Restorative Justice Works (Just Not Like That)

You sat in the circle.
You heard the apology.
And you knew… nothing actually changed.

Restorative justice can work in schools- the research supports that.

But the versions most campuses are implementing...

Are something else entirely.

Research describes restorative practices as structured, resourced, and time-intensive.

What most schools are doing is faster, lighter, and handed off.

That's how school counselors end up in the middle of things:

• Facilitating conversations that aren't meant to be rushed
• Trying to facilitate a process you were never really trained to lead
• Knowing the outcome doesn’t match what the promises of true restoration, but not having the language to explain why.

In this episode, we take a hard look at what restorative justice actually requires... and how to know if your campus is falling short.

Because this isn’t just about whether you believe in restorative practices.

It’s about whether what’s happening on your campus even matches what the research is measuring-

And what that means for the role you’re being asked to play.

Referred to in this episode:
Ep. 191, "Your Campus Runs on a Pyramid of Lies"

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All names, stories, and case studies in this episode are fictionalized composites drawn from real-world circumstances. Any resemblance to actual students, families, or school personnel is coincidental. Details have been altered to protect privacy.

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This work is part of the School for School Counselors body of work developed by Steph Johnson, LPC, CSC, which centers role authority over role drift, consultative practice over fix-it culture, adult-designed systems and environments as primary drivers of student behavior, clinical judgment over compliance, and school counselor identity as leadership within complex systems.

Transcript

The Definition Problem In Practice

What Real Implementation Requires

What A Real Circle Looks Like

Voluntary Participation And Safety Limits

Measuring Success Beyond Suspensions

The Four Conditions And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 0:07

