A circle is a practice.
Culture is a pattern.
That distinction sits at the center of the 2026 debate about restorative justice in schools. Some educators and commentators argue that restorative justice has not delivered: classrooms feel harder to manage, teachers feel unsupported, and students experience inconsistent accountability. Others point to meaningful reductions in suspensions, arrests, and exclusionary discipline, along with stronger relationships and school climate.
Both concerns deserve attention.
The evidence does not support a simple verdict that restorative practices in schools either work everywhere or fail everywhere. It shows something more useful: restorative practices produce different results in different conditions. A circle can support repair. It cannot, by itself, create the trust, expectations, systems, and adult alignment that make repair possible.
A circle cannot fix a culture it did not create.
The question, then, is not whether schools should choose restoration instead of accountability. The question is how schools can build a culture where accountability is relational, credible, consistent, and connected to learning.
1. The debate is real, but the question is incomplete
The current debate often asks whether restorative justice “worked” in schools.
That question is too broad.
A 2025-revised National Bureau of Economic Research study of Chicago Public Schools found that restorative practices were associated with a 17.8% reduction in out-of-school suspension days for high school students and an 18.8% reduction in arrests. The researchers also found suggestive improvements in students’ perceptions of school climate and no meaningful average decline in test-score value added.
Those findings matter. They suggest that well-supported restorative implementation can change adult responses, student behavior, and the experience of school.
At the same time, the evidence is not uniformly positive. Reporting in Education Next highlights a randomized evaluation in which schools using restorative justice did not show statistically significant differences in school climate, suspension rates, or academic outcomes. The article also documents teacher concerns about inconsistent consequences, limited training, and classrooms where educators feel they lack meaningful support.
The lesson is not that one side is telling the truth and the other is not.
A program label cannot carry the weight of culture change.
Schools need more than circles. They need shared expectations, clear pathways for response, adult learning, data, leadership support, and honest attention to power. That is the work of transforming school culture.
2. Restorative practices fail when they replace culture instead of building it
Restorative practices are often introduced after a school experiences high suspension rates, strained relationships, or a serious incident. The school adopts circles, conferences, or restorative conversations and hopes those tools will repair the larger culture.
But responsive practices depend on proactive conditions.
Students and adults need to know:
- What does accountability mean here?
- How do we respond when harm occurs?
- Who is responsible for repair?
- What happens when harm is repeated?
- How do we protect safety and preserve dignity at the same time?
Without shared answers, restorative practice becomes inconsistent. One teacher may use a conversation to support accountability. Another may avoid addressing the issue because the process feels unclear or time-consuming. A third may treat a circle as a substitute for a consequence, even when the harm requires a more structured response.
That inconsistency does not create trust. It creates uncertainty.
The California Department of Education’s restorative practices guidance emphasizes that restorative approaches work best as part of a broader schoolwide effort. That effort includes relationships, implementation planning, staff development, student voice, and systems that support practice over time.
A restorative culture is not softer than a punitive culture. It is more intentional about what accountability is meant to accomplish.
3. Five steps move schools from adoption to alignment
Remembering Justice Collective’s Remembering Leadership Framework offers a practical sequence for school leaders and culture teams. The five movements, Remember, Dream, Reframe, Redesign, and Remain Accountable, help schools move from seeing a problem to sustaining a different way of working.
1. Remember what shaped the present
Before redesigning discipline, schools need to understand the history and patterns that produced the current conditions.
This includes examining:
- Who is most often removed from class?
- Which behaviors receive the strongest responses?
- How do race, disability, gender, language, and poverty shape adult interpretation?
- Where do students and families experience belonging, or exclusion?
- What do teachers inherit when they enter the school?
Remembering interrupts the assumption that current culture appeared by accident. Discipline patterns reflect policies, habits, beliefs, staffing structures, and histories of trust or mistrust.
A school cannot change what it refuses to see.
2. Dream a culture people can recognize
A vision is only useful when people can experience it in daily life.
