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Despite long-standing evidence that the use of exclusionary discipline practices is both ineffective and even potentially harmful, these policies continue to be used in educational settings across the country. In this chapter, we discuss the problems associated with exclusionary discipline, with an emphasis on zero tolerance approaches. We begin our discussion with a brief history of the origin of zero tolerance policies, a presentation of data that contradict the effectiveness of such policies, and examples of the continued and egregious application of this exclusionary approach. We discuss problems of disproportionality associated with the use of zero tolerance policies, including how this approach exacerbates learning problems for students with and at risk for disabilities, especially if that risk is related to emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD). We conclude by offering alternatives to a zero tolerance approach in the form of positive and preventative approaches for improving student behavior across various levels of intensity within a tiered system of support framework.

An understanding of the effects of zero tolerance policies in schools has resulted in rethinking of approaches to prevent conflict and creating a healthy school climate. Restorative practices (RP) have been looked to as an alternative to zero tolerance policies. At the same time, social emotional learning (SEL) programming has been implemented to provide students with the skills to communicate and build relationships with peers. The purpose of this paper is to provide a look at the historical context shaping the development of RP, and explore connections between RP and SEL. Considerations for implementation and conceptual models for implementing RP are also discussed.

Informed by education policy analysis methods, this essay places RP in their broader context, explores RP and considers such practices important to study due to the unintended effects stemming from “traditional” obedience-oriented punitive approaches to school discipline (American Psychological Association Zero Tolerance Task Force, 2008; O’Malley and Austin, 2014).

Based on the analysis of current research, the authors explain that when RP are implemented with SEL programming, it is an opportunity for educational practitioners to address issues around race, gender, disability, and other aspects of diversity. By integrating these approaches together, RP become a vehicle to develop students’ SEL skills, which includes communication skills, kindness, empathy, and caring.

An understanding of how zero tolerance policies have played out in the school setting has resulted in rethinking of current approaches to preventing conflict. Subsequently, educational leaders and professional associations have led a shift toward alternative models and practices in school discipline.

District, state, and federal policymakers have pressed for more constructive alternatives that foster a productive and healthy instructional climate without depriving large numbers of students the opportunity to learn (Skiba and Losen, 2016, p. 4). These approaches include RP, as well as integrating SEL into school practices and the curriculum.

Several challenges and opportunities lie ahead. Based on the firsthand work with schools and districts implementing restorative and SEL practices, as well as the knowledge and insights gained from this analysis of research, one important need to consider is the need to integrate school disciplinary practices, including RP, into the school context and existing structures.

By conducting this study of the research evidence on RP, the authors were able to gain insights into questions, including: How have school practitioners applied RP as an alternative to zero tolerance policies?

Concern about the use of zero-tolerance policies for discipline has led to a search for alternatives such as training in early-warning signs of aggressive behavior and strategies for effective classroom management in schools. This chapter examines the effectiveness of the provision of alternatives to out-of-school suspensions (OSS) in reducing the use of exclusionary discipline for minor misbehavior and the school characteristics associated with these provisions.

This analysis uses the 2008 panel from the National School Survey on Crime and Safety to explore this question for approximately 1,000 high schools. The analysis is a probit regression analysis to examine the association between the provision of alternatives to OSS, school characteristics, and the use of OSS for low-level suspensions. This analytic approach provides wide generalizability for the findings, though it does also limit an ability to identify individual school- or student-level effects.

Findings based on probit regression analysis suggest that structural characteristics of schools – beyond student characteristics – are only somewhat related to variation in the use of OSS for low-level infractions and, on average, the availability of alternatives to OSS do not strongly decrease the frequency of OSS for lower-level infractions. These findings are important in the current era of discipline policy scrutiny where schools and policy-makers are searching for alternatives to traditional suspension practices in a limited empirical evidence base.

While these alternatives hold great promise, little is known about their effectiveness in addressing behavior problems and/or reducing OSS. More importantly, even less is known about the characteristics of schools likely to enact alternatives.

A series of highly publicized school shootings in the USA generated the misperception of an epidemic of school violence. Fears of school violence stimulated an ill‐advised expansion of zero tolerance school discipline policies and the widespread dissemination of profiles or warning signs of potentially dangerous students for use by school administrators. This article presents the rationale for student threat assessment as an administrative alternative to zero tolerance or profiling. It describes the development and field‐testing of guidelines for school administrators to follow in investigating and resolving student threats of violence. Student threat assessment permits administrators to make reasonable judgments about the seriousness of a threat, to resolve most threats quickly and efficiently, and to reserve more labor‐intensive procedures for the most serious threats.

Part of a larger multicase ethnographic research project, this case study examines the experience of transgender youth and their teachers at a school that uses restorative practices as an alternative to school suspension.

The current study focuses on interviews from one transgender student, her teachers, and her administrators.

Taken together, these interviews expose complex mechanisms through which transphobia undermines an ostensibly democratic discipline practice intended to promote social justice. The restorative concept of “accountability” framed staff’s efforts to create a more gender-inclusive school, but this frame inadvertently placed the burden of inclusion largely on the transgender student, as staff expected her to educate peers and teachers and enforce gender inclusive practices.

