It’s time to rethink school discipline

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We’re building a coalition of education leaders committed to ending the school-to-prison pipeline.

The Discipline Revolution Project, an initiative of ThirdWay Solutions, is a coalition of education leaders and advocates working to radically rethink school culture and decriminalize the way we think about student behavior. We help leaders build physically, psychologically, and emotionally safe cultures, including handling conflict and difference with an anti-biased, anti-racist lens in order to meet audacious goals.

Over the past decade, we have come to know that great schools that get results for all kids — including but not limited to students who have been marginalized — do four things well:

• Instruction
• Talent
• Operations
• School Culture & Student Supports

While we know that it’s critical to deliver excellence on all four legs of this stool, we have found that the fourth leg of the stool remains unexamined, lagging in innovation and rigorous dialogue. Systems struggle the most at the fourth leg. DRP helps states, districts, CMOs, and schools understand, prioritize, and improve this fourth leg.

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DRP is supporting systems leaders, schools, and their partners to become expert at:

• Conditions: Anti-biased/anti-racist cultures of high support, high expectations to keep kids learning.

• Capacity: Adult skill and will in actively tearing down policies and practices that cement inequities — including but not limited to how schools handle incidents, struggle, and difference.

• Care: Student and family supports, including decriminalizing approaches to behavior.

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The Case for Action

If we are truly committed to ensuring every single student has every life option they deserve, we cannot turn away from the facts:

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