Photo by Artur Debat via Getty Images
The city’s public schools prefer restorative justice. But the results don’t add up.
During the first half of this school year, New York City public school suspension rates dropped. Yet over the same period, assaults inside schools rose.
A spokesperson for the city’s education department pointed to the decline in suspensions as evidence that restorative justice — the school system’s favored disciplinary method, emphasizing reconciliation and communication — is working. But the contradiction suggests that suspension metrics do not capture what is happening in classrooms.
This spring, the city reported that suspensions fell 8.3 percent during the first half of the school year, compared with the same period last year. The most serious suspensions, reserved for the severest offenses, fell by 21.6 percent.
But during that same period, arrests of those under 21 for felony assaults inside city public schools during school hours rose 20 percent, from 28 to 34 incidents, according to data from the New York Police Department’s school safety division. These incidents include standard felony assaults, assaults on children, hate crimes, gang assaults — the term for assaults involving multiple attackers — and strangulation.
Continue reading the entire piece here at The Washington Post (paywall)
______________________
Jennifer Weber is an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute.