Accountability Is Not the Opposite of Compassion

For marginalized children especially, lowering expectations for how they treat other human beings is not liberation.

I have spent much of my career working in schools serving predominantly Black and Brown children. And there is a conversation I think we need to have, even though I know it may make some people uncomfortable.

We know the history.

We know Black children, particularly Black boys, have experienced disproportionate discipline in American schools. We know students with disabilities have historically been excluded, misunderstood, mislabeled, underserved, and sometimes punished for behaviors directly connected to needs schools failed to address. National discipline data have consistently documented disproportionate disciplinary outcomes for Black students and students with disabilities (U.S. Department of Education, 2024; U.S. Government Accountability Office [GAO], 2018). (Government Accountability Office)

Those realities matter.

They should influence how we design discipline systems. They should force us to examine bias. They should make us question whether consequences are equitable. They should make us look at who gets referred, for what behavior, by whom, and what happens afterward.

But somewhere along the way, in some schools, I believe an important distinction became blurred:

Reducing exclusionary discipline is not the same thing as eliminating meaningful accountability.

And pretending those are the same thing is not helping children.

When Compassion Becomes the Absence of Accountability

I've worked in environments where a student could significantly disrupt a classroom, be removed, and return shortly afterward with a snack and seemingly no meaningful process between the incident and the return.

Meanwhile, the teacher is expected to resume instruction.

The students who witnessed or experienced the disruption are expected to move on.

And the child who caused the harm may never actually be asked to repair it.

We call that restorative.

But I have a question:

What exactly was restored?

The relationship?

The learning environment?

The teacher's sense of safety?

The other students' sense of safety?

The student's ability to respond differently next time?

If none of those things happened, we didn't practice restoration.

We practiced return.

Those aren't the same thing.

Context Explains Behavior. It Doesn't Erase Impact.

This is where the conversation becomes difficult.

Children bring their lives into our classrooms.

Trauma comes through the door.

Poverty comes through the door.

Disability comes through the door.

Family instability comes through the door.

Community violence comes through the door.

So do joy, resilience, culture, humor, brilliance and possibility.

A good educator wants to understand what sits underneath a child's behavior.

But understanding why something happened does not require pretending it didn't happen.

A child can be experiencing tremendous difficulty and still hurt another child.

A student can have a disability and another student can still be harmed by their behavior.

A Black boy can be subjected to racial bias in disciplinary systems and also make a choice on a particular day that requires a serious response.

These realities can coexist.

For marginalized children especially, I don't think lowering expectations for how they treat other human beings is liberation.

I think liberation includes believing children are capable of learning accountability, repairing harm, developing self-regulation, making different choices and participating responsibly in a community.

“It's a Manifestation of the Disability”

This phrase deserves particular care because the legal concept behind it is important.

Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), a manifestation determination isn't simply a declaration that “the student has a disability, therefore there can be no consequences.” When a disciplinary removal constitutes a change of placement, the local educational agency, parent, and relevant members of the student's IEP team must determine whether the conduct was caused by, or had a direct and substantial relationship to, the child's disability, or whether the conduct was the direct result of the school's failure to implement the student's IEP (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act [IDEA], 2004; U.S. Department of Education, 2022). (EDBlogs)

In other words:

Manifestation should trigger a more sophisticated response, not the absence of a response.

If the behavior is connected to the disability, that tells us something critically important about what the child needs.

Does the behavior intervention plan need to change?

Does the student need a functional behavioral assessment?

Are services appropriate?

Was the IEP actually being implemented?

Is the environment contributing to the behavior?

Does the student need additional behavioral or therapeutic support?

When behavior is determined to be a manifestation of a student's disability, IDEA requires the IEP team, depending on the circumstances, to conduct a functional behavioral assessment and implement a behavioral intervention plan or review and modify an existing behavioral intervention plan as necessary to address the behavior (U.S. Department of Education, 2022). (EDBlogs)

But there is another question that cannot disappear:

What does everyone else need to remain safe and able to learn?

We Cannot Create Equity by Making Another Child Collateral Damage

Years ago, I encountered this question not as an educator, but as a mother.

Another student's behavior was affecting my daughter. The proposed solution was essentially to alter my daughter's educational experience in order to accommodate the situation.

My daughter wasn't causing the problem.

Yet she was being asked to absorb the solution.

That experience stayed with me.

And years later, after becoming an educator and participating in leadership conversations about special education, discipline and manifestation, I kept returning to the same question:

When did protecting one child's rights begin requiring us to overlook another child's?

It shouldn't.

The child exhibiting the behavior deserves dignity, appropriate services and access to education.

The child experiencing the behavior deserves dignity, safety and access to education.

Both children matter.

Equity cannot mean deciding which child's needs we're willing to sacrifice.

And Teachers Cannot Be the Entire Intervention System

This is another uncomfortable conversation.

Teachers should know how to build relationships.

Teachers should understand culturally responsive practice.

Teachers should know classroom management, de-escalation, regulation strategies and restorative approaches.

Teachers should understand their students as human beings.

Absolutely.

But teachers are not simultaneously classroom instructors, psychologists, social workers, behavior specialists, family therapists, crisis intervention teams and administrators.

At some point, “build relationships” becomes an organizational excuse for failing to build systems.