You know how this goes. Your principal goes to a conference or watches a webinar or reads a headline and they come back on fire. This is it. This is what we've been missing. And suddenly there are emails, there's a PD workshop on the calendar, and posters going up in the hallway, and everybody's language starts to change overnight because it's not just a suggestion or an idea anymore. It has become a mandate. We are going to transform our school culture. This is going to be a game changer for our kids. And if you've been in education longer than five minutes, you recognize this moment because you've lived it before. You've watched the excitement, you've sat through the trainings, you've nodded in all the right places, and then you've watched the whole thing implode while the next game changer was already being announced. But when this one got announced, it felt different. Because this time they put this one in your hands. And that's how you end up here. Sitting in a room with two students, 30 minutes notice, a talking piece on the table. One student is leaning back, they're relaxed, almost like they're amused. And then another student is staring at their shoes, making themselves small. The apology comes. It's technically correct because it has all the right words. I'm sorry if what I did made you feel bad. And you sit there watching this with a feeling you can't quite put your finger on because nothing about this situation feels like restoration. It feels like the student who caused the harm just got a very structured opportunity to intimidate again in front of you with your facilitation and a talking piece. The following week, you hear about the same two students and you're asked, can you run another circle? The first one didn't quite stick. And when you say you're not sure that's the right call, you're told, trust takes time. The process just needs more repetitions. Now, you know in your gut this is not the right intervention, but the problem is you don't have the words yet to explain exactly why. Well, I have good news for you, my friend. That's exactly what this episode is for. Hey, school counselor, welcome back. Here's what I know about you right now. You either love restorative justice or you feel like it's complete baloney. There's not a lot of middle ground on this one. Maybe you've watched it work, but more likely you haven't. Today we're gonna go through exactly what it takes, according to the research, for restorative practices to work. Some of what you hear is gonna feel very validating, and some of it is going to make you extremely uncomfortable. So, if you're ready for some straight talk, my friend, some clarity in your work and maybe a little bit of rebellion, you are in the right place. I'm Steph Johnson, and this is the School for School Counselors podcast. Hey, hey, so today we're gonna do something a little different. Instead of telling you what doesn't work, we're gonna talk about what it actually takes to do this one right. There are four conditions that come straight from the research. And fair warning, some of what the research shows is gonna surprise you, even if you've already made up your mind about restorative justice, and especially if you've already made up your mind. So let's start with the most basic condition of all for making restorative practices work in schools. You have to know what you're actually doing. And in restorative justice, that is genuinely harder than it sounds. Because here's something that almost nobody tells you until you dig into the research. There is no agreed upon definition of restorative justice. The field itself calls it a contested concept, which means when someone says research supports restorative justice, the first question has to be, okay, which version? Because that label gets applied to a lot of things that are not the same. Quick hallway conversations, classroom check-ins, and formal harm conversations that last an hour or more are not all the same things. Their approaches and their underlying intentions and frameworks are not interchangeable. And this isn't just a problem of semantics, it has direct consequences for the research. If we can't agree on what we're studying, we can't actually know what we're measuring when we say it works. Think about what that means. Was that school doing what your school is doing? Was that circle the same kind of circle? Was that coordinator the same kind of coordinator? Maybe, maybe not. And nobody in that training room is asking those questions. This is also where something deeper is worth talking about because the problem with defining restorative practices isn't accidental. There is a pattern in Western education where we encounter something cool rooted in Indigenous knowledge, something communal, relational, embedded in a specific cultural framework, and we grab onto the one piece that fits on a poster. We strip out the community, the accountability structure, and all of the context that made it work in the first place. And then we hand the remainder to the schools, we slap a name on it, and we call it a strategy. We did that with Maslow. If you listened to the last episode, episode 191, you know Maslow's hierarchy has serious evidence problems. But here's something I didn't cover in that episode. And it's the fact that the origin story goes way deeper than most people know. Abraham Maslow visited the Sixica, the Blackfoot Nation, in 1938. He spent six weeks embedded in a community that genuinely challenged his assumptions about human motivation. Because in the Blackfoot framework, self-actualization is not the destination, it's the starting point. The individual develops, and then that development fuels something larger, community actualization. And above that, cultural perpetuity, the responsibility to contribute to your people's survival and knowledge across generations. The individual exists in service of the community. Maslow observed that. And he never credited the Blackfoot. And there are Blackfoot scholars who are still feeling pretty salty about that, rightfully so. Though to be fair, the foremost researchers on this specific question, Blackfoot scholars Ryan Heavyhead and Nurse Blood, stop short of calling it stealing. What they document is significant unacknowledged influence, the taking without the crediting. The literature calls that epistemic appropriation. But then again, most of us would probably just call it stealing. Then we did it again with mindfulness, a 2,500-year-old Buddhist