Student Accountability Matters: Rethinking Restorative Justice Practices in Schools

If you're feeling fed up with the lack of student accountability, chaos in the classroom, and lack of admin support, then this email is for you. I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Justin Bader - the incredible voice of reason taking over TikTok for exhausted teachers everywhere.

School leaders - you MUST listen!
Teachers - you will feel so seen and validated!

Topics we cover in this episode:

✨ The Hot Mess of Restorative Practices

• The well-intentioned but disastrous move to remove student consequences and redefine failure as success
• Tales of students returning to class with candy bars after outrageous behavior 
• How this approach stole all accountability and enabled chaos

✨ Dismantling the "Load Bearing Wall" of Progressive Discipline

• The invisible backbone that kept classroom management functional has been decimated
• Creating predictable consequences is key for a safe, calm learning environment
• Without it, the message is "you can aft how you want without consequences"

✨ The Role of Ideological, Agenda-Driven "Research"

• Most discipline studies are "absolute garbage" with massive logical holes
• The unfounded claims that avoiding discipline improves student outcomes
• How quality research got hijacked by fads and alternative discipline camps

✨ Getting Back to Basics with Firm Boundaries

• Rewind 10-15 years to the old-school wisdom that still worked: high standards, counseling, engaged lessons, fair consequences
• Prioritize creating a viable learning environment above all else
• "We've gone off the rails by making other goals the primary objective"

✨ What Effective Leadership Really Looks Like

• It's not just subject matter expertise - wisdom and backbone are crucial
• Having experience in a highly functional organization to model healthy leadership
• Keeping the main thing (learning) the main thing through the boring basics

✨ Why PBIS program research was solid, but it's being implemented incorrectly

Justin's advice? Fix the foundational pieces like progressive discipline first. Then build your creativity and innovation on that solid base - not the other way around. Regain that empowered stance as an educator by reestablishing firm boundaries and consistent accountability... and so much more!

For comprehensive FREE evidence-based resources on PROGRESSIVE DISCIPLE go to:
https://www.principalcenter.com/pd/

To learn more about The Elevated Teacher Experience visit: www.gracestevens.com/elevate

Want to truly thrive in teaching without sacrificing your personal life? Check out the Elevated Teacher Experience here
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Transcript

  Okay, educators, if you're a teacher, if you're an admin, especially if you're instructional leadership, my goodness, you are going to love this conversation today. This was the best conversation I've had with anyone in education, honestly, in a really long time. And I'm so excited to bring it to you. It is with a wonderful gentleman called Justin Bader.

I'm going to read you his bio and all those things in a minute. He really is an expert in instructional leadership. But it's sensible, just a sensible feet on the ground kind of guy. If you're on TikTok, you know him, you know him with all this craziness going on about student behavior. He seems to be one of the very few practical, logical, researched, well researched voices of reason about how to bring student accountability back into the picture and how,  although it was a worthy idea, this idea of restorative practice, how it's kind of gone off the rails when people aren't doing it correctly.

So anyway, you're going to love this conversation. If you're not an administrator, you're going to want to share it with an administrator. Again, I'll give you all his credentials. When we get inside there, you are going to love this conversation as much as I do. I'm going to I will see you on the inside. 

Welcome to the Balance Your Teacher Life podcast, where we talk all things avoiding educator burnout, setting healthy boundaries, and achieving better work life balance.  If you're passionate about education, but tired of it consuming your whole life, you have found your home in the podcast universe. I'm your host, Grace Stevens, and let's get going with today's show.

All 

right. So this shows a little bit of a longer one this week, but I'm telling you, you're going to be sad when it ends. So I'm going to give you a professional introduction to Justin. Um, again, though, Oh, if you're on Tik TOK, you know him. And if you don't follow him, you need to. So Justin Bader, B A E D R. He is from the Principal Center.

Okay. He's the, he has a PhD. He's the Director of the Principal Center where he helps senior leaders in K 12 organizations build capacity for instructional leadership. A former principal in Seattle Public Schools. He was also a teacher. He is a creator of the Instructional Leadership Challenge, which has helped more than 10, 000 school leaders in 50 countries around the world.

Confidently get back into classrooms every day, have feedback conversations that change teacher practice and discover the best opportunities for school improvement. He is also an author. He has published Now We're Talking, 21 Days to the High Performance Instructional Leadership and he was co author with Heather Bell Williams of Mapping Professional Practice, how to develop instructional frameworks to support teacher.

growth. He's also the host of the Principal Center Radio, a podcast featuring education thought leaders and founder of Repertoire, the professional writing app for instructional leaders. Okay, that's it. He has a ton of qualifications. I'm not going to read them all to you. If you're that curious, you can go look, trust me, he's a real deal.

He's not making it up. It's all researched and you're going to love this conversation. We'll get right to it.  All right. So welcome to today's show. I am thrilled to have Justin Bader with us here today. Um, thank you for agreeing to do this. And I'm going to fangirl for just one second, because I want you to know, Justin, that you have a huge following on TikTok.

I don't know if you know what the, the ratios are between teachers and admins. Do you know what the ratio is of people who follow you?  

Yeah, it seems like it's, it's pretty heavily weighted toward teachers, although I primarily work with administrators. It's great to engage with teachers on TikTok. 

