Delaware ACLU, Charter Schools of New Castle County announce results of 10 year restorative education practices study

DELAWARE – The Delaware ACLU is touting a model for inclusive schools they found over a ten-year study to lead to lower suspension rates and positive outcomes for students of color.

The report, Charter School of New Castle (CSNC): Education Equity Initiative 2021-2023 Model for Creating an Inclusive School Climate, unveils the CSNC inclusive school model focused on three tracks, practices to achieve an inclusive school environment, increasing student engagement, and creating channels for parent collaboration and engagement.

Since the implementation of the inclusive school model, CSNC has seen a significant reduction in suspension rates, and positive outcomes in students’ sense of belonging, personal academic abilities, and perceptions of teachers and school staff as allies and resources including a consistent 2 percent suspension rate compared to statewide figures that range from 15 to 19 percent when compared to charter and public schools respectively.

“Kids make mistakes, but if the mistake happens, you’re not spending the entirety of the classroom talking about, oh, kids are not listening, everyone’s loud, and then it kills the culture,” said CSNC Elementary Principal Rachel Valentin, adding the program is focused on defining good behavior for children and rewarding it.

“When I started a decade ago it would be common to see color boards with kids as red or green, and I would notice students just having breakdowns at the end of the day, just saying, I’m going home on red, you know, I’m going to get in trouble, but red had no definition, red meant nothing, there were no goals,” Valentin said.

The ACLU says the traditional punitive model of bad behavior can be ripe with racial bias and discrimination against students of color, but is also lacking in results that help teach students how to improve.

“the punitive model, I don’t think allows for the opportunity to build a relationship, it’s very much you did this, so now this is your consequence, and this vantage point doesn’t connect the consequence with the emotional behavior behind the root cause,” said ACLU Senior Police Advocate Shannon Griffin.

The ACLU says the program can be a model for schools state-wide, as they say it helps train teachers and parents on how to reinforce positive behavior, and what emotional issues could be causing disturbances in the classroom.

“The teacher is now essentially talking about how do we get back to everyone raising their hand, how do we get back to everyone being a positive contributor to the classroom, students can take action from that,” Valentin said adding out-of-school resources for parents and for students to stay engaged are also key pillars of the program.

“Another pillar for us was the program we developed, students got to become involved, develop their own studio leadership skills around, develop, identify, and issues around a service-based learning project that they cared about,” Griffin said.

The program allowed good behaviors to be tallied into in-school rewards as well as educational field trips and other long-term rewards.

Griffin says the data shows students who had their emotional needs met and listed to were better suited to the classroom.

She says she believes other schools have parts of what was done under their programming, but could be expanded and more comprehensive, and hopes more can expand the scope of the social-emotional learning, and restorative practices in their own behavior management systems for students.

“If you don’t take the time to establish relationships, you’re not going to be able to do the kind of education you really want to do, because you’re going to always be managing the lack of those relationships, the lack of trust that is not there,” Griffin said.

The ACLU of Delaware says they will be presenting the report, the education plan, and action items for districts interested during a  virtual hearing on November 2nd.