Soft ‘Restorative Justice’ Discipline Policy a Bust in NYC Public Schools

The New York City Department of Education’s $100 million push to implement “restorative justice” instead of stricter school discipline has been a bust — with police incidents doubling to 4,200 reports this year and “chronic absenteeism” spiking to a whopping 35%, a new study claims.

The major shift in policy at city public schools started in 2015 under then-Mayor Bill de Blasio, when the DOE began requiring principals to obtain approval from the central office before suspending students in grades K–2.

But “what began as an alternative became a mandate, forcing administrators to abandon exclusionary options regardless of school context,” Jennifer Weber, an education behavioral researcher with the Manhattan Institute think tank, wrote in the report, released Thursday.

“NYC’s implementation of RJ has failed to achieve its promises,” Weber said. “The changes undermined teacher authority and weakened classroom order rather than improving school climate and advancing equity.”

Restorative justice is the education establishment’s equivalent of alternatives to jail programs for juveniles and criminals — focusing on mediation, conflict resolution, relationship building and harm reduction “circles” of students and teachers, aimed at defusing and preventing misbehavior, fights and violence.

The goal is to improve school climate and curb more punitive punishment such as student suspensions, and advocates have pushed the changes in the name of racial and economic equity.

Groups including the New York Civil Liberties Union have long complained that suspensions disproportionately punish minorities, particularly black students.

But the new system ultimately did not lead to “a shift from punishment to compassion,” Weber wrote, “but the dismantling of the systems that had maintained basic classroom stability.”

Weber’s MI-funded study cited shocking examples — some highlighted in The Post — of students not being punished or held accountable for reprehensible and violent acts.

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The new system may even be harmful, the study found, contributing to disorder, lack of accountability and possibly an increase in chronic absenteeism.

Over the last decade since restorative justice began being rolled out, incidents that the NYPD’s school safety division nearly doubled, from 1,200 in the first quarter of 2016 to 4,120 in the first quarter of 2025, records show.

Chronic student absenteeism — missing 10% of school days or 18 days in a given year — skyrocketed from 26.5% in the 2018–19 school year to 34.8% in 2023-24.

That percentage is equal to roughly one-third of kids in the nation’s largest public school district, or some 300,000 students, regularly missing class.

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At the same time, test scores have been less than stellar — with 53% of students in grades 3-8 meeting standards on the state’s 2024 standardized math exam and 49% passing the English test.

On the more rigorous National Assessment of Educational Progress tests, only 33% of city 4th graders and 23% of 8th graders were deemed proficient in math.

Similarly, just 28% of 4th graders and 29% of 8th graders were found to be proficient in English.

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The study said the DOE has spent a total of $99 million on restorative justice initiatives from 2015–2024 under both de Blasio and current Mayor Eric Adams.

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