Yeah, and that, I think the reason for that is, I think we all feel, not like I talk for all teachers, but the teachers I know, um, really feel, um, that you are a voice of reason in what seems to be, you know, a sea of foolishness right now.

I don't know how else to say it. And, um, really, you know, I think you make teachers feel very validated and very heard that, um, our concerns that what we see with student behavior not being appropriately, you know, supported in trying to manage that is just really driving burnout and other things. But although I have to say. 

I have been a fan of yours since your very second TikTok, which was a home run where you talked about the first thing you did as a principal was to stop that stinking stamp of shame on kids  hands when, um, their lunch balance was low, right? And that is something I have hated for a really long time. And I think, um, you just kind of won a lot of hearts that way as being like sensible and compassionate and like thinking about.

and their dignity, like it's so important. All right. So maybe you could start by just telling us how did you make that transition? You were a teacher, you were an admin and now you support admins. Tell us a little bit about that journey. 

Sure. And Grace, first, let me say thank you so much for reaching out and for having me on your show, and I think.

And for the, the work you do to, uh, to help teachers avoid burnout or come back from burnout and, uh, stay in, in this profession. Cause I think it's, it's such an urgent challenge. And, you know, for, for me, um, you know, like I, I can feel myself periodically needing  And I think the more support that we have for people making changes to stay in the profession, the better.

And I have, uh, have been out of the classroom and out of the principalship for over 10 years now. So I, I do, you know, I, I participate in a different way. In the education profession, but consider it an honor to, uh, to do so and have worked for the past a dozen years or so as director of the principal center.

And I do professional development on instructional leadership. I started with a focus on the iPad and then broadened that to instructional leadership and especially classroom walkthroughs and teacher evaluation. So those are my, my main topics. And, uh, I'm, I'm very interested in how we make this a sustainable profession because we hear so many stories.

to us that for many, many people in many schools, it does not feel very sustainable. And I think we've, we've got a shared mission to address that.  

Yeah, absolutely. And, um, myself, you know, I stepped out of the classroom a year and a half ago. I, I, I.  I was a second career teacher. Um, I always knew that I was never going to be able to retire as a teacher.

I was never going to be able to put in enough years, right? So, um, I had said I would dedicate myself to public service for 20 years and then I would step out and do something else. And as it was coming up to that 20 year mark, um, I was really conflicted. Like I loved teaching, but it was really starting to take its toll.

And I also felt that maybe my impact could be greater in coaching teachers to stay in teaching, because so many teachers, you know, really feel that they, well, what I've seen over the last 20 years is firstly, you know, classrooms have changed, um, student relationships have changed, and I'm not sure that there has been enough, not just professional development, for teachers, but personal development for teachers to learn the skills that they need to make teaching sustainable, to prioritize themselves, to set boundaries, to all those things.

Because, you know, the prerequisite of like all the things that you talk about, which is, um,  You know, how do we deal with students? How do we support teachers with that? The foundation of that is that the teachers should have good classroom management skills, right? You can't take that piece out of the equation, but it's getting harder and harder to manage a classroom.

So, so anyway, so here's one of the things I wanted to talk about. What do you think, now this is the million dollar question, because I think you were a teacher, right? What year did you start teaching? 

I started teaching in 2002 and I taught middle school science.  

Middle school science. Oh, bless you. Middle school. 

Yeah. So I started teaching in 2002 too. And I would say, um,  many things have changed, but here's something I see that has really changed and it's been a cultural shift. And I don't think it was a sudden thing. I think it was something that slowly happened, but really, you know, it's my show. So I get to say it just like it is.

Um, here's what, what I feel and what I know a lot of teachers feel, right? That teachers, we feel that we have to, um,  really, not kind of please, but like, we got to keep in the back of our mind, like, what is it that our administrator wants, right? Our principal, right? And then the principal's always thinking, what is it that, you know? 

The superintendent wants, and the superintendent is worried about the board and the board is worried about the parents. And it seems to me like the kids aren't worried about anybody, right? We've got the inmates running the jail is basically how it felt the last few years that I was teaching is that, that somehow we have  in not all schools.

I'm hoping it's not all schools, but certainly schools that I was aware of and ones that I participated in. What happened was this really, this with good intention, I'm sure. Um, but this piece of student accountability as students got more and more dysregulated, um, just really disappeared. Like it just, um, it sounds like a joke and like a meme that by the time a teacher finally sends a kid to.

To the office, which we don't want to do. I mean, the joke is they come back with a piece of candy. Now it might not always be with a piece of candy, but in my experience, it has been a lot of times, like the promise of a pizza on Friday, if you just don't break any more rules, like, what is that? Like, why do you think that's happened?

I know it's a big question. But, and then we're going to be, I'm all about empowerment, so we'll talk about how do we get ourselves out of it. But how did we get here, for goodness sakes? Do you know? Like, it seems like, to me, it just  

Yeah, I'm, I'm not sure I know. And I'll be honest, I had trouble even believing that some of what people were telling me Was actually happening.

Like I thought surely the sending kid to the office and they come back with a candy bar. Surely that's exaggeration. Surely that's hyperbole. But so many people have told me that that is literally what happens in their school that I have to believe it now. I mean, I can't, can't dismiss that any longer as just an urban legend or, uh, you know, an exaggeration on the part of people who are frustrated.