ethical practice, communal, inseparable from the Eightfold Path, and grounded in collective liberation. Mindfulness got redefined as individual stress management. It was stripped of its ethical framework, stripped of its communal purpose, and handed to schools where it became a glitter jar in a calm corner. And now we're doing it with restorative justice. Indigenous peacemaking practices that only worked because they were embedded in a community with shared values, shared accountability, and shared commitment to long-term relationship repair. But we packaged it into a one-day PD and handed it to educators. In all three cases, what made the original meaningful is exactly what got taken out, which is why we can't even agree on what to call restorative practices and why the research is so hard to interpret. You can't call it what it is because we've lost track of what it actually was. So knowing what it is that you're actually doing isn't just a technicality. Before your school implements anything called restorative anything, someone needs to be able to answer these questions clearly. What specific model are we using? What does it include? What does it explicitly exclude? And is everyone in this building working from the same definition? And if any of those answers are vague, your foundation is already cracked before you've laid a single brick. Restorative practices in schools can work, but it's only if we're honest about what we're actually doing. So then, if the first condition is knowing what you're doing, the second step is having what you need to actually do it. You know, when I was instructed to use restorative practices, I was handed a cue card with four guiding questions, and I was told to use it in hallway conversations. That was it. That was the extent of my restorative training. And I'll bet you got something similar if you got anything at all. My friend, that's not a foundation. That's an aesthetic. So let's start with what the research says genuine implementation looks like. It's whole school adoption, not a program that runs in the school counselor's office. It is not a circle here and there only when something goes sideways. It requires every single adult in the building to operate from the same philosophy, the same training, and the same level of commitment. It requires ongoing professional development, not a one-day workshop. It requires strong, consistent administrative leadership, not just endorsement, but modeling, living by it. Administrators who use restorative language in their own interactions, who back the process when it gets hard, and who don't default to suspension the moment a situation gets serious. It also requires a full-time dedicated coordinator. Not a school counselor who also does restorative justice, not a dean who runs these restorative circles between their other duties. It is a role, a person whose entire job is this. Research specifically identifies the absence of a dedicated coordinator as one of the primary reasons implementations fail. And then there's a study that should have changed this whole conversation, but somehow did not. Pittsburgh Public Schools, the Rand Corporation, with one of the first randomized controlled trials of restorative practices in schools. This is the gold standard. 44 schools, strong experimental design, real resources, real training, a dedicated program with coaches who visited schools, monthly professional learning groups, and consistent administrative support. What else could you ask for? By most measures, this was a better implementation than anything most schools ever attempt. And here's what they found: suspensions went down in both the restorative schools and the non-restorative schools. And we need to pause there because that's not how this gets presented. It gets presented like a clean win for restorative practices. Suspensions went down, hooray! But it isn't a clean win. And they couldn't actually say restorative practices caused that change. Maybe there was something else happening in those schools. Maybe it was a national trend. Maybe it was the fact that everybody knew they were being watched. No one really knows for sure. And that is a huge problem. And then when they looked at the other outcomes in this study, violence, no meaningful difference. Arrests, no meaningful difference. And in middle schools, academic outcomes actually got worse, including declines in math scores for black students. Let that one percolate for a second. Because this was one of the better resourced, better supported implementations in the research literature, and it still could not deliver clear results. So if Pittsburgh, with coaches and training and administrative support and a real program produced results this mixed, what exactly are we expecting from a laminated card on a lanyard? So before your school moves forward, someone needs to be able to answer these questions. Do we have a dedicated coordinator? And is that their only role? Do we have a multi-year professional development plan, not just a one-off workshop? Does our administration model restorative practices or just talk about them? And are we prepared to sustain this for three to five years before we expect to see any meaningful change? Because that's what the research says it takes. Three to five years of sustained, supported, whole school implementation. If the answer to any of those questions is vague, you don't have a foundation. You have an intention. And intentions don't repair harm. Restorative practices in schools can work, but not without a real foundation. So if condition two was about what your school needs to have in place, the next condition, condition three, is about what actually happens in the room. And this is where we kind of need to slow down because most people have probably never actually seen what a true restorative circle looks like when it's done well. And that's important. Because if you haven't seen the real thing, you don't even know what you're aiming for. So a real circle starts before anyone ever sits down. You meet with each student individually, you prepare them, you assess whether the situation is even appropriate for a circle. And we're going to come back to that one in a minute. You make sure that participation in the circle is actually voluntary. Then the circle itself is structured. Chairs in a circle, everyone can see each other with a trained facilitator guiding the process. They don't control it, they guide it. They work through a sequence of