Instead of describing a school as “restorative,” leaders can ask more concrete questions:
- What does a student experience after causing harm?
- What does the person harmed experience?
- How does a teacher receive support during a conflict?
- How do families participate in repair?
- What does re-entry look like after removal?
- What does safety feel like in the hallway, classroom, and cafeteria?
Dreaming is disciplined imagination. It names the conditions a school is trying to create: voice, dignity, connection, safety, accountability, and meaningful participation.
The vision must belong to students, staff, families, and community, not only to the leadership team.
3. Reframe the problem with R.A.N.K.
Many school discipline efforts begin with a narrow question: How do we stop this behavior?
R.A.N.K. helps teams ask a fuller set of questions:
- R, Recognize the Ranking: Who is treated as credible, dangerous, disruptive, or disposable?
- A, Analyze the System: Which policies, routines, incentives, and power relationships shape the outcome?
- N, Name the Harm: Who is affected, and what harm remains unaddressed?
- K, Keep Repairing Forward: What must continue changing after the immediate incident?
This diagnostic does not remove individual responsibility. It places responsibility within context.
A student remains accountable for harm. Adults and systems remain accountable for the conditions in which harm occurs, the responses that follow, and the patterns that repeat.
Reframing helps schools avoid two incomplete responses: blaming individual students for systemic patterns or blaming systems in ways that erase personal responsibility.
4. Redesign the everyday system
Restorative practices stick when they become part of how the school operates, not when they depend on one enthusiastic staff member.
Redesign may include:
- Shared language for conflict, harm, impact, and repair
- Community-building routines before serious incidents occur
- A tiered continuum of responses
- Clear criteria for restorative conversations, conferences, and re-entry
- Coaching for teachers and administrators
- Student and family participation in culture planning
- Policies aligned with restorative goals
- Data reviews that examine both outcomes and lived experience
This is where ideals become observable.
A school might track suspensions and referrals, but it should also examine repeat incidents, instructional time, student belonging, teacher confidence, perceived safety, and whether harmed students feel heard.
Accountability becomes more credible when people can see how decisions are made and what happens next.
5. Remain accountable beyond the launch
Implementation is not complete when staff attend training or when a school adopts new language.
It begins there.
Remaining accountable means asking, regularly and without defensiveness:
- What is changing?
- For whom?
- What is not changing?
- Where are students still experiencing exclusion?
- Where do teachers still feel unsupported?
- Which practices are producing repair?
- Which practices are producing avoidance or confusion?
This step matters because culture work unfolds over time. Staff turnover, leadership changes, new student needs, and shifting community conditions all affect implementation.
The first design is not sacred.
Schools learn, adjust, repair, and continue.
4. What schools can do next
Restorative practices in schools are not a quick fix, and they are not a complete discipline system by themselves.
They are part of a broader approach to building relationships, responding to harm, and creating conditions where students and adults can learn. They work best when leaders invest in proactive culture-building, responsive repair, adult practice, and implementation systems together.
For a school or district beginning this work, a practical next step may be to:
- Review discipline, climate, and belonging data together.
- Listen to students, staff, and families about how accountability is currently experienced.
- Identify one recurring pattern rather than attempting to solve everything at once.
- Use R.A.N.K. to examine the power and system conditions behind that pattern.
- Redesign one set of routines, responses, or agreements.
- Establish a feedback cycle before implementation begins.
Our Restorative Practices for Schools work supports schools through this process with shared learning, implementation cohorts, culture assessment, leadership coaching, and practice design.
The goal is not to defend restorative justice as a brand.
The goal is to build schools where connection is practiced before conflict, accountability does not depend on shame, and repair is possible because the culture has made room for it.
If your school is asking whether restorative practices have delivered, that question can become a useful beginning. Examine what has been tried. Name what has not worked. Listen for who has been affected. Clarify what accountability should make possible.
Then take one practical step: from remembering, to dreaming, to reframing, to redesigning, and remaining accountable together.