Pushout (29 page)

African American Female Achievement Initiative

Oakland, CA

Alliance for Girls

Bay Area

Beautiful Black Girls, Inc.

Baton Rouge, LA

Black Girls Code

San Francisco, CA

Black Girls Rock

Youth Enrichment Programs

New York Metro Area

Blossom Program for Girls

Brooklyn, NY

BreakOUT

New Orleans, LA

Center for Young Women's Development

San Francisco, CA

Children of Promise NYC

Brooklyn, NY

Community Works West

Oakland, CA

Delta GEMS Program

Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.

Nationwide

Eve's Circle

Montgomery, AL

GEMS

New York, NY

Girl Power! Rocks

Miami, FL

Girls and Gangs

Los Angeles, CA

Girls for Gender Equity

New York Area

Girls, Inc.

Nationwide

Girls Rule

Chicago, IL

Impact Family Counseling

Birmingham, AL

Lead4Life, Inc.

Baltimore, MD

LifeBuilders

Chicago, IL

A Long Walk Home

Chicago, IL

The Mentoring Center

Oakland, CA

MISSSEY

Oakland, CA

National CARES Network

Nationwide

National Human Trafficking Resource Center

Washington, DC

National Hotline: 1–888–373–7888

PACE Center for Girls

Jacksonville, FL

Rise Sister Rise!

Columbus, OH

A Servant's Heart Youth Ministries

Upper Marlboro, MD

She's All That

Chicago, IL

Sisters of Tomorrow and Today

Atlanta, GA, & New Haven, CT

Southwest Key Programs

Texas, Wisconsin, California, New York, Florida, Arizona

Tomorrow's Girls

Philadelphia, PA

True Belles Mentoring Program for Girls

Dearborn Heights, MI

Young Enterprising Sisters

Nationwide

APPENDIX B ALTERNATIVES TO PUNISHMENT

Two of our nation's most prominent alternatives to punitive discipline are Positive Behaviors Intervention Systems (PBIS) and restorative justice. Both systems are an alternative paradigm in which to respond to problematic student behavior, but each also provides its own distinct set of promises and challenges—particularly with respect to their ability to interrupt school-to-confinement pathways.

Positive Behavioral Intervention Systems and Black Girls

There are more than seven thousand schools currently implementing Positive Behavioral Intervention Systems with the support of the National Technical Assistance Center on Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports in the Office of Special Education Programs.
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PBIS is described as a “systems approach for establishing a continuum of proactive, positive discipline procedures for all students and staff members in all types of school settings.”
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As a tiered, research-based approach that may be enhanced by the use of wraparound services, PBIS promotes “prosocial behavior” among “(a) students without chronic problems (primary prevention), (b) those students at risk for problem behavior (secondary prevention), and (c) students with intensive behavioral needs.”
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The focus of PBIS is to “enhance the school's capacity to prevent disruptive behavior”
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and, where necessary, modify student behavior, often within an existing paradigm or school climate of punishment. This “socially
important behavior change” is at the center of the PBIS programmatic thrust and helps to facilitate institutional responses to the problematic behavior of students.
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This model draws upon behavioral and social learning and includes several school-based personnel (typically a school psychologist, guidance counselor, or other adult equipped to engage in behavioral assessments) to institute the multitiered interventions.
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While presented as an alternative to exclusionary discipline, its implementation at the elementary school level also includes “pre-correction” of student behavior, whereby adults remind students of school behavioral norms and expectations using “praise statements” such as “I saw you share with your friend.”
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PBIS is rooted in special education and behavior modification.
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As a preferred intervention in federal law associated with the behavior modification of students with disabilities, PBIS also has an established legal framework for its implementation.
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As such, tools to measure the effectiveness of PBIS include those that focus on how well students adapt to teacher- and school-established norms.
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PBIS has worked to improve staff members' perceptions of the schools' organizational health, and it reduced “students' need for and use of school-based counseling services.”
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This suggests that by investing in specific interventions that target student behaviors, there can be broader outcomes that impact school climate and resources. In New Hampshire, for example, the implementation of the large-scale use of PBIS reduced suspensions (in-school and out-of-school), reduced office discipline referrals, increased instructional time, and increased time for “administrative leadership.”
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PBIS has been noted to have a positive effect on student disciplinary outcomes, in that schools that have been trained in PBIS report a significant reduction in the percentage of children with major and minor office disciplinary events and in the overall rate of these events.
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Existing research found that schools that have
implemented PBIS with fidelity experienced decreases in office discipline reports (ODRs) and total suspensions (TS).
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The researchers also found that over time, fidelity was less a factor in the rate of office discipline reports.
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According to the investigators of this research, “regardless of fidelity, schools experienced decreases in ODRs over time, but time alone did not lead to overall decreases in [out-of-school suspensions] or TS.”
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So, it takes time to shift the decision-making climate within a school, which might directly impact the number of discipline reports filed, but other interventions are needed to reduce the disparities associated with the use of exclusionary discipline.

