Guest MINDSETTER™ Kinte Howe: Restorative Justice Needed in Providence Schools
Guest MINDSETTER™ Kinte Howe
Guest MINDSETTER™ Kinte Howe: Restorative Justice Needed in Providence Schools
The punitive disciplinary practices that are used in many of our state’s schools are counter-productive to what they are actually design to do. Rather than help students improve their behavior, they often push students not to come to school at all. Punitive disciplinary practices like harsh consequences for wearing a hat, giving detention for arriving at school late, or regularly suspending students for small infractions like not going to detention do nothing to correct students’ behavior. All these practices do is ignite a fire of defiance in a student and increase absenteeism, already a major problem across the state.
And worse than that, recent research by the ACLU has shown that punitive discipline practices are used in discriminatory ways across the state, with African American males like myself suspended at much high rates than our peers. I myself was actually targeted because I forgot to take off my hat one day, even though I am a strong student.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTThese punitive disciplinary practices have a very negative effect on school culture, which is really a problem since having a positive school culture has been shown to be a factor in having students actually attend school.
We need a new system that will help empower our youth to improve their behavior and reflect on their actions. That system is called Restorative Practices, also known as Restorative Justice. Restorative Practices get the teachers, parents, administration, and even students involved in the issue of helping restore a student to the right track. I experienced Restorative Practices when I was a student at Highlander Charter School. When a student would misbehave, they were sent to a room with an adult who helped to get to the bottom of why they misbehaved, and gave them extra support if it was needed. They were also given a chance to sit down with this adult and the teacher and tell them from their own perspective why they misbehaved, and also hear from the teacher why what they did was wrong. This kind of practice actually helps teachers get to know their students on a more personal level and allows a student a chance to voice their opinion, which helps avoid the overbearing feeling that teachers have more power than students.
Instead of just suspending two students who had a fight, who would then return to school even angrier at each other, they worked to mediate the situation and resolve the conflict. Restorative Practices is a way to correct a student’s behavior without having to harshly punish them and send them running from the school.
Restorative Practices are something we need in our schools today! No longer can we just send students to the principal’s office and suspend them just because they were late a certain amount of times or didn't go to detention. The schools need to start trying to get to know their students and improve the climate in the schools, which is a huge factor in attendance and graduation rates. At Central Falls High School, Restorative Practices have been in place, and the graduation rate increased from 58% to 70% in just one year.
When schools use “No Tolerance” policies that often target students, they set up an environment that students like me don’t want to be in. Students will not come to school if they aren't welcomed into a healthy school climate in which they have a stake in how the school is run. Students should be included in school and district level committees in framing effective discipline policies.
RI Experts on the Biggest Issues Facing Public Education
Sasse
"Provide a state constitutional guarantee that all children will have access to an education that will prepare them to meet high performance standards and be successful adults.
Bridge the gap between the educational achievement of majority and minority students. This will require the implementation of a comprehensive agenda for quality education in Rhode Island’s inner cities."
Sasse
"Revisit school governance and clearly define the roles and responsibilities of the state, school districts , neighborhood schools, and school teachers and school administrators. Develop and implement a system to hold schools responsible for student outcomes."
Sasse
"Build a consensus and buy in of all stakeholders around the education reform initiatives being advanced by the Board of Education."
Metcalfe
"Set high expectations and raise our standards across the state for anyone that contributes to the success of our students. From adopting the Common Core to discussing rigorous teacher evaluations, conversations around creating a culture of high expectations have to be at the center of the work."
Metcalfe
"Expand opportunities and start earlier - we must ensure that all kids have access to a high performing public school of their choice, which includes full-day kindergarten."
Metcalfe
"School facilities - with an aging infrastructure, underutilized buildings and the need to provide fair funding for school facilities for all public school students regardless of the public school they attend, this needs to be a top issue tackled by the RI General Assembly in 2014."
Cano-Morales
"Meet the academic potential of all students but especially with regards to urban schools students -- 3 out of 4 are Latinos in Providence, Central Falls, and Pawtucket."
Cano-Morales
"Connect through specific best practices the academic successes of our students to careers jobs. Investing in schools is economic development as a whole for Rhode Island. "
Cano-Morales
"Increase the access to -- and completion of -- higher education and post- secondary opportunities. Poverty? Struggling families? Education and access to careers and competitive wages is the best antidote."
Duffy
"Providing adequate funding is critical -- and there are going to be pressures on the state budget, which mean stresses to meet the education funding formula. With the predictions of the state's projected loss of revenue with the casinos in MA, education funding could be on the cutting board, and we need to ensure that it's not. Do we need to look at strengthening the language of the constitution to guarantee funding?"
Duffy
"Implementing the common core standards will provide continuity -- and comparison -- between states now. With over 40 states involved, we're embarking a new set of standards here."
Duffy
"Accountability and assessing student performance -- how that it's driven by the common core, we'll be able to compare the best districts in RI against the best districts in say MA. That's the intent of the Common Core is a standardization of how we hold the system accountable."
Cylke
"Issue one is quality. Your quality of education should not be dependent on your zip code. And the reality is, certain cities are distressed, or whose property values are not as high, I know each town has a different capacity to fund education. There's an absolute, clear relationship between the quality of public schools, and economic development of states. There's irrefutable evidence that quality public schools can make states more competitive."
Cylke
"Issue two is equality. In West Warwick and Providence, the per pupil spending is around $16K. In Pawtucket it's $12.9. What's wrong with that picture? If I'm in charge of overseeing that my students are college ready, they need to be adequate funding. A difference of $3000 per pupil? We're talking in the tens of millions of dollars -- more like $25 million in this case. An exemplary school district is Montgomery County, MD -- they have roughly the same number of students, around 145,000 -- there's one funding figure per pupil. There's equitable funding for all kids."
Cylke
"Issue three is Infrastructure. A critical issue is whether the state is going to lift its moratorium in 2014 for renovations for older schools, ore new construction. If that moratorium is not lifted, and those funds are not available, it is critical to us here in Pawtucket. The average of my schools is 66 years, I've got 3 that celebrate 100 years this year. These old schools have good bones, but they need to be maintained. These are assets -- and this is all interrelated with the funding formula."
