Now That Restorative Practice Isn't Working, Advocates Say It's 'Reformist' to Expect Results
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses how restorative practice advocates have moved the goalposts, arguing that expecting measurable results is itself a flawed expectation.
Key Takeaways
- Moving the goalposts - When evidence shows restorative practices aren't improving outcomes, advocates claim the expectation of results was wrong
- This is intellectually dishonest - You can't sell a practice by promising results and then claim results don't matter when they don't materialize
- Accountability applies to reforms too - If a discipline approach can't demonstrate effectiveness, schools should reconsider using it
Transcript
Restorative practice is dead as a doornail, and now the educator gaslighting has begun.
In a remarkable issue of their Ed Leadership magazine, ASCD has published a series of articles on restorative practice and how it has failed.
And there's one article, even with the hilarious title, Don't Give Up on Restorative Practice.
The writing is on the wall.
Even advocates can tell now that their ideas have failed.
And yet, instead of admitting that they were wrong, admitting that You know, they tried some things and they didn't pan out and that's just part of learning.
Rather than do that, they're pivoting and they're now saying that expecting restorative practice to work is reformist.
Reformist.
Expecting these promised results to materialize from these approaches that they've been advocating.
is reformist, like how dare we expect results that were promised to us?
I read that and it just blew my mind that people would be explicitly advocating that we get rid of our expectations for results.
When it comes to restorative practices, promises were made, right?
Promises were made that we could address disproportionality in our discipline and we could improve school culture and climate through restorative practices.
Now that it is clear that that is not the case, they're pivoting.
And here's what they're pivoting to.
They're pivoting to religious language.
They're pivoting into framing restorative practice as a religion.
Look at the religious language in these articles.
I would encourage you to actually read the whole issue.
I've ordered a hard copy.
of the issue from ASCD and would encourage you to check out all of these articles on restorative practice.
Clearly, everybody sees now that restorative practice does not work.
And now we're being gaslit into thinking that we were wrong to ever believe that it was supposed to work.
No, wait a minute.
This was sold to us as something that worked, as something that worked better than progressive discipline.
This was sold to us as a solution to disproportionality, and progressive discipline was demonized.
Educators in favor of progressive discipline were demonized for clinging to those approaches that, by the way, still work.
and demonized for criticizing these approaches that we now know don't work.
And now we're being told that we have to continue to accept restorative practice even though we know it doesn't work.
What on earth is going on here?
Read these articles and let me know what you think.
But I'm not here for this religious insistence that restorative practice works despite the evidence to the contrary, right?
We're pivoting away from science.
We're pivoting away from evidence.
And we're saying, well, now you just have to believe it.
It's like, you know, in a movie when the, you know, the cast, you know, the characters get to the end of their journey and they open the box that's supposed to have the treasure in it and there's no treasure in it.
And they say, well, I guess the real treasure was the friends we made along the way.
No, no.
These practices were promised to us to work, right?
We were told to implement these practices under the theory that they work.
Now that we know that they don't, we cannot now pivot and say, oh, this is just something we have to have faith in no matter what.
I am saying no to that.
So read this article, this issue of Ed Leadership, and let me know what you think.