PBIS has also been found to positively impact academic achievement. In New Hampshire elementary, multilevel, and high schools, the implementation of PBIS with fidelity produced “associated gains in math achievement.”
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The researchers of this study found that the math scores improved for 20 percent of middle schools. These scholars also found that in these same schools, 41 percent of the schools that implemented PBIS with fidelity saw improvement in reading and language scores. This is not surprising. When children are in class and focused on learning, they experience better academic outcomes.

In alternative educational settings, typically those that include “alternative middle/high schools, day treatment schools, residential facilities, self-contained schools, and secure-care juvenile justice facilities,” PBIS has been found to reduce problem behavior among youth.
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The use of temporary, second-tier interventions such as check-in, check-out (CICO) or “check, connect and expect,” both of which target conflict resolution, social skills development, and mentoring, decreased problem behavior in the “most problematic classroom.”
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According to researchers, “The public health model and logic can be applied seamlessly with implementation of PBIS in alternative educational settings when behavioral supports are matched to student needs, beginning with universal supports and interventions.”
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Initial attempts to understand the impact of PBIS and the factors associated with its effective and/or ineffective implementation are limited by a dearth of student data captured by referral processes and incomplete documentation of school- and evidence-based interventions.
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While the populations included in studies on PBIS certainly included Black and Latino youth, studies were not designed to examine the specific behaviors for which PBIS interventions (by tier) were determined and whether those interventions varied in effectiveness by levels of youth cognition, perceived racial bias, stereotype threat, law enforcement reactivity, or other attributional features that may impact student behaviors in schools. PBIS and its outcomes are outliers in comparison to other conditions associated with the disproportionate discipline, exclusion and marginalization of youth of color (e.g., implicit bias in school discipline decision making, or the impact of a school's structure of dominance on students structural change or leadership development to reduce the use of exclusionary discipline). So we still have little information about how PBIS specifically impacts responses to Black girls.

We can imagine how a PBIS-based intervention might have helped to create a climate for the establishment of behavioral norms that would have provided an alternative for Mia when she was agitated by a teacher or student, or how it may have helped Stacy, the self-described “problem child,” find language and actions that could help her to present as a more constructive member of the school community. Each of the these girls had developed actions in response to feeling disrespected—cursing and fighting—that a PBIS approach could isolate and provide opportunity to correct (without academic marginalization or criminalization). Taking the time to invest in the development of behavioral adjustments and expectations prevent later outbursts that can negatively impact student achievement. But these interventions, in focusing on modifying the behaviors of children, still might miss the oppressive conditions—present in institutions and in society at large—that place these girls in harm's way.

In our efforts to create conditions to support the learning of Black girls, it is important to understand the intention of each intervention. PBIS is aimed at correcting student behavior (largely in association with the use of school discipline), but as we will explore, restorative justice aims to shift the paradigm of accountability. Because PBIS is a federally supported intervention, there is a more supportive legislative environment for the adoption of policies and practices that fall under the PBIS rubric.
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Restorative approaches are well suited as a community- and school-based intervention that may improve the overall climate for PBIS and other behavior modification programs among students.
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Restorative Justice and Black Girls

Restorative justice is a process by which individuals involved in a crime or harmful incident are brought together to repair their relationship.
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Rooted in indigenous paradigms of justice from the United States, New Zealand, and other world cultures, restorative justice provides an alternative structure by which to correct negative student behaviors and to build accountability and community.
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Research on the school-to-prison pipeline shows an underutilization of restorative approaches in schools where Black students predominate, but there may be growing anecdotal and local evidence that restorative approaches are a promising strategy by which to build leadership skills and repair relationships between and among Black youth in schools and communities.
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While these studies on restorative justice have typically lacked an intersectional lens, there are aspects of the restorative approach that inform this discussion.

Restorative justice is a paradigm that emphasizes the repair of relationships when a harmful incident has occurred. The repair of relationship(s) comes by way of tending to obligations, engaging stakeholders, using cooperative and collaborative processes, and focusing on harms and needs.
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Restorative practices prioritize the relationships that exist in people's conscious and spiritual domains.
Howard Zehr, a leading source on restorative practice in the United States, has cautioned against the labeling of all retributive or discussion-oriented processes as inherently “restorative.” In other words, just talking out an issue and assigning an action to hold someone accountable does not automatically restore or transform the relationship that has been harmed. According to Zehr, three questions are central to a restorative process:

       
   
Who has been hurt?

       
   
What are their needs?