I think it really does happen. And I think where a lot of it comes from is. A very positive desire to do everything we possibly can to improve outcomes for students And to be clear that is not a new commitment in our profession I mean when you and I began teaching, you know 20 some years ago, uh, that was not a new idea It was a well established idea that we needed to do everything we could As educators to increase our students chances of success to believe in them when they did not believe in themselves To put supports in place so that if they did not have supports at home if they had Whatever challenges they were facing we wanted to do whatever it takes to help them succeed And I think what has happened in the last couple of years is that we have stopped being bothered By the limitations of reality and we have tried to take that idea Farther than it can be taken You Into the point of just pure fantasy that makes us think, you know, if I want the student to succeed and the student doesn't want to succeed, I can just make them succeed by redefining failure as success.

And I've seen so many examples of this, you know, like if a student does not come to school at all, it does not do their work. Well, we can still give them a diploma and call them a high school graduate. Well, I think we've got to ask ourselves, did we overreach the bounds of the impossible? With that attempt to believe in our students and to help them succeed By simply redefining failure as success.

I like this just does not seem like a a viable strategy to me So the the secret key to unlocking everything that I have to say on these topics is going back about 10 or 15 years and sharing conventional wisdom. I mean, I mean, I feel like almost everything I say was conventional wisdom 10 or 15 years ago. 

So I claim nothing  

special, but it's 

like, 

you know, We know the things to do, get the kid counseling, you know, make the feel, give them extra responsibilities, you know, get them tutoring. If they have, you know, academic, um, deficiencies, have a good relationship with them, let them know you have high standards for them and you believe they can achieve them and different instruction so they can feel successful, have engaged lessons, like.

We do all of that, right? If you're a good teacher, you do all of that. And so by the time you get to the point, now there needs to be a consequence because this kid literally, true story, punched another kid in the face while I was teaching math. Like,  I've done everything I can do. Like, we're not doing this kid  any favors. 

By not having consequences for them, and we've just taught everybody else in class that that's okay when they come back in a few minutes with a big grin on their face. Um, like,  I was never the teacher just to send them out the room, right? Like, I just wasn't that kind of teacher. I can handle it myself.

But for me, I kept, you know, with all those things in place that we knew  and that we know, you know, for me, classroom management didn't need to be that difficult. Calm, consistent consequences. If you take out that consistent and consequent piece and teachers don't feel supported in that, like the whole foundation kind of crumbles. 

So, um, so that's kind of where I feel, like I said, I feel like your content, when you, you share like this common sense wisdom about, you know, issues. In practice, you know, restorative justice has a place in society. It really does. And when done correctly, it does have a place in some schools, but it's not being done correctly.

Um, and it is not, um, you know, backing teachers up. And like I said, apart from driving burnout, because, um, it is very frustrating. It is also not doing students any favors.  It's not helping them be successful to let them know there are no consequences in life, right? Um, that's really, um, not helpful.  So tell me, I know that you have, like you said, it's common sense.

I know that you have a program. In fact, you put on a free webinar for, um,  for administrators, um, and it's on progressive discipline system. And I love that it's called for protecting learning communities. Because well, while we're so concerned with the one student who's acting now and making him successful, you're stealing learning from other kids.

I mean, that's just the way it is, right? It's like the other kids aren't learning, the teacher can't teach. Um, So if you had the opportunity to do like, you know, a 10 minute TED talk  on everything you teach, which is sensible, could you tell us what you, like, if a principal came to you and just said like, I don't think we have a good system in place, our system isn't consistent.

That's number one is like a huge problem, right? And I'm not sure it serves kids. What would you tell them? Where would you start?  

Yeah, I think progressive discipline really is kind of the invisible load bearing wall of classroom management, of, of, You know, the safe operation of schools in general. And just like when you watch one of those home makeover shows, you know, they always want to knock out a wall and open up the space, but first you have to make sure that it's not a load bearing wall, or you're going to have big trouble.

And we've been watching those shows for 10 or 15 years now and yet missed the point. Um, That in education, we also have load bearing walls and progressive discipline is one of them. And we're, we're seeing the consequences of knocking it out without thinking about it. So yes, I have a few resources on progressive discipline.

All of them are free. I don't sell anything related to this. Everything on the website, webinars and articles and things are completely free. And I'm happy to, uh, to do more if there's interest in, How to implement progressive discipline that the funny thing about progressive discipline is there is actually nobody that I there's there's one author who recently wrote a book on a piece of progressive discipline named JP frame.

It's a good book on how to how to put some systems in place. He's been on my podcast principle center radio, but there are basically no consultants. On progressive discipline for the last few decades, there have been no advocates or authors or any kind of basic research being done on progressive discipline because it's been that load-bearing wall.

You know, it's been plastered up and doing its job for decades and nobody really thinks about it. And when we take it out, we discover the hard way that actually it was doing a, a very important job. And I think you, you touched on. The important job that it does in creating predictability for students, you know, our students need to know every day that when they go to school, they are going to be safe. 

And the way that we ensure that they are safe and feel safe is by putting some procedures in place, right? Like we can't prevent. A student from punching another student in the face as happened in your class, right? Like, there're just going to be random things that happen that threaten that sense of safety and, and that, uh, calm learning environment.