questions that move from surface to impact to responsibility to repair. There's a talking piece, which means people are listening fully. And all of this takes time. 60 minutes, sometimes more. And it doesn't even end when everybody stands up to leave, because even though you often see it utilized that way, restoration isn't supposed to be a one-and-done event, it's a process. So after the circle, someone should intentionally continue to check in. Agreements may have to be revisited. The relationship is monitored, it's tended to, and it's more deeply cultivated. That's what repair actually looks like. And that is not what we are doing in schools. Compare that vision to what most schools are calling a restorative circle. Two students sitting across from each other at a desk. Tell me how that made you feel. There's silence, there's a shrug, there are some single-sentence answers, a tentative agreement, and done. That's the whole thing. And out of that, everybody wants to believe that the situation was handled because it looked like the process and it sounded like the language. It checked the box, right? But if you're being honest, these situations are not the same thing. They're not even close. And this is where everything gets really blurry because we start confusing resolution with restoration. And those are not the same thing. Adding to that, reparations do not equal restoration. An apology is not repair. An agreement is not trust. And getting everybody back to class as quickly as we can is not the same as actually addressing what happened. So be honest with me for a second. If you were asked right now to lead a full restorative circle, the kind that I just described, for 60, maybe 90 minutes with multiple students and real harm that has occurred, would you actually know how to guide that conversation all the way through? You could probably get it started. You could ask good questions, you could get people talking, but then what? When it gets tense, when somebody shuts down, when the conversation drifts, do you have a structure to bring it back? Because most of us were never ever trained to do that, not at that level. And that is not a deficit on your part. That is a mismatch between what's being asked of you and what you were actually taught. Now, here's another thing that nobody ever covers in PD. There are three things that almost never get mentioned in this process. The first one is the harmed student. Almost everything that is written about restorative justice focuses on the student who caused the harm, their accountability, their reintegration, their behavior change. And that's probably not an accident because modern restoration practices were adapted from the criminal justice system. That's literally why it's called restorative justice. In that context, the offender is the subject. The process is built around them. Accountability, consequence, reintegration. That's the architecture of the justice system. And it traveled into schools with this practice. But schools are not courtrooms. And the student sitting across from the person who harmed them is not a plaintiff with legal representation and procedural protections. They're a kid who got hurt and who now has to sit in a room and listen to an apology they didn't ask for, facilitated by an adult who may or may not have any good trauma training, with no guarantee that the other student is actually remorseful. And we are calling that restoration. But the harmed students' needs, their right to feel safe, their right to choose whether they participate, and their right to have someone in their corner who is specifically there for them, those needs get forgotten in favor of the process. That should concern every single school counselor involved in these practices. The second thing you hardly hear people talk about, voluntary participation. Authentic restorative justice requires genuine, voluntary participation from all parties. That is not just a preference or a guideline. That is a foundational requirement of the model. But in schools, how voluntary is it really when the alternative is suspension? Would you like to participate in a circle or would you like an out-of-school suspension? That is not much of a choice. That is coercion implemented with the talking piece. And any agreement reached under those conditions is pretty much worthless. And when it doesn't work out, everybody's going to act surprised, except for you. The third thing people rarely talk about is knowing when not to hold a circle. There are situations where a restorative circle is not appropriate. Full stop. Like when there's an ongoing safety threat. Restoration can't Cannot happen until safety is established. Those are sequential. They are not simultaneous. One has to happen before the other, not at the same time. When the relationship is chronically power imbalanced, like with chronic bullying or ongoing harassment, putting those two students in a circle does not level the playing field. It just gives the more powerful student a new venue. When a student has significant trauma history, forced dialogue with someone who caused them harm can reopen wounds that a 60-minute circle is not equipped to close. When a teacher wants to run a circle with an entire class over a discipline concern, this happens more than it should. And it is not a restorative practice. It is a teacher using the language of restorative justice to manage a room. The power differential between a teacher and 28 students does not disappear just because everybody's sitting in a circle. And when harm has happened repeatedly, if you've got situations where you've already run a circle for certain students and the harm reoccurs, that's data telling you the circle does not work. And running another one is not persistence. It's the definition of doing the same thing and expecting a different result. These are not outlier cases. These are situations you will encounter. So doing it right means authentic preparation before anybody sits down, a trained facilitator, not a cue card, a genuine process, not a time-bound version that gets everybody back to class as quickly as possible. Real follow-up, not a handshake and a hope, and the judgment to know when a circle isn't the right call at all. Before you say yes to running a circle, someone needs to be able to answer these questions. Has each student been individually prepared? Is participation genuinely voluntary, or is suspension or other discipline the alternative? Is anyone in