Regular readers know that school bullying is a big thing with me. I believe in swift and unsparing punishment for bullies. I believe that the right of students to go to school without being intimidated or harassed is one of the most important things to defend. When the Obama administration a few years ago announced an initiative at “restorative justice” — roughly, not suspending the poor misunderstood bullies, but treating them more kindly — I was skeptical. You don’t coddle sadists. In a 2014 “Dear Colleague” letter, the administration told schools that they were tired of seeing “disparate impact” of discipline for non-white kids — that is, disproportionate numbers of non-white kids being disciplined in schools — and that they had better bring those numbers down.

Turns out I was right to be skeptical. Excerpts:

Last week, the first randomized control trial study of “restorative justice” in a major urban district, Pittsburgh Public Schools, was published by the RAND Corporation.

The results were curiously mixed. Suspensions went down in elementary but not middle schools. Teachers reported improved school safety, professional environment, and classroom management ability. But students disagreed. They thought their teachers’ classroom management deteriorated, and that students in class were less respectful and supportive of each other; at a lower confidence interval, they reported bullying and more instructional time lost to disruption. And although restorative justice is billed as a way to fight the “school-to-prison pipeline,” it had no impact on student arrests.

The most troubling thing: There were significant and substantial negative effects on math achievement for middle school students, black students, and students in schools that are predominantly black.

This commenter, Max Eden, faults journalists and RAND for burying or even ignoring the bad news. More:

Restorative justice is frequently presented to teachers as “evidence-based” and on the cutting edge of “social justice” as something that works if they embrace it. Man’s capacity for self-deception cannot be discounted, and if teachers think they’re doing better even as students think things are getting worse, that would be consistent with the policy drama that has played out writ large over the last two years: In the face of increasingly overwhelming negative evidence, social justice education reformers have only grown more vociferous in their insistence that discipline reform works.

Right now, the tally of studies on the academic effects of discipline reform on school districts are three negative (Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Philadelphia) and one null/positive (Chicago). In terms of student surveys, my tally has four negative (NYC, Los Angeles, Washoe County, Seattle) and one negative/positive (Chicago). When it comes to local teacher surveys, I’ve seen eleven negative (Oklahoma City, Baton Rouge, Portland, Jackson, Denver, Syracuse, Santa Ana, Hillsborough, Madison, Charleston, Buffalo) and one positive (Pittsburgh).

Fortunately, now that President Trump has rescinded the 2014 school discipline “Dear Colleague” letter, school leaders can make policy based on the interests of their students, not based on fear of losing federal funding.

Here’s an amazing story about how “restorative justice” ruined Urban Assembly Wildlife, a Bronx school. Excerpts:

One student, who has transferred out of UA Wildlife, agreed to be quoted by name. Students and teachers said they wanted to set the record straight on McCree as well as on UA Wildlife, a once safe and supportive school that fell into chaos as new administrators implemented a supposedly more positive approach to school discipline.

This change was in line with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s campaign promise of putting city schools at the vanguard of a nationwide movement to unwind traditional discipline in favor of a new progressive, or restorative, approach. At UA Wildlife, meaningful consequences for misbehavior were eliminated, alternative approaches failed, and administrators responded to a rising tide of disorder and violence by sweeping the evidence under the rug, students and teachers said. If they had prioritized student safety over statistics, McCree’s teachers believe, he would still be alive. And they fear that the dynamics that destroyed UA Wildlife are playing out across New York City.

More:

A senior whom I’m calling Jeremy recalled that “sixth to eighth grade was honestly the best school years of my life. We had the best staff [and] the best students.” A former humanities teacher whom I’m calling Ms. Smith said, “The students respected us, they cared for us. They knew we cared for them. It was a very family environment.” There wasn’t a trace of the homophobia to come. According to a former humanities teacher whom I’m calling Ms. Hernandez, “Kids who were transgender or gay or lesbian were comfortable. It wasn’t a thing.”

But by the 2016-17 school year, Smith and most of the old faculty had fled. Only 19 percent of teachers said order was maintained and only 55 percent of students said they felt safe. Rumors of weapons were omnipresent, and fights were a matter of weekly, if not daily, routine.

How did conditions deteriorate so quickly?

The school passed from the leadership of Mr. Diaz, a no-nonsense disciplinarian, to Mr. Primus, a progressive squish. More:

But in the 2014-15 school year, a new leader, Latir Primus, took the helm. A probationary principal, Primus was under pressure to meet the expectation of his superiors, and, as Hernandez recalled, “when the superintendent was, like, ‘I don’t want the suspension rates,’ ” Primus followed orders. He boasted in UA Wildlife’s comprehensive education plan that the “school has low incidents of behavioral problems as evident in their suspension data.” But lower suspension data can be quite easily achieved by simply not enforcing rules.

As Hernandez said, “It comes down to rules. Where’s your line? Kids know where the line is. It was a free-for-all.” In Primus’s first year, she said, the “kids ruled.” There were “things that you were surprised to see because those were the kids in sixth grade who didn’t do that. Then their behavior changed.” A current UA Wildlife student whom I’ll call Deon agreed. “The school changed, because [a] situation would be handled right away before the new people came,” but “now, they just brush it off like nothing,” he said.

More:

The kids quickly realized that their teachers could get into trouble for getting them into trouble. In a video shot by Vasquez in his classroom that was viewed by The 74, two girls are standing in front of the class, talking loudly. When he asks them to return to their seats, one girl yells, “I’m gonna stand right here! You not tellin’ me nothing! Mr. Primus not tellin’ me nothing! None of them teachers tellin’ me nothing! So I’m gonna stand right there!” The other girl chimes in, “I’ll take you to court!”

And then Primus was replaced by a principal named Astrid Jacobo:

“If I could rewind, I would 10 times work under Primus again,” Vasquez said. “We had big discipline problems. But with Jacobo, everything was just clear chaos.”

“I remember one time, this was right when she started,” said a former STEM teacher I’m calling Mr. Garcia. “There was one student who was cursing in the hallway. Jacobo comes up very calmly, puts her hand on her shoulder, and says, ‘We don’t curse in this school.’ The girl yanked her shoulder away saying, ‘Get off me, bitch.’ She did that. Fine. What’s the result? Nothing. She didn’t get detention. Nothing.”

Because of that incident and others like it, according to Jeremy, “Nobody listened to Jacobo. She would threaten us at first with detention or suspension, and she wouldn’t do it. This caused students to ignore her.” Turnquest-Jones, who was assistant principal in Jacobo’s first year, recalled that students “cussed Miss Jacobo out from head to toe” without consequence.

And then a gay kid who was tired of being bullied pulled out a knife one day and stabbed his bully to death. Read the whole thing.

(H/T: Spotted Toad)