And we can't prevent them. We don't wanna lock things down so much that students can't interact. We want to have, you know, warm, welcoming environments. So the way that we ensure safety. is by putting predictable consequences in place and saying, you know, like we might not be able to prevent a student from ever bringing a gun to school, but we can guarantee what is going to happen.

If that does occur, we're going to, you know, permanently expel a student law enforcement's probably going to be involved. There are things that we're going to do other than simply look the other way or tolerate it. And somehow we allowed ourselves to be talked out of that. I think by a change in discussion, a change in terminology, we talked about trauma informed, we talked about restorative, you know, we, we talked about all these things that made us not quite realize that what we were doing was removing that predictability.

So that, you know, if, if a student punches another student in the face, it should be entirely predictable that that student gets at home. There's a consequence. The students have maybe a few days in class without that student to kind of reinforce that boundary that you can't do that here. And in a lot of cases, when we remove that predictability, we're sending the opposite message.

That in fact, you can do that here. If this student comes right back to class with a candy bar, that reinforces, as you said, for everybody that you absolutely can punch other people in the face because, you know, we might have words to say about it, but talk is cheap. And what students pick up on very quickly is what we actually do.

And in a lot of cases, we've convinced ourselves that what we need to do is nothing other than talk. And that just does not work.  

Yeah, absolutely. And I said, it's the kind of consistency piece, um, that, and so I'll, like I said, it's my show, I'll say it. I don't work for a district anymore. I don't worry about pleasing people.

Um, I think part of the problem is, um.  Optics.  I think some school districts, uh, some superintendents, whatever, hypothetically, let's say, are very concerned with optics and very concerned with that, you know, school report card that gets published on the internet and then, you know, obviously seeing that a disproportionate number of students in a certain demographic are being suspended.

And so, you know, the answer to that is they're not.  Let's not suspend those children, and we'll suspend others. That, that doesn't serve us well, and I have seen that. You know, the question is, what supports are missing for that child that's going to make them behave that way, right? And try and work on those.

Because I feel like what should be a, um, a big measure, what parents should look at more on that school report card dashboard, is, uh, you know, what's your teacher retention rate? Why can't you keep teachers? Like, that's, that's very disruptive to learning, right? When there's a constant turnover of teachers and The feeling that, um, you know, one of the things I know you've talked about in the past is teachers really want to feel that, um, administrators have their back, right?

And so we really feel that, but it's not just in the area of, you know, supports with classroom management. Understand that if I've got to the point and I'm an experienced, competent teacher, um, with a good reputation and a good background. Track record, and if I do send a student to the office, there's a reason for that.

Don't ask me, did I try classroom management?  Okay, um, right. Support me in that. But, you know, support us in all areas. And, and another, like, just kind of, I think, you know, I've, I've, no, I've heard you talk before about having a backbone, but like have a backbone in all areas. And that means that if there are staff on campus that we all know, I'm not cutting it.

Like, do something about it. Right? Don't just keep changing. Honestly, I, again, let's just say hypothetically, there's a teacher whose grade assignment got changed every year for ten years.  Now you're teaching this. Now you're teaching that. Now you're teaching a combo class. Not trying to find the right fit for them, but hoping that it's obnoxious enough for them that they will quit.

And everybody knows that, like, put them, you know, come on, man, put them on the program improvement plan. Have some, um,  have some kind of, um, capacity,  go get training if you don't have it, to have difficult conversations. That's part of your job. That's what you signed up for, right? It's not always going to be, you know, spirit assemblies and PBIS rooms.

That's not the job of an administrator, right? It's like, make sure that people feel supported so we can do our jobs. And yeah, kids feel safe in school. Um, there's a lot of, um, when I was in school, like if I could tell the teacher didn't have control of the class, that caused a lot of anxiety for me. Um,  And I see that cause a lot of anxiety for, you know, other kids.

And I didn't go to a school where there was ever, you know, I went to school in Europe, there was never this question of what, of somebody, you know, brings a firearm to school, but it was never that it was never, so I can't even imagine how, you know, sometimes students must feel these days, um, when we hear the things that we hear on the, on the news and whatever.

So it's more. That, that I think that drives the burnout for teachers. It's not just the lack of support with behaviors. It's the lack of support in, in, in having difficult conversations. And, you know, if you don't have the skills, you know, sometimes we just, I see, um,  I see, I do feel you should be a teacher before you're a principal.

So you understand what teachers, you know, go through, but it doesn't mean every teacher has it in them to be a principal.  Right? Like it's a different skill set,  right? It is a different skill set. Absolutely. And, um, I don't feel like people should be kind of, um, I think it's one of the problems with education is that if you are a teacher and, and you know, you hear this, just a teacher a lot, right?

Just a teacher, like, well, what else can I do? Right? If you, you kind of feel that pressure sometimes, if you want to move up or move ahead, that you have to become an administrator. And I don't think every teacher's, you know, has quite the, the, the. Um, what it takes to be an administrator. So what do you think when you look at, you know, really good leadership, what are some,  uh, should we say kind of traits or areas that you look at?

I think 

that's a  great question. If, you know, if you ask, um, A lot of teachers, what makes a good leader? One of the things that they'll often say is that they need to be a great teacher and they need to have 20 years of experience, and they need to need to have taught exactly what I teach. And I think there's some value to that, but I think we overestimate the importance of instructional expertise and underestimate what I would just call, you know,  backbone and common sense.

