A Shift From Punitive to Positive

A Shift From Punitive to Positive

As classroom practitioners and school-site leaders, we are constantly seeking how to most effectively manage student behavior in the classroom, on the playground, in the hallways, and in all areas across the school campus. We have sought answers on how best to respond when students invariably make behavioral choices that negatively affect themselves, their classmates, or their school community. We also have looked for solutions for how to make our campuses safer and equitable for all students. Our searches have led to varying and even diametrically opposing approaches that have trended with the social and political conditions of the time.

From the 1980s to the early 2000s, schools and districts, paralleling the criminal justice system, adopted zero-tolerance policies that focused on punitive practices. With this discipline paradigm, the belief was that harsher consequences, even for relatively minor behaviors, would result in better student behavior and safer schools. Yet, the effectiveness of this punitive approach has not been backed by empirical research (Scott, 2018; U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 2019; Whitford, Katsiyannis, & Counts, 2016).

Numerous researchers have asserted that punitive practices do not work, they do not increase school safety, and they actually worsen outcomes, particularly for underserved students (Allen & Steed, 2016; Mallett, 2016). In fact, according to the 2015–2016 Civil Rights Data Collection survey (U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, 2018), under the zero-tolerance approach to discipline adopted by 94 percent of U.S. public schools (Monroe, 2005), Black and Latinx students were disproportionately overrepresented in suspensions and expulsions as compared to White students. Additionally, research has attributed the emergence of the school-to-prison pipeline in the 1980s—which has had a disparate impact on Black and Latinx students, particularly those identified with special needs—to these zero-tolerance policies (Castillo, 2014; Dancy, 2014; Grace & Nelson, 2019). The school-to-prison pipeline is the criminalizing process whereby students who have been the recipients of exclusionary discipline, often more than once, are funneled by educators from schools into the criminal justice system (Dancy, 2014).

In response to this failure and harm of the zero-tolerance approach, beginning in the 1990s to early 2000s, educators in U.S. schools began to shift from these punitive policies and practices to positive and proactive approaches (Ritter, 2018). Moreover, research shows that positive and proactive approaches to discipline are more effective at creating safe and equitable school environments (Bottiani, Bradshaw, & Gregory, 2018; Reinke, Herman, & Stormont, 2013). In fact, the American Federation of Teachers publicly renounced the use of zero-tolerance practices and advocates for more empirically effective alternatives to punitive practices (Skiba & Losen, 2015). Restorative justice (alternatively referred to as restorative practices), logical consequences, and trauma-informed practices are a few examples of these positive and proactive approaches.