this building trained to facilitate this, not just willing to do it? What are the dynamics of this situation? And are we risking further harm to the student who's already been hurt? And if this circle doesn't work, what happens next? If the answers are vague, you're not doing restorative justice. You're doing conflict management with fancier sounding words. Restorative justice can work in schools, but only if we're willing to do it right and walk away when we know we can't. So we've talked about what restorative justice is. We've talked about what it takes to build a real foundation for the practice, and we've talked about what doing it right actually looks like. Now we need to talk about how we know if any of it's working. Because in most schools, this part goes completely wrong. And it's because people ask the wrong questions. The question most schools using so-called restorative practices are asking is Did suspensions go down? And the answer in many cases is yes. Restorative practices do appear to reduce suspension rates. Multiple studies support that. But there's some problems here. First, if that's the only metric you're measuring, almost anything can look like success. Send every student to the counselor instead of the office, suspensions go down. Stop documenting minor incidents, suspensions go down. Tell teachers to handle everything in the classroom, suspensions go down. None of those are restorative justice, but all of them can show up in your data as a win. And secondly, the same studies that showed gains in emotional well-being also, in the same studies, reported mixed or negative results on bullying, attendance, and academic performance. No one talks about that part, and that's a problem, because fewer suspensions is not the same as less harm. Fewer suspensions is not the same as better relationships. And fewer suspensions is not the same as students feeling safer. It just means fewer suspensions. And if we're measuring success by suspension rates alone, we're asking a question that's easy to answer instead of the questions that actually matter. Which leads us to the question we should be asking instead. What are we sacrificing in order to claim that it works? There are three outcome questions your school needs to be talking about very honestly. First, what does the rigorous research actually show? Because the Rand Pittsburgh study, which is the most rigorous study we have, found something that should have changed this entire restorative practices conversation, but somehow it didn't. Suspension rate disparities narrowed, but math scores also declined for Black students specifically. So that is not a clear win, and there's more. That is true and it is worth fighting to change. But the Pittsburgh finding illustrates something uncomfortable. Fixing the suspension disparity and harming academic outcomes in the same intervention is not justice. It's a trade-off. And your students deserve better than a trade-off. The third question your school needs to be honestly asking is Is durable change actually happening? Are students who participated in circles reporting feeling safer? Does anybody ever really take any time to ask them? Are relationships actually improving, not just on paper, but in how students actually interact with each other in the real world? Are academic outcomes improving? Or are we trading discipline data for learning loss? Is the harmed student, not just the student who caused the harm, experiencing something that feels like repair? And is the process producing lasting change? Or are we running the same circle from the same students every few weeks and calling it restorative? Asking better outcome questions means being willing to look at that whole picture, even when the full picture is more complicated than the slide they showed you in PD? Before your school declares restorative practices a success, somebody needs to be able to answer these questions. Are we tracking outcomes for the harmed student, not only for the student who caused the harm? Are restorative practices affecting academic outcomes for our most vulnerable students? Is real change happening or are we seeing the same situations happen over and over again? And are we willing to follow the data even when it tells us something we are not ready to hear? If the answer to any of those is uncomfortable, that discomfort is the whole point. That's the data talking. Restorative practices in schools can work, but only if we're willing to ask and honestly answer the questions that matter. So let's bring this back to you because everything that we just covered, the definition problem, the foundation gap, the process failures, the outcome questions, none of that is purely theory, right? These are real life. And these situations become real decision points about your school counseling program, your time, and your ethics. And to be real, you often have a layer of administrator pressure coming down on all this too, right? So listen, if your campus is still hyping up restorative practices, know that they can work. The research shows that. You have to call it what it is, get a real foundation in place, do it right or don't do it, and ask better outcome questions. Are we actually doing restorative justice or are we just calling something restorative? Your students deserve an approach that's actually built to deliver what it promises. Where we're not just bringing them the aesthetic, right? We're bringing them the real thing. And if you've been sitting there thinking, man, this is a bigger problem getting my talking piece is going to solve, you're you're not wrong. And now you have the research to say so. We have put together an action guide that goes with this episode, the four conditions laid out as a framework you can bring to any meeting, any conversation, or any moment when someone tries to put restorative justice in your hands and expect you to figure it out. For the next few days, it's going to be a free download in our new school community. I'm going to put the link to that in the episode description. And if you want that action guide permanently, along with the space where these conversations keep going every single week, that's the School for School Counselors mastermind. And there's a link for that in the episode description as well. Hey, I'm Steph Johnson. I'll be back soon with another episode of the School for School Counselors podcast. In the meantime, grab that action guide and keep asking the hard questions. Take care.