Yeah, and wisdom. Because this is ultimately. You know, human work. This is ultimately leadership work and not just ensuring good teaching. And I think we, we have to make sure that.  Learning is the bottom line I think that is one area where we've gone off the rails a bit as we've tried to Make other goals our primary objective and that has resulted in some some kind of thrashing around that has has not gone Well, but if I you know, if I think about the great leaders I had The privilege to work for it was not that they had any particular deep instructional expertise and they did, but that wasn't what made them a great leader.

I've seen lots of people who have deep instructional expertise and were hired for that deep instructional expertise, but don't have the wisdom and the You know, the maturity at really at any age, it's not an age thing. It's a,  you know, it's a, it's a wisdom thing. Um, and, and really the ability to keep the main thing, the main thing and, and to see things in perspective.

So when I hear things like my principal sent the student back to class and said, I should build a relationship with them. And the student came with the candy bar. I think what's lacking there is not. Expertise on math curriculum. What's lacking there is just a basic common sense and humanity that says, wait a minute, I'm asking this person to do a very difficult job with 30 kids in the room.

And this teacher is asking for help. The student has done something that is clearly well beyond the bounds of what a teacher should be able to handle with classroom management.  I don't have a lot positive to say  someone who makes a decision like that to not support that teacher and to just send that student right back to classes if it was no big deal.

So I think back to your point about, you know, teaching experience. You know, having some, some real value.  I think part of the value that it provides to have been a teacher and to have had good teaching experience is, is empathy, right? The perspective taking of, you know, like what, what job am I asking this person to do and what conditions is this person working under and how can I best support them?

I think that's continually the question that we have to be asking as leaders because What I hear from a lot of teachers who are burning out or who are just really  You know not happy with the way things are going is is there being it being given an impossible job? You know, they're being asked to contend with violence.

They're being asked to contend with just behaviors that are incompatible with learning and the the load bearing walls that normally would support that classroom are just not there. So I think we've got to see classroom management  within the context of progressive discipline within a school. We have to recognize that the best teaching like nobody ever studied good teaching In a chaotic school, like there was never any systematic study that said, you know what we can have a complete dumpster fire and then we can draw a rectangle around one teacher and that teacher can do everything great. 

That never happened, right? That there's no body of research that established that. And, you know, and, and researchers who do study effective teaching often will  assiduously avoid chaotic school environments because they know they're not going to be able to do their study there. So we have to take it for granted that Functional schools with boundaries and expectations and progressive discipline have always kind of been the silent backdrop to any study of good teaching. 

Yeah, no, I agree with that. And I do feel like, um, you know, I, of course, you know, you need to understand the demands of teaching. You actually, you know, you're not going to get any respect from, it's going to be hard to get respect if you've never been a teacher, right? I don't know of any administrators who maybe they've kind of adjacent jobs, but it's,  There's a difference between, you know, being a great teacher and being great with kids and, you know, being good with adults. 

You need to know how to be good with an adult, with adults to be an administrator. Um, and so I think that's, you know, part of it too. So let me ask you this, because I know, um,  That you really,  you know, you have this podcast where you interview, you know, thought leaders in education, but it's all very evidence based, right?

You know, my experience is anecdotal. Yours is evidence based. So I want to know what does the data say? Because this was the biggest thing. And I, you know, I don't know where, um, you know, I don't want to just go off to a tangent with all the horror stories because there are plenty. Um, but you know, in the last School that I was in, there was a very difficult situation with a student in the room next to me who, um, had, um, you know, physically assaulted others.

We weren't allowed to have any scissors on  because he had taken scissors to people like, you know, and we had behaviorists and we'd done all the things and we set up the rewards and whatever, but it seemed like he had the keys to the kingdom, you know what I'm saying? Like he just knew what he was doing.

He, he, it was very, um, it was a very difficult situation. But, um, we had been told again and again and again that a student could not be expelled from school unless they'd been suspended 10 times.  I don't know if that's the same way you teach, but that's apparently what it is in California. We had sent, you know, it just wasn't work apart from how disruptive it was to everybody else.

It just wasn't working for the student. It wasn't an appropriate environment for him in general a classroom and parents were not open to other things. Um,  So given that there are some, you know, constraints around that legally that we cannot control, but what does the evidence say about being so hesitant to suspend students?

Because we've kind of been sold this bill of goods that like, oh, you know, the school to prison pipeline and everything else. And like I said, you know, there's,  There's not a direct causality between you, we suspended you and now you went on to have this life of crime. It was, there was a lot of issues in your life that led you to be a student who did those types of things that made you get suspended, right?

It didn't, it wasn't just the teacher's fault.  Right?  Because we couldn't handle you. So what does the evidence really say about suspending students? 

Yeah. Well, it was actually quite shocking to me as I started to look at some of this research and I, you know, I'm not a practicing researcher, but I am trained as a researcher and I think I'm decent at reading education research.

And, I want to say this carefully, but also not pull any punches, most discipline research is absolute garbage. If you read the studies on, say, the school to prison pipeline, you will be able to find massive logical holes in them if you think about how school works at all. And what's really interesting is that I think a lot of this research is done by people who have never worked in schools.

