Everyone’s Talking About Behavior. This Is the Part We’re Missing

PBIS, restorative practices, and the accountability schools keep leaving out.

There are conversations happening in education spaces all over the country right now about safety, behavior, and what people are experiencing in schools. They aren’t always easy conversations to have, but they matter. I’m grateful to the educators who are engaging in them thoughtfully, with the goal of strengthening schools for all students.

It’s not about perfection. It was never about perfection.

Let me start with a story.

My daughter came home from school the other day with something I hadn’t seen on her face in a while: relief.

“The vice principal came in to check on all of us during lunch. She made sure we were ALL okay.”

But it was what she said next that peaked my interest- how are kids so insightful? She expressed genuine relief that the adult had also checked in on the student who’d been the aggressor in a situation earlier that week. That’s all she needed. Just… an adult who showed up, saw what was happening, and let every kid in that room know they mattered and… that yes there was follow through with the consequences that were discussed.

She wasn’t asking for a perfect school. She wasn’t expecting a conflict-free lunch period. She was simply hoping the adults would see the lived experience of her and her peers and step in to support. And when they did, she felt grateful, she felt relief, and she felt safe.

That’s it. That’s the whole thing. She wasn’t looking for a conflict free school, just a supportive one.

And somehow, we as a nationwide system keep getting it wrong.

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Let me be clear from the start: I’m not here to burn down any single program, framework, or philosophy. I’m here to say what thousands of teachers, parents, and kids already know but can’t seem to get anyone to hear- safety is not a slogan. It’s a felt experience. And right now, too many of our kids aren’t feeling it.

Everyone’s Nervous System Is Listening

Before we talk about behavior charts and consequences and restorative circles, we need to talk about biology. Because when a school environment feels unpredictable and when kids sense that nothing real will be done to address harm, every nervous system in that building goes on alert.

Neuroscientist Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory describes this in terms our bodies already understand. Our autonomic nervous system is constantly scanning for cues of safety or danger. When the environment signals safety, we access what’s called the ventral vagal state: the sweet spot for curiosity, problem-solving, creativity, and connection. But when the environment feels chaotic or when harm goes unaddressed, our nervous systems shift into sympathetic activation known as “fight or flight” or worse, into dorsal shutdown, where kids go numb, withdraw, and essentially leave the learning process entirely.

In context of classrooms, the educator’s nervous system also functions as a co-regulatory anchor. When teachers and administrators embody calm and presence, students experience implicit physiological safety through relational synchrony. But here’s the flip side that many educators across America understand too well, when educators themselves feel unsafe, unsupported, or gaslit about the reality of what’s happening in their classrooms, their nervous systems can’t co-regulate anyone. The whole building’s stress response escalates.

A school that punishes dysregulation without understanding it, or perhaps worse, a school that ignores dysregulation altogether in the name of “grace,” is a school misaligned with human neurobiology. Environments characterized by unpredictability feel awful and chronically activate defensive states in everyone. Schools that do not properly address student safety will see defensive states in students, teachers, support staff and even in parents. Parents picking up their kids in the carpool line can feel it the moment their child opens the car door.

What the Data Actually Says

Let’s ground this in the numbers, because the numbers are alarming.

A 2024–2025 RAND survey of nearly 1,000 teachers and principals found that almost 50 percent expressed concern about students being attacked or harmed at their schools- a 12-percentage-point increase since 2022 when the question was first asked. More than one in five teachers reported worrying about being attacked or harmed themselves.

The NEA reports that student behavior has nearly overtaken pay as the top concern among educators and it’s driving people out of the profession. A 2024 NEA Rhode Island survey found that 74 percent of members said students are acting out and misbehaving, and 40 percent reported that students are more violent toward staff and peers. In Delaware, public school teachers report losing an average of 7 hours per month managing student outbursts and behavioral health issues rather than teaching. Middle school teachers lose closer to 10.

An APA study published in 2024, surveying 15,000 teachers, found that 80 percent reported experiencing student violence or threatening behavior after COVID, up from 65 percent pre-pandemic.

And here’s the statistic that should give every administrator pause: nationally, large-scale surveys consistently show that a significant portion of educators report feeling unsupported in managing student behavior, with many saying they cannot rely on administrative follow-through when serious issues arise. In the words of one 4th-grade teacher in Delaware who sustained a concussion and bruises after a student slammed her into classroom furniture: she knows that for the rest of her career, the office and administration are not an option. She’ll have to handle it in-house, in her classroom, because administration will not be assisting her.

That’s not a school safety plan but seems far too common nationwide. Teachers get pushed to a point where they feel the only choice is to handle it all themselves. And that is a major factor in what has made teaching unsustainable.

The Both/And That Schools Keep Getting Wrong

Here’s where we all need to hold two truths at once. Because like most things in education, it is not an either/or. It’s a both/and.

Kids need something like PBIS AND they need firm boundaries and consequences.