Restorative practice trainings should be integrated with trainings on inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) individuals.

Existing research examines the impact of zero tolerance policies on transgender students. This study demonstrates that even when alternatives to zero tolerance policies are in place, teachers and administrators easily slip holding transgender youth accountable for their own safety. A school-wide commitment to “inclusion” does not negate the need for educating staff and students about LGBTQ identities and inclusion.

School leaders seeking to implement restorative justice discipline practices in diverse urban schools have a series of subtle and crucial decisions to make that are omitted in the literature on alternatives to suspension. The current chapter examines one group of Black teachers from a larger study of schools using restorative practices. In interviews and observations, these teachers demonstrated Du Bois’s theory of Double Consciousness; they recognized both the institutional dynamics of the school’s discipline policy and the ways in which enactment of that policy ultimately replicated traditional racial inequality. They repeatedly challenged restorative theory and practices in terms of their relevance to students whose everyday reality involved police violence, community violence, and impoverished living conditions. While praising its potential as a foundation for communication and trust building, they perceived its implementation as a way to restore obedience for the student and restore order in the school. While stemming from one group of teachers in one school setting, my findings beg important questions for school leaders, researchers, and policymakers concerned with school discipline reform.

Behavioral threat assessment and intervention is a violence prevention strategy that has become widely used in US schools. Instead of relying on a zero tolerance disciplinary approach that often leads to school exclusion of students with disabilities, schools can use a multidisciplinary threat assessment team to assess the seriousness and context of a student's behavior and identify appropriate interventions and supports. This process is especially valuable for students with disabilities who are identified as threatening violence. This chapter describes an evidence-based model of threat assessment, the Comprehensive School Threat Assessment Guidelines (CSTAG), ¹ reviews some common misunderstandings of threat assessment, and presents a case example illustrating the value of threat assessment in preventing school exclusion, and provides services for a student with a disability.

In this chapter, we consider the complexity of issues associated with violence in schools and provide an overview of this 33rd volume of Advances in Learning and Behavioral Disabilities. We begin with a brief consideration of the nature and definitions of violence as it manifests in schools and then consider three broad areas addressed by the chapters in this volume. First, we consider bullying and the bullying dynamic, including cyberbullying, and the intersection of bullying and students with disabilities. Next, we address the extraordinarily difficult topic of school shootings, including whether and how we can predict, prevent, and respond to school shootings. Finally, we consider more broadly advances in building a more positive school climate and sense of community and creating safer schools generally. In all of these, we acknowledge the challenges of understanding the complexity and multiple causes of school violence, and the apparent rise in many forms of violence in schools, but conclude with thoughts on the positive avenues identified by authors in this volume for ways we might better support children and youth in both preventing violence and responding to it in appropriate, supportive ways.

School counselors are committed to serving students' social-emotional, postsecondary, and academic needs while they navigate primary and secondary school (American School Counselor Association, 2019). Much has been said about the ways in which school counselors can impact postsecondary outcomes and social emotional health. It is important that we also address the ways school counselors can impact positive academic outcomes as it is intertwined in postsecondary options and success. For Black males, academic success has traditionally been met with systemic barriers (i.e., school-to-prison pipeline, lower graduation rates, lower incomes, higher unemployment rates, and lower college going rates (National Center for Edcuation Statisitics, 2019a, 2019b, 2020a, 2020b) and low expectations. School counselors are charged to be leaders and change agents for social justice and equity in our schools by the American School Counselor Association (ASCA, 2019) and can impact systemic change. This chapter will explore ways in which school counselors can impact positive academic outcomes for Black males. School counselors as change agents and advocates are positioned to make a real impact for Black male academic success. The authors will also provide some recommendations and best practices for elementary, middle, and high school counselors as they work with students, teachers, and families from an anti-deficit model as outlined by Harper (2012).

This study aims to assess service user characteristics, uptake and outcomes for drug checking services offered to over 250,000 English festival-goers in summer 2018 and to compare findings with earlier years, wider festival-goers and the general population.

A total of 2,672 substances of concern were submitted by the public and tested by chemists in mobile laboratories on 24 show days at seven festivals. Results were embedded in 2,043 individually tailored brief interventions (BI) delivered by health professionals to 4,240 service users. Comparative data were collected through anonymous self-report surveys with 1,291 respondents at five of the same festivals.

Three percent of drug-using festival-goers received BI, 95% of whom had not previously accessed health services regarding their alcohol or other drug use. Drug checking service users were significantly more likely to be younger, male and past month polydrug users with a wider range of drugs consumed in the last month compared with the general festival population. For samples matching purchase intent, nearly half intended to reduce dosage, with younger and female service users significantly more likely to reduce dosage. For substances identified as other than expected, nearly two thirds disposed of them.

Festivals are potential sites to deliver innovative health interventions and to monitor their outcomes, reduce the risk of poisoning and overdose, and facilitate access to follow-up support services.

This study suggests that there is value in event-based services that provide risk reduction communications directly to young adults engaged in higher risk drug use compared with wider event and general populations.