strategy is an updated version of Maori tribal tradition that treats rule-breaking as damage to community bonds and seeks redress in the form of repair. It has been used extensively in schools overseas.
But not until American educators began searching for ways to stem suspensions did restorative justice take hold in the United States.
Last year, 3 million students were sent home, adding up to a staggering loss of instructional time just as government and business leaders are clamoring for better academic performance.
San Francisco, which educates 57,000 students, spends about $900,000 a year on training, coordinators and other expenses related to the restorative approach.
Even there, the effort is not unanimously embraced. Teachers pressured to cover vast amounts of material in preparation for state tests have been skeptical of the time required.
Similar concerns are heard about Big Picture. But students do as well, or better, than the district average in reading, writing and science. And when judged on discipline, the school has been transformed.
Four years ago, before restorative justice became the norm, Principal Loren Demeroutis assigned 700 days of suspension. This year, there have been eight.
“It’s true, teachers and principals don’t have time for any of the billion things we’re supposed to be doing, so you have to make choices,” he said. “In the long run, these practices actually save time.”
Trevino and her friends each had to acknowledge — in front of Levine and a circle of advocates — how her decision to use drugs affected the broader school community. It rattled one girl so much that she stormed out of the room.
Nationally, students of color are suspended three times more often than whites — for the same offenses. Seattle has been under federal investigation for this pattern since 2012.
But the talk-it-through approach fundamental to restorative justice appears to make a dent in those figures. In Denver, the discipline gap between black and white students narrowed by 4 percentage points after several years of using the practice. San Francisco is starting to see similar results.
“Why do you think more black students are getting kicked out than everybody else?” Imperato, the San Francisco coach, often asks his colleagues. “It can’t be that every black kid doesn’t know how to behave.
“It might be that we don’t understand their behavior as well as we need to, to teach them.”
Those who have watched restorative justice at work often use terms like culture change or paradigm shift. Less discussed is the link to academic achievement and the way patterns set in school play out later through a host of societal ills.
But that connection was clear in Baltimore. In 2008, Superintendent Andres Alonso told city leaders that crime and unemployment were both connected to school discipline.
“Reform discipline and I can guarantee you that we’ll start turning the dial on these other things,” he said, according to the recollection of Tisha Edwards, who was his assistant and eventually took the superintendent’s job.
Seven years later, suspensions are down, and achievement and graduation rates are up.
A month ago, Levine was flummoxed at the idea of writing a college recommendation for Trevino after she walked into school high. What could he say? How would he explain a punishment for drug use?
Now the idea inspires him. He’ll talk about Trevino’s ability to lead discussion groups, do research and read college-level literature — all of which came out of her restorative-justice contract.
“It’s a way,” he said, “to turn the most negative thing into possibly the most positive thing you’ve ever done in school.”