A teacher can have an extraordinary relationship with a student and still need help.

A teacher can understand trauma and still need a dangerous behavior removed from the classroom.

A teacher can love a child and still say:

You cannot do that here.

Those statements are not contradictory.

So What Would Real Restorative Practice Look Like?

Not a snack.

Not fifteen minutes in the office.

Not a conversation that the classroom teacher never hears anything about.

And certainly not sending a student right back into the exact environment where the incident occurred with nothing fundamentally changed.

A legitimate restorative system would have four components:

Safety. Accountability. Repair. Reintegration.

First, make the environment safe.

Then determine what happened and what support, intervention and consequence are appropriate.

Then address the harm.

That doesn't necessarily mean forcing an apology or making a harmed student or teacher participate in a restorative circle they don't want. Repair might involve restitution, behavioral intervention, counseling, skill development, family involvement, a facilitated conversation when appropriate, or another meaningful response.

Then comes reintegration.

When the student returns, there should be a plan.

What has changed?

What is expected?

What support is available?

What happens if the behavior begins again?

How will the teacher be supported?

How will the other students be protected?

And how does the returning student get an authentic opportunity to begin again?

That last piece matters.

Accountability without permanent condemnation.

Suspension Isn't the Goal. Neither Is Avoiding Suspension.

I don't want schools suspending children because adults don't know what else to do.

I don't want children pushed out of classrooms for subjective behaviors that could have been handled differently.

I don't want Black boys criminalized for behavior other children are allowed to work through.

I don't want students with disabilities punished because adults failed to provide legally required or educationally appropriate support.

The concern about disproportionality is supported by substantial evidence. In its national analysis, the GAO found that Black students represented approximately 15.5% of public school students but about 39% of students suspended from school. Students with disabilities were also disproportionately represented in school discipline, including suspensions and school-related law-enforcement referrals (GAO, 2018). (Government Accountability Office)

But I also don't want schools chasing lower suspension numbers while classrooms become less safe.

Those numbers alone cannot tell us whether we've built a healthier school.

We should be asking:

Are serious incidents decreasing?

Are repeat behaviors decreasing?

Are students learning replacement behaviors?

Do students feel safe?

Do teachers feel supported?

Is instructional time being protected?

Are interventions actually working?

Are disciplinary decisions equitable?

Are students receiving appropriate behavioral and special-education services?

Are harmed students being supported too?

Because if suspensions decline while repeated serious behavior, classroom disruption, fear, teacher burnout and peer victimization rise, we haven't necessarily solved the problem.

We may have improved the spreadsheet.

Maybe We Need a Different Goal

Perhaps the goal shouldn't simply be:

Reduce suspensions.

Maybe the goal should be:

Reduce the number of children who ever reach the point where exclusion becomes necessary.

Build stronger Tier 1 environments.

Identify needs earlier.

Provide real Tier 2 and Tier 3 behavioral support.

Invest in counselors, psychologists, social workers and behavior specialists.

Use functional behavioral assessment appropriately.

Support teachers before they are drowning.

Examine discipline data for bias.

Intervene before patterns become crises.

And when serious behavior does occur, respond proportionately, fairly and consistently.

Sometimes that response may include suspension.

Sometimes it shouldn't.

IDEA itself does not prohibit all disciplinary removals of students with disabilities. Federal regulations allow school personnel, under specified conditions, to remove a student with a disability who violates a student code of conduct, while also establishing additional protections, services, manifestation procedures, and special rules for disciplinary changes of placement (34 C.F.R. § 300.530). (EDBlogs)

The question isn't whether we're being hard enough or soft enough on children.

The question is whether what we're doing actually teaches them something, repairs what was harmed, protects the community and reduces the likelihood that it happens again.

Compassion and Accountability Belong in the Same Room

I refuse the choice between caring about children and holding them accountable.

We can tell a child:

I understand that something is happening with you.

I want to help you.

You belong here.

I am not giving up on you.

And still say:

What happened was not okay.

Someone was harmed.

We have to address it.

And we're going to help you learn how to handle this differently next time.

That isn't abandoning a child.

That is believing the child is capable of growth.

And perhaps that's the conversation we need to start having when we talk about restorative practices, disproportionality, disability and the school-to-prison pipeline.

Because protecting marginalized children from unjust systems is essential.

But for marginalized children especially, lowering expectations for how they treat other human beings is not liberation.

They deserve something far more difficult and far more meaningful:

Support without excuses. Accountability without abandonment. Consequences without dehumanization. And restoration that actually restores.

References

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 20 U.S.C. § 1415 (2004). IDEA statutory text, Section 1415

U.S. Department of Education. (2022). Questions and answers: Addressing the needs of children with disabilities and IDEA's discipline provisions. Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services. U.S. Department of Education IDEA discipline guidance

U.S. Department of Education. (2024). School climate and student discipline resources: Know the data. U.S. Department of Education discipline data resource

U.S. Department of Education. (n.d.). Authority of school personnel, 34 C.F.R. § 300.530. Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. IDEA regulation § 300.530

U.S. Government Accountability Office. (2018). K–12 education: Discipline disparities for Black students, boys, and students with disabilities (GAO-18-258). GAO-18-258