Black Educational Transformation

Examining Anti-Racist Restorative Justice as a Site for Black Educational Transformation:
A Possibilities Project Case Study

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Principal Investigator: Chezare A. Warren, PhD

Description

Research in Black Education demonstrates the numerous ways schooling in the US has been an excruciatingly painful experience for Black youth. Campaigns for “police free” schools and national calls to reduce disproportionality in Black students’ exclusionary discipline signal heightened public awareness of the ways anti-Black racist school structures, such as school discipline, undermine Black children’s educational wellbeing. This study describes Black student outcomes following one charter school network’s adoption of a new antiracist restorative justice approach to school discipline. The study features a high-profile charter management organization located in a large Midwestern US city whose leadership publicly acknowledged the decades of racial harm caused by the punishment-oriented discipline system previously employed across its 18 campuses. This phenomenological case study catalogues what happens in terms of Black student experience following the charter network’s change in disciplinary practice and the consequence of this change on educators’ orientation to school discipline with Black students. Ultimately, the project helps to clarify the challenges and tensions associated with structural change, and the potential/consequence of such change on Black student education experience.

Research Question:

What Black student academic and social outcomes follow adoption of a new antiracist restorative justice approach to school discipline?