Frequently Asked Questions

• Restorative practices is a whole school strategy to create a healthy school culture based on trust, respect, inclusion and the engagement of all with a stake in a school. It is a strategy not a project or program. It involves students, teachers, other school staff, administrators, parents and the wider community.
• Restorative practices defines the way people listen to each other, talk with each other and behave toward one another.
• The “circle” is a primary tool of restorative practices. Sometimes it is an engagement strategy involving a group addressing common questions as participants listen to one another. Other times it is an instructional took that facilitates student critical thinking, problem solving and sharing different insights about classroom content. Sometimes it is a strategy for conflict resolution. In those circumstances, the people in conflict gather with a neutral party, in a circle, and address three questions: what happened, who was affected and what must we do to address the issue?
• Restorative practices becomes a way of life. It is based on developing positive relationships among all those interested in the success of a child, school, family and community.

• School to prison pipeline. Suspension is a significant precursor to juvenile and later adult incarceration. There were 56,000 suspensions in MD schools last year. 60% of them were Black children and 27% children with disabilities. Restorative practices, properly implemented, will change that. Moreover, classroom management challenges drop precipitously.
• Chronic student absenteeism. 22% of Maryland's students (197,000 children) are chronically absent every year. If they are not in school, they will not learn. Restorative practices, properly implemented, will change that.
• Teacher turnover - 14% of our first year teachers quit before the end of their third year of teaching. Many more before the end of their sixth year of teaching. Restorative practices will reduce that.
• Mental health - 37% of middle schoolers and 39% of high schoolers reported feeling sad or hopeless for two weeks or more in the previous year; 29% of high school students and 23% of middle school students reported that their mental health was not good most of or all of the time. Restorative practices will help create a culture in which students feel safe and like they belong. 
• Inequitable school achievement - Poor school culture helps drive the performance gap between Black students and white students: 34% of our state’s Black students are proficient in English/language arts, while 63% of our white students are. In math, the numbers are: 40% proficient for white students; 12% for Black. Restorative practices will help change these facts.

Bad behavior is seriously reduced in Restorative Schools but not because it’s the only point or even the main point of restorative practices. The point of being a Restorative School is to create a place where each person is valued, where a community is built, where fairness is normative, where overt and implicit discrimination based on race, disability, language and income is not tolerated, where all persons accept accountability for their behavior. Any community that lives these values will experience a significant drop in bad behavior….and suspensions, office referrals, chronic absenteeism, teacher turnover, mental health challenges and achievement gaps.

The Blueprint is the most significant education legislation adopted in the United States in the last half century. 

1. Its program areas of focus (early childhood, teachers and leaders, college and career readiness, the focus on concentrated poverty, and accountability) are comprehensive and evidence-based.
2. It assembles the program areas systemically.
3. It makes equity a defining characteristic of the constituent parts.

However, the Blueprint fails to address school culture directly. Culture in an institution significantly determines the institution’s success. The Blueprint will not achieve its promise without changing the culture in Maryland’s schools. Restorative practices is an evidence-based strategy to make that change.

• Establish that restorative practices should be an integral part of all 1,400 schools in Maryland.
• A full-time state funded restorative practices coach in each school.
• Appropriate state funded training for all current staff and all new staff.
• Appropriate state funded training for a cohort of parents and a cohort of community leaders in each school as it begins its transformation and each year thereafter.
• Appropriate annual re-training.
• On-going coaching of school staff, parents, students and people from each school’s community.
• Restorative practices training as part of all education certification program requirements to be a teacher or school administrator.

Our strategy is to build a grassroots advocacy voice statewide that is educated about restorative practices, educates elected and appointed policy leaders and, thus, creates the conditions that result in the necessary changes in state policy and funding to implement restorative practices at scale.

We will follow a game plan that has a track record of success, most recently in Maryland where Strong Schools Maryland built a powerful grassroots voice resulting in the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future. David Hornbeck, the founder of Voices for Restorative Practices also founded Strong Schools Maryland.  

Leadership will be provided by Voices for Restorative Schools. We will rely primarily on volunteer advocates, but we will have several part time field directors to provide leadership, support and coordination throughout the state. 

The core part of the strategy will be Circles of Ten…at least one in each jurisdiction and 5+ in each of the bigger jurisdictions. Each circle would “meet” monthly take an action such as writing two letters or emails each to designated state officials with a monthly coordinated message. 

The regular monthly communications would be augmented by social media, carefully targeted op-ed pieces and other best communication practices.

We are grateful for funding to the Open Society Foundations and to the Fund for Educational Excellence for serving as our fiscal sponsor.

David Hornbeck, Chair, Founder, Strong Schools Maryland; Former Maryland State Superintendent of Schools, Former Superintendent, School District of Philadelphia; 

Thornell Jones, President, World Class Grads and Education Chair, Caucus of African American Leaders; 

Edward Lee, Executive Committee, NAACP State Conference and Founder, Teach Them to Fish. 

Chuck Hurley, education, civil rights and child advocate

The Learning Policy Institute pulls together research from restorative practices implementation in multiple sites throughout the United States.

https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/impact-restorative-practices-report

The Johns Hopkins University studied the implementation of restorative practices in fifteen Baltimore City schools. These are the results and recommendations.

https://www.casciac.org/pdfs/RP-Report-2020-FINAL.pdf