You know, education research has become its own career track. And when I was in my PhD program in educational leadership and policy, many, many of my classmates were, had never been educators. They were simply graduate students. They went straight from college into graduate school. They worked at the university.

So they didn't really understand in fundamental terms, how school works,  Just, you know, their own experience as students, which doesn't really explain everything. So there's, there's a huge amount of pressure from funders to come up with discipline alternatives and to, you know, try to deal with, uh, you know, disproportionality in different ways.

But the research base on it is very, very low in quality. And especially around the causal claim that you were describing that it is school discipline that causes students to have negative life outcomes. That research base. Is just frankly garbage. It is very, very poor quality, very, very ideological in nature and really just illogical when you read it.

And I'll give one example. Uh, I, I feel good picking on this study because it was extremely well funded and it was done by smart people who should have known better. And, uh, this is the, uh, the LaCassie et al study on, uh, New York city and what they did to demonstrate the reality of the school to prison pipeline, which is, You know, quite questionable is they looked at a database of incidents and consequences and they said if we punish students more strictly, do they have worse life outcomes compared to other students who are involved in the same incident who didn't get the same consequence?

And not surprisingly, they found that students who got a more severe consequence had worse life outcomes.  But if you think for a second about what the comparison group is, if you have an incident database, who is in that database that didn't get consequences? And the researchers set this up so that we're meant to think that it was some sort of experiment.

Well, group A will give a consequence and group B, we won't give a consequence and we'll see which has the greater impact. They made us think that that's what their data. was. This was not an experiment though. This was data that was analyzed after the fact that had not been collected for that purpose.

The other group in that database is the victims. and the witnesses. So, of course, the students who don't get a consequence are going to have better outcomes because they weren't the perpetrators of those behavior incidents, right? It is the, the students who did it who got the consequence, and of course, things are going to, to not go as well for them in life because of the, You know, the wide variety of factors that contribute to their behavior and of course their behavior itself.

So this is characteristic of, of just about all of the research on school discipline. Like frankly, I understand it because I can imagine it would be difficult to establish a career and a reputation as an education researcher on, you know, the, the topic of suspension. Hey, isn't suspension great? Isn't it great to kick kids out of school?

Like, I get that it's not  an appealing thing, but. back to that load bearing wall. You know, kicking kids out of school is deeply unpleasant. It is terrible. It, it makes us feel awful. But when the alternative is trapping behaviors in school that make school unviable for everybody else, and, you know, exposing students to violence from students who, who just are not willing to be safe around other people, uh, I think we've, we've just got to, you know, have that backbone and be willing to do what needs to be done to, to keep everybody safe.

Yeah, and it's not just even, you know, of course, to protect, you know, the safety of students, but to protect the learning environment. Absolutely. It becomes literally like it, you know, it, it just becomes almost impossible  to teach and that is very stressful when And the other, you know, everybody, the other pressure we all get is, you know, test scores and optics and all those things, right?

Um, and so it is, um, you know, it's a complicated issue, but it doesn't seem that, like I said, it seems like there's a common sense missing there. Like, tell me, like, I understand. Okay. So my whole, you know, I don't think of myself as having a brand, but you know, I did write a book, Positive Mindset Habits for Teachers, right?

And that's kind of what I'm known for is positivity and empowerment and giving teachers tools to, you know, create a more positive  work and life experience for themselves, so I'm all about. So for me, yes. Wow. You know, PBIS should, you know, I should be the biggest champion of that, right? Logically thinking, but to reward kids for just doing.

What they should be doing anyway, you know, I'm just not sure about that. You know, um, when I finally, the last class of students I had, um, and we, we made our way to the PBIS room and honestly, um, we trashed it. It was embarrassing. Like we broke for, you know, we had video games. It had all kinds of stuff.

Like, Oh my God, those kids were literally out of control outside of the confines of a classroom where they knew what was expected, what was tolerated. Um, you know, there was just this big, um,  It just didn't work out well at all. It was just the irony of it. This was a reward you earned for your behavior and you literally just trashed the room and it had to be closed for a while because like everything was broken.

It was like, where is the common sense in that? Like we just got a, yeah, like so much. I see this pendulum swing in education where we get very complicated and then we like back to basics and then we pendulum swing and fancy terms and back, like back to basics with calm. Consistent consequences, right?

Like, like I said, the prerequisite for that is the teacher need to be properly trained, right? They need to be doing all those other things that we talked about. I'm not talking about going back to, you know, um, I used to take the kids to, um, You know, a school simulation from the Pioneer School. Like, I'm not talking about going back to that, right?

Stand up before you can talk and, you know, go put your nose in the corner if you're not doing your job.  It, it is the relationship building, the getting kids the supports they need. But above and beyond that, it needs to be, um, a consequence. And so that, um, 

Yeah. 

Yeah, it's kind of crazy. 

And if you're open to talking about the research there, I think that's another instructive case where PBIS really does have a very solid and sound research base.

If you go to pbis. org, you will see the original research that was done at the university of Oregon. And that is what I was trained in, in terms of PBIS. But what people are talking about when they talk about PBIS today was completely made up. Right. All this stuff about rewarding expected behavior, having a school store, giving out prizes, giving out bucks of some type for expected behavior that has absolutely no foundation in the PBIS research.

