States Returning to Traditional School Discipline Policies, Abandoning Restorative Justice

School discipline based on traditional notions of justice and common sense is increasingly returning to classrooms thanks to the Trump administration.

In April, President Donald Trump signed an executive order, “Reinstating Common Sense School Discipline Policies.”

The order’s purpose was to ensure that the “Federal Government will no longer tolerate known risks to children’s safety and well-being in the classroom that result from the application of school discipline based on discriminatory and unlawful ‘equity’ ideology.”

The order repudiated the Obama administration’s 2014 “Dear Colleague” letter that threatened schools with a Department of Justice investigation if their school discipline policies were found to be discriminatory under a disparate impact analysis.

These were the days before Ibram X. Kendi became the leading antiracism intellectual, but disparate impact essentially follows his rubric for what racism is. Disparate impact analysis considers racial discrepancies in policy outcomes to be evidence of racism regardless of intent.

In the case of schools, if black students were receiving more suspensions than white students, for instance, that could be seen as a violation of civil rights law according to President Barack Obama’s DOJ. The policy was ended by the first Trump administration but brought back under President Joe Biden.

The result under Obama and Biden was a disaster. Schools decided in many cases that disciplining troublemaking students was more trouble than it was worth if the federal government was going to come after them and cut off their funding.

As schools became lax on discipline, academic standards dropped. Teachers felt like they weren’t in control of classrooms. Students were increasingly at risk. Policies based on the Obama-era guidance may have directly contributed to the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida.

The situation was only exacerbated during the era of COVID-19 lockdowns. When students returned to class, discipline had further eroded, and many students slipped further behind. Good teachers quit, students reported feeling unsafe, and academic achievement plummeted.

It seems now that not only has the federal government made a drastic reversal, but momentum to move away from disparate impact analysis and “restorative justice” is increasing in the states.

The Wall Street Journal noted in early July that several states have responded to the Trump executive order—and the perhaps the “vibe shift” on disparate impact and other kinds of counterproductive wokeness—with laws that prioritize school discipline.

As the Journal noted, while school discipline policies are best left as a local matter, the Trump administration policy shift ensures that “schools are free to enact discipline based on behavior, not race.” And that’s clearly what more states are focusing on now.

In May, Texas passed a so-called “Teachers Bill of Rights” that included a law making it easier for teachers and schools to discipline disruptive students.

The law allows teachers to remove disruptive students from classrooms and extends the potential time for suspensions.

The need for increasing discipline was apparent because, according to the Texas Tribune, “more than 3,300 Texas district employees were the target of a student assault in the 2023-24 school year, about a 15% increase from the year before.”

“The main mission of this bill is about protecting the rights and safeguarding and elevating the rights of educators in the classroom to control and crack down on classroom discipline, which is becoming a growing problem across the state in all grades and all schools,” Texas State Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, said according to local ABC affiliate KVUE.

“Arkansas lawmakers in April passed a law that ensures students removed for violent behavior aren’t returned to the same classroom,” the Wall Street Journal reported. “The Legislature also stripped from state law a requirement that districts use ‘positive behavioral support’—which focuses on ‘conflict resolution’ and ‘coping skills’—to address student misbehavior.

West Virginia passed a law in April making it easier to remove violent or threatening students from classrooms. The law provides a framework for schools to assess misbehaving students, put them on behavioral plans, and potentially remove them permanently from classrooms if improvements aren’t made.

While not every state is making this school discipline pivot, the tide seems to have turned—at least for now.

Perhaps the woke, DEI mania of 2020 ended up opening the eyes of many Americans who suffered the consequences of policies based on social justice. Hopefully the seesaw will end and this will be the last we’ve seen of the disastrous Obama-Biden school policies.

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