Kids need restorative justice AND they need to know the person who harmed them will be supported and, if necessary, given a meaningful consequence.

Being a warm demander means authentically caring for students AND ensuring there are structures in place to hold them accountable, both academically and socially.

If you’ve spent any time in education Twitter, Instagram or professional development circles, you’ve probably heard someone complain about being told, “Have you tried building relationships?” as if relationships are a magic wand that makes aggression disappear. Relationship building is crucial but not talking about it in a superficial magic wand way. I’m talking about the kind of relationship-building that Zaretta Hammond describes in Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain where knowing students well is coupled with what she calls “active demandingness.” Where the goal isn’t to give a pep talk or cheer kids on, but to earn the right to push, stretch, and hold students to high expectations because they know you see them as whole people who are capable of more. That combination is key. Warmth without accountability is not kindness. It’s neglect dressed up in soft language.

Don’t Throw Out What Works But Don’t Pretend It’s Enough

As pendulums continue to swing wildly in education I want to be clear- I am not suggesting we throw out things like PBIS. A 2023 systematic literature review from the Center on PBIS at the University of Oregon confirmed that Tier 1 PBIS can be designated an evidence-based practice for reducing exclusionary discipline and improving social, emotional, and behavioral outcomes. Multiple randomized controlled trials have found that schools implementing PBIS with fidelity see reductions in office discipline referrals, decreases in suspensions, and improvements in school climate and perceived safety.

Restorative justice works, too. A landmark study by the University of Chicago Education Lab evaluating restorative practices across Chicago Public Schools found a 35 percent reduction in student arrests in school, an 18 percent decrease in out-of-school suspensions, and significant improvements in students’ perceptions of school climate including large increases in students’ sense of belonging and their belief that their school was a safe place.

These are not programs we should be throwing away. These are evidence-based frameworks that, when implemented well, genuinely improve outcomes for kids.

But here’s the critical piece that keeps getting lost: the research also shows that these frameworks fall apart without consistent, meaningful follow-through. The Hechinger Report documented how restorative justice programs in multiple districts struggled precisely because schools couldn’t implement them fully. It wasn’t that the philosophy failed. It was that the implementation was incomplete.

And in too many schools, what I see happening is even more specific than incomplete implementation. It’s the selective application of only the comfortable parts of these frameworks. Schools adopt the rewards, the positive reinforcement and the restorative circles. All of which are good and necessary- kids should learn to talk about how they feel.

But many schools stop short of the other half, and in my opinion this part is equally if not more important. Kids need the boundaries, the consequences, and the part where an adult says: “What you did caused harm, and here is what happens now.”

When that accountability piece is missing, a few things tend to happen:

• Kids who cause harm don’t build responsibility

• Kids who are harmed stop trusting the system

• Teachers feel unsupported and start compensating on their own

• Families lose confidence, quietly at first… then all at once

And the irony is, that outcome is the opposite of what both PBIS and restorative models are trying to create.

The truth is… Boundaries are not the opposite of care, they’re a major part of it. A student can be understood and held accountable. A school can be restorative and clear about consequences.

A Pep Talk and a Lollipop Is Not a Boundary

Principal Jared Lamb known to many on social media has spoken openly about learning this lesson the hardest way possible. Early in his career as a school administrator, he failed to hold students accountable for their behavior. The campus became unsafe, many teachers left and then he was fired.

That experience transformed how he leads. Now, with over 15 years as a principal, Lamb operates from a rolling cart instead of an office, making himself visible and present throughout his building every single day. He’s said publicly that schools get the student behaviors they tolerate, and that when a student is escalated, violent toward others, or destroying learning for 25 classmates, there has to be a response. A real, meaningful response that protects everyone in that room including the student who’s struggling.

He isn’t perfect and his schools are not conflict free zones. But/and that’s the piece so many schools are missing. Beyond checking in, when a kid missteps, they need more than a pep talk and a lollipop. They need more than constant rewards for expected behavior. They need to understand the limits and boundaries of the community they live in. They need to feel that when their actions harm someone else, there will be a consequence, not as punishment for punishment’s sake, but because that’s how human communities work. That’s how trust is built and that’s how safety is maintained.

The most loving thing we can do for students with significant behavioral challenges is both: support them by acknowledging and rewarding expected behaviors, AND ensure consequences are in place to teach real boundaries. These aren’t competing goals. They’re the same goal.

The Danger of Gaslighting Children

There’s something else happening in schools that I believe is more damaging than any single disciplinary framework failure, and it’s this: we are gaslighting our children.

I don’t use that word lightly. But when an adult tells a child that what they experienced “wasn’t that bad,” or writes off repeated aggression as “normal kid stuff,” or assures a parent that “we’re handling it” while doing nothing observable to address the harm that is a form of reality denial that children internalize in devastating ways.