And the way we got there, I think was probably a combination of factors, but somewhere along the way, software platforms started adding the ability to give out PBIS points or bucks, or, you know, there are five or six different platforms now that allow you to do this. And they created this feature and then made it seem like that was part of the original research, and it wasn't.

If you go to pbis. org and do a search for rewards, you find almost nothing, and you certainly don't find anything about giving out candy and prizes and expected behavior getting rewards. But Because like, frankly, the psychology behind that is terrible, right? If you reward kids for expected behaviors, you spend a lot of money.

You can easily spend 10, a year in an elementary school on rewards, and it doesn't improve behavior, right? Because it takes You know, the 90 percent of kids who are intrinsically motivated to, you know, mostly behave most of the time. And it turns it into this transactional thing where instead of just, you know, learning, focusing on learning and behaving and being a nice kid, everybody is obsessed with earning as many rewards as possible.

And that like on basic psychology principles, like we should have seen that coming.  

Yeah. And like, as a teacher, um, you know, like I said, it just went off the rails. Like I said, I don't feel like restorative justice, like in, in, in, it probably has some very good applications, but it's not being used that way.

Right. So PBIS, yes, has some good research. But it's not being used that way. It's being used as, um, you know, yeah, like I had class dojo, right. And like the kids don't want to do anything. We're like, do we get a dojo point? Like, Oh my gosh, like do it. Cause you're supposed to, cause you want to learn, like, just not that you want your dojo point.

Right. I felt like I, that, that yeah. Transactional. I felt like, you know, some days I was a bank manager, deposits, withdrawals, deposits, withdrawals, how many points do I have? And you're like, Oh my gosh. Um, and yeah, organizing and then having to, and here's the craziest thing, having to fundraise.  Falls on the back of the teacher  to buy all that  stuff.

Stuff is a nice word. I wanted to say something else, but to buy all that stuff, you know, I don't like, I know people were like, Oh, I sound so old fashioned, but you know what, when I was a kid, if I got that Licon gold star, I, that was it, man, I earned that gold star, I was so happy, um, you know, so anyway, keeping it simple.

All right. Well, I think this has been a great conversation. What would you. Let's say, you know, part of me feels so, I think being an administrator is such a difficult job, right? And I see so much criticism laid at them and I feel like, um, you know, it just like being a teacher, it feels you're set up to fail.

Sometimes I feel like a lot of administrators feel they're set up to fail, right? They have a lot of competing agendas.  I'll just say it. And, um, you know, like there's a whole, my heart hurt. I don't want to get off on that whole tangent, but, uh, you know, with that, the, the incident of the six year old who saw, shot his teacher.

And then I read the whole transcript of how, you know, the assistant principal was being sued and all the areas where she had not done what she was supposed to do. But, you know, one of them was the teacher's like, I went in and she didn't even turn her head from her computer. No, of course not, because she was probably dealing with 10 other behavior incidents at that point, right?

You just feel that, um, you know, I'm not defending her, but you, you, you understand where it comes from. It feels like an impossible task. Okay. So I do feel that, um,  that administrators need support too. And having said that as a lot of them were teachers and then yes, they went to some kind of program and they kind of got thrown in.

And I feel like, you know, I don't know how it is in Arkansas, but I do know, um, in all the districts I taught in, it was really, um, you don't become an administrator, you become an assistant. Principle right first, and then you get all the behavior issues.  That's now the, now the, now the principle doesn't want to deal with any behavior issues.

They just palm it all off. I don't know if that's like a universal kind of thing, but that's what I've seen a lot. And so that's a very stressful position. So, you know, they need to be trained. They need support. They need to not just be, um, having to, you know, please a school board or a superintendent, right?

Cause like I said, there's a lot of agendas out there, but if it, if an administrator was kind of struggling, if they, um, thought.  You know, where this kind of sounds a little close to home,  like with good intentions. I believe they have good intentions. They're trying to do the right thing, right? Um, where would you suggest they start?

Like I know you have a ton of free resources. I know that a lot of it is, you know, they, they, there needs to be a mutual trust there. I need to know when the administrator's got my back, but at the same time, the administrator needs to know that what's happening in my classroom is appropriate.  Right. And so I know you focus on helping, um, administrators do effective walkthroughs.

Um, what else, where else would you suggest somebody start if they were like, Oh, this thing is out of control and I do want to put some foundational supports back?  

Yeah, that's a great question.  Yeah. I think  we all need to develop kind of a working theory of how school works. And to me, that's what's been most lacking in our profession the last 10 years or so is instead of a.

You know, comprehensive understanding of just how school works. We listen to the latest fads. And I think one of the reasons so many administrators are struggling is because they got into their jobs by competing to be the most eager to adopt the latest fad. And you know, PBIS was one of them, restorative practices was one of them.

So we have all these things that are kind of unproven but are hot. And people don't really have a basic understanding of you know, like why do you think kids behave in school? Why do you think kids do their work? Why do you think teaching works? So I like I think it's unavoidable to have To do some of that basic thinking about just how things work So that we don't break things that are working and replace them with fads I mean like frankly, I think that's a lot of what has happened is we've we've removed various sources of accountability whether it's grading or behavior expectations or  You know, whatever in the name of, uh, of, of some new and kind of unproven fad. 

