More than a decade ago, the nation’s schools began to turn away from punishment-based approaches to student discipline and toward restorative justice (RJ), a practice based on mending harm, taking responsibility for one’s actions, and strengthening community. While the approach aimed to build social-emotional skills and create a positive school climate, the unintended consequences of RJ are now coming into focus. A 2025 RAND Corporation survey found that teachers reported significantly higher stress and lower overall wellbeing than other working adults and cited student misbehavior as a primary reason. Many teachers said that classrooms are harder to manage than ever.
“The school system’s discipline policies don’t support the classroom teacher,” one educator commented in a survey headed by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute in 2019. “I have observed students with chronic behavior problems repeat poor behaviors with little consequences. It seems at times that administration’s hands are tied.”
Federal action and state-level debates have pushed the discipline issue to the forefront. In April 2025 President Trump issued an executive order mandating a return to impartial discipline based solely on individual behavior and calling for “school discipline policies that promote common sense, protect the safety and educational environment of students, do not promote unlawful discrimination, and are rooted in American values and traditional virtues.” States are reconsidering their own school discipline laws, as teachers continue to report rising concerns. In Texas, the legislature approved giving schools more flexibility to manage student behavior. In West Virginia, the house passed a bill to give teachers more authority to remove both disruptive and violent students. Across the nation, policymakers are reexamining the decade of RJ and whether it delivered on its promises or left students and teachers feeling unsafe.
The current debate traces back to 2014, when the Obama administration issued a “Dear Colleague Letter” urging schools to reduce suspensions and address racial disparities in discipline. That guidance spurred a national experiment in school discipline. Shortly after, RJ began to move from the juvenile justice system into classrooms across the country. New York City took the lead, followed by Los Angeles, and New York’s reforms became a model for other cities and districts. Smaller districts adopted it, while federal agencies reinforced the approach by labeling RJ a best practice.
On paper, it appeared that the reforms had succeeded. Between the 2011–12 and 2017–18 school years, suspensions rates decreased in 48 states. Some of the largest reductions occurred in California and Illinois, both of which enacted policy reforms to restrict the use of suspensions. Teachers have raised concerns that these declines reflected policy pressure rather than real improvements in student behavior. For example, one teacher noted on the Fordham survey that “the reason suspensions dropped across our very large school district is that the district-level administration refused to let principals suspend students out of school. It had nothing to do with changes in student behavior or ineffective teachers. It had everything to do with them wanting to make the numbers look good on paper.”
A 2023 survey conducted by the EdWeek Research Center reflected the growing concern among educators: In 2022, 77 percent of school staff identified student behavior as a top challenge, and nearly 70 percent of teachers reported that behavior had worsened since before the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2018, the Trump administration rescinded the guidance issued in the 2014 Dear Colleague letter, but most districts nationwide retained their RJ policies. Only recently, with Trump’s April 2025 executive order, has the federal government redirected agencies to reverse equity-driven discipline mandates and return to behavior-based approaches.
RJ gained traction because it offered something different: an emphasis on repairing harm and building relationships. It worked in some settings, and conflict resolution and communication did improve. But on a broader scale, RJ efforts replaced consequences without building the infrastructure needed to maintain order.