Our children are not stupid. They have exquisitely calibrated sensors for honesty. Research in developmental psychology consistently shows that children who are persistently told their perceptions and emotions are invalid experience higher levels of psychological distress, including depression, helplessness, and diminished self-worth. Psychologist Jennifer Fraser, author of The Gaslit Brain, has written extensively about how gaslighting impacts the brain’s core function of interpreting reality and that children are especially vulnerable because they haven’t yet formed a clear sense of identity and are dependent on adults to help them make sense of the world.

When adults at school deny a student’s lived experience when they tell a child “that’s not what happened” or “you’re being too sensitive” about something the child saw and felt with their own body, the child doesn’t stop believing what happened. The child stops believing the adults will help. And that is precisely when kids stop feeling safe at school.

Kids are not expecting perfection. They know there will be conflict. But when time and time again they see and feel physical or verbal aggression go unchecked by the adults at school and when they watch harm happen and then watch nothing meaningful change… this is when things unravel. Not because the school lacks a framework, but because the school lacks follow-through.

Children can feel the difference.

Seeing the Whole Child Means Seeing the Whole Picture

There’s a phrase educators love to use “see the whole child” and like most education buzzwords, it has been repeated so often that it’s lost some of its meaning.

Seeing a child as whole means understanding that the kid who threw a chair in third period might also be the kid who hasn’t eaten since yesterday’s school lunch. It means knowing that the student who just shoved a peer on the playground is also the student who read to her little brother every night while their mom worked the late shift. It means refusing to flatten any child into a single behavior and instead holding the full complexity of who they are. Behaviors are a form of communication- we must see the whole child and interpret what is trying to be told.

But/and this is crucial- seeing the whole child doesn’t mean excusing the behavior. It means understanding the behavior well enough to respond to it effectively. When adults in a building truly know their students they can get ahead of crises rather than constantly reacting to them. They can be proactive instead of reactive. This means understanding a child’s triggers, their home lives, their strengths, and their patterns.

I am not asserting building relationships and seeing the whole child will solve all of the worlds problems. It wont. Even the most attuned teacher or the most present administrator will sometimes be caught off guard. Kids are humans. Humans are unpredictable. The goal isn’t to prevent every conflict. It’s to build systems and relationships strong enough to respond to conflict when it inevitably comes—and to do so in ways that leave every child feeling seen, held, and safe.

Conflict Is Not the Enemy

Here’s something that gets lost in the panic around school safety: conflict itself is not the problem. Conflict is, in fact, a necessary part of growing up.

Kids need conflict. They need to move through conflict resolution. They need to fail. They need to experience the growing pains of friendships. They need to feel the pains of arguments, the hurt feelings, the awkward apologies, and the slow rebuilding of trust. Conflict is not symptoms of a broken school. These are signs that children are doing the developmental work of learning how to be human beings in community with other human beings.

Schools get a lot of this right, actually. Restorative circles, when done well, are profoundly powerful tools that help children learn, through adult mediation, how to both offer forgiveness as the person who was harmed and take responsibility as the person who caused harm. The research on restorative practices consistently shows that these processes can build empathy, strengthen school climate, and reduce the reliance on exclusionary discipline that we know disproportionately harms students of color and students with disabilities.

The problem isn’t the presence of conflict. The problem is the absence of meaningful adult response to conflict. No school will ever be conflict-free, and honestly? It shouldn’t be. A school without any conflict is a school where kids aren’t taking social risks, aren’t testing boundaries, and aren’t growing. What matters and what makes or breaks a child’s sense of safety is what happens after the conflict occurs. Does an adult show up? Does the adult see what actually happened? Does the adult respond in a way that protects the harmed and supports the one who caused harm? Does anything actually change?

What Kids Are Really Asking For

Let me return to my daughter’s face when she walked through the door that day. Relief. Not joy. Not excitement. Just relief. The bar was not high. An adult showed up. An adult saw what was happening. An adult checked on everyone including the student who was struggling.

That’s what our kids are asking for. Not perfection. Not a school where no one ever gets hurt. Just adults who will be honest about what’s happening, who will respond with both compassion and accountability, and who will build systems where every child, every single one, knows that the grown-ups in the room have their back.

And when the grown-ups make a mistake- because as humans of course we will… they need to model owning their mistake out loud. They need to model taking accountability.

The teachers in our nation’s schools know this. They feel it every day. They’re the ones losing 7 to 10 hours a month to behavioral crises instead of teaching. They’re the ones reporting that the office isn’t an option, that administration won’t assist, that they’re on their own. They’re the ones walking into buildings where every nervous system is on edge because the environment has become unpredictable and the follow-through has disappeared.

We owe them better. We owe our kids better.

PBIS and consequences. Restorative justice and accountability. Warm relationships and firm boundaries. Proactive systems and honest responses when things go wrong. These aren’t contradictions. They’re the complete picture.

Our kids have been telling us what they need. The question is whether the adults in charge are ready to listen… not just to the comfortable parts, but to all of it.

Melinda Karshner is a veteran educator and literacy specialist focused on structured literacy, morphology, and supporting upper grade students.