So, you know, I, I think there's always going to be that tension between the novel that people  compete on to, you know, to gain attention, to, to gain their positions and the kind of unpleasant, uh, boring basics that really make a school function. I mean, like frankly, a lot of it is boring stuff. You know, suspending kids is not fun.

Buying supplies is not fun. Balancing the books is not fun. Um, but if you want to have a functional organization, you get those basic things right. And then any innovation comes on top of that, not instead of,  

Yeah. 

Like you don't, you don't want creative bookkeeping. That, that's a crime. Right? Creative bookkeeping is a crime.

People go to jail for that. So get the bookkeeping right and then build your creativity on top of that rather than as a, as a substitute for it. So 

yeah. Yeah. 

I mean, I think the other thing that. I think really messes up a lot of people is they have never worked in a healthy organization. So I can't really say this is a scalable solution, but my advice to anyone who has never worked in a highly functional organization is get out of the one you're in and find a place that is functional and let them teach you what it is like to work in a healthy organization.

Because over the past 10 years, as I've been You know, working to support public education at the outside. One of the things that I've just been continually shocked by is how many people have spent their entire careers in deeply dysfunctional districts. Nobody.  Knows what they are doing. Nobody has ever worked in a functional organization, and we get these isolated pockets You know, I think one strange feature of American education is you have districts side by side.

They're just night and day Different. So if you feel like you don't know how  to be an effective leader because it was never modeled for you I think one of the best things you can do is get out of an unhealthy organization and get into a healthy one  Frankly, even if you have to take a pay cut, uh, even if you have, you probably won't because the healthier organizations are better at managing money can probably pay you better, but like recognize when you are on a sinking ship and go work someplace that is doing things right.

And if you want to go back and rescue that sinking ship in the future. More power to you, but I think it has to, it has to be modeled. You have to be,  uh, in a place where you can learn from effective leadership in order to be an effective leader. And especially in a dysfunctional environment, I think there are big opportunities for effective leaders to make a difference in dysfunctional environments, but it's of course, 10 times harder. 

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, no, a hundred percent agree. I feel that, um, you know, I, like I said, I came to education later in life and I had been, had a very successful corporate career and I was very good at managing relationships and managing people. And I think that really helped me, um, with relationships with parents, with all the moving parts and other stuff.

And, you know, I do see there are just some teachers who don't, You know, adult well, right. And so then when you've just always been in that kind of environment, um, you don't necessarily have the skills and you don't maybe understand why things aren't working. And that might be one of the reasons, but yeah, I absolutely agree that you need to have some good modeling.

All right. Well, you've been massive. Oh, go ahead. And I 

was going to say for any teacher or administrator who is thinking about leaving the profession, I want to encourage your listeners to ask themselves, you know, am You know, am I working in what I would consider a good organization because 

yeah, 

you know Leaving the profession is a pretty big decision And I think a lot of people just need to find a better organization to work for and they will you know Reconnect with everything they love about the profession When that dysfunction is gone.

So it is not necessarily you. It is not necessarily the profession. Sometimes it is just the specific organization that you work for. 

It is the specific organization, but I do coach people on, you know, there, there are 10 tends to be like, Oh, if I had a different admin, if I had the dream class, there is no dream class.

If I had different this way, different that, you know, my whole kind of thing is like, don't go somewhere else. And recreate the same circumstances for yourself because of your own lack of knowing how to set boundaries. Right? Or, or do things that make you successful, right? Don't just, you know, I always say, you know, well, it's like Jon Kabat Zinn, right?

Wherever you go, there you are. I always say, you know what? Your problems have passports. So if you think that changing school districts, like, make sure that the problem isn't you. I guess I'm saying make sure the problem isn't you, and you're saying make sure the problem isn't you. Right? Isn't the district.

So, um, I think those are both valid points. All right. Well, you've been super generous with your time. I have really, really appreciate it. I appreciate the work you do. Um, I'm going to put some links, um, below in the show notes for where people can find you. So I know you have a podcast because of course it's a podcast.

That's an easy transition for people. It's very centered on books, right? It's not so much centered on this type of. Practical wisdom, right? So tell us a little bit about that and tell us the best place that, um, the administrators who feel they need some help, some guidance, some common sense, um, can go to find you. 

Yeah, absolutely. So my website is principal center. com and principal center. com slash PD is where you will find all of the progressive discipline resources. Uh, it doesn't stand for professional development there. It's just progressive discipline. Everything's free. Uh, principle center radio is the podcast principle center.

com slash radio or in your favorite podcast app. And we've been going for over a decade. I've had over 400 guests and we talk almost exclusively about new books. So I talk with authors about their research and their books and uh, you can engage with those ideas and it's a, it's a nice way to figure out what, what books you might want to read and hear from a wide variety of authors.

Um, you know, I. Personally, probably could not, uh, keep up with, with that much, much research. So it's a, it's a real pleasure to hear directly from the authors about their work.  

Great. And if you are not far, you know, and if you're on TikTok, go find him. I got to tell you in a world full of people admiring the problem, like here's a voice of common sense, actually with some solutions, that's the world needs that.

The world needs some solutions, not just people sitting around admiring the problem. So I appreciate it. Thank you so much for your time. And, um, I'll put everything in the show notes and for everybody who's listening, I will be with you next time. Until then, create your own path and bring your own sunshine.