• By Paige Duggins-Clay, J.D. • IDRA Newsletter • August 2024 • 
Every year, millions of students experience harmful bias-based behaviors, such as identity-based bullying, harassment and hate crimes in school. Left unchecked, these incidents detract from student success, increase the risk of physical and mental health issues, and violate students’ civil rights. However, educators can use restorative practices to prevent and heal the harm caused by hate crimes and harassment. 
Students Face Increasingly Hostile Climates
In January of this year, the FBI reported an all-time high for reported incidents of hate crimes from 2018 to 2022. Schools are the third most common place where these offenses occur, and school-based incidents have steadily increased in proportion to other hate crime locations (FBI, 2024).
Continuing a disturbing, decades-old trend, the most common bias type motivating hate crime offenses at schools was anti-Black bias (FBI, 2024).
For example, from 2018-2022, Black students experienced a total of 1,690 hate crime incidents. Other groups only reported experiencing between nine and 245 incidents during that same period. Anti-LGBTQ+, anti-Jewish, and anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hate crimes also increased in the last year due largely to the conflict in Palestine and Israel (Duggins-Clay & Lyons, 2024).
Over 30% of young people who reported a hate crime experienced it at school. Nearly 36% of youth perpetrating a hate crime committed the offense at school (FBI, 2024).
Other bias-based harms are also on the rise across the nation. For example:
- One-fifth of teens see hate words or symbols (g., anti-Semitic symbols, homophobic slurs, and references to lynching) written in their schools (GAO, 2021).
- One out of every four bullied students reported experiencing identity-based bullying – threatening and harmful behavior directed against a student based on their immutable characteristics or legally protected status (Duggins-Clay & Lyons, 2024; GAO, 2021).
- The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) received over 19,000 complaints in 2023 alone – the highest number of complaints received in the department’s history (Lhamon, 2024).
- OCR experienced an 187% increase in the number of complaints between 2008 and 2019 (Leadership Conference, 2024).
These trends mirror the broader reality of our society, which has been increasingly shaded by rises in extremism, hate and bigotry (Carey, 2022).
“Rather than relying on traditional frameworks for responding to hate crimes and harassment that focus on punishment and isolation, schools can cultivate the capacity to implement restorative responses that support meaningful accountability, healing and collective resistance and resilience to bias-based harm.”
Powerful Role of Educators
Given this reality, preventing and addressing bias-based harm in schools requires intentional efforts to address the underlying causes of bullying behaviors and community cultures that allow discrimination to occur.
Schools can and must be central to our nation’s efforts to address and end discrimination, harassment and bias-based harm perpetrated against youth in our communities.
To build safe schools free from hate crimes and harassment, policymakers and school leaders should invest in a multi-pronged approach rooted in evidence-based interventions and authentic student, family and community engagement.
For example, rather than relying on traditional frameworks for responding to hate crimes and harassment that focus on punishment and isolation, schools should cultivate the capacity to implement restorative responses that support meaningful accountability, healing and collective resistance and resilience to bias-based harm (Luan, 2022; Craven, 2023).
Under a restorative framework, students who engage in bias-based harm are expected to repair it to the fullest extent possible with the support of adults and other community members (Duggins-Clay, 2022). By working to repair the situation, the person who caused harm is able to regain respect and trust from the community.
In addition, school and community leaders can use community building and healing circles to discuss issues impacting school climate, safety and belonging, including hate crimes and other discrimination (Duggins-Clay, 2022).
Restorative practices can also promote healing for individuals and communities impacted by hate crimes and bias through restorative storytelling and connection. Because bias-based harm reflects community attitudes, norms and cultures, it is critical to counteract harmful speech and action through community dialogue (Hooker, 2016).
When an individual or community’s identity and sense of self are attacked through hate crimes and harassment, school and community leaders should take steps to create welcoming, non-divisive spaces for dialogue and validate the lived experience of those harmed.
To begin building capacity to use restorative practices in this context, school leaders should do the following.
Remove unnecessary policy barriers to implementing restorative practices, such as mandatory referrals to exclusionary discipline placement, involving law enforcement in school discipline matters, and bans on using restorative justice.
Use restorative practices to identify and provide supportive measures to students impacted by bias-based harm to ensure safety and continued access to education after bullying or harassment occurs.
Establish partnerships with community-based organizations with expertise in facilitating restorative responses to bias-based harm to build capacity and increase the impact of school-based restorative justice interventions.
Invest in training and ongoing support of educators working to implement restorative practices, including training in restorative justice facilitation, de-escalation and trauma-informed practice. 
Update and mandate training on evidence-based anti-discrimination and harassment prevention and response programs and practices for students, families and educators.
IDRA’s model policy package on preventing and addressing identity-based bullying discusses these and other policy recommendations on this topic at length. It also provides resources, such as research briefs, advocacy toolkits and educational practice guides. See it here.
Resources
Carey, M.H. (2022). Returning to the Schoolhouse Steps, Extremist Groups’ Reactionary Anti-Student Inclusion Efforts. The Year in Hate & Extremism 2022. SPLC.
Craven, M. (January 2023). Schools Should Prioritize Prevention, Education and Support Over Exclusionary Discipline in Cases of Identity-Based Bullying and Harassment – IDRA Statement.
Duggins-Clay, P., & Lyons, M. (May 2024). Preventing and Addressing Identity-based Bullying in Schools – IDRA Model Policy Issue Brief.
Duggins-Clay, P. (June-July 2022). Implementing Restorative Practices to Strengthen School Communities. IDRA Newsletter.
FBI. (2024). Special Report – Reported Hate Crime at Schools: 2018-2022. U.S. Department of Justice.
Feingold, J., & Weishart, J. (2023). How Discriminatory Censorship Laws Imperil Public Education. National Education Policy Center.
GAO. (2021). K-12 Education: Students’ Experiences with Bullying, Hate Speech, Hate Crimes, and Victimization in Schools. Report to the Chairman, Committee on Education and Labor, House of Representatives. Government Accountability Office.
Hooker, D. (July 12, 2016). The Little Book of Transformative Community Conferencing: A Hopeful, Practical Approach to Dialogue.
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. (February 2024). Letter Urging the White House to Double Funding for the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.
Lhamon, C.E. (2024). Fiscal Year 2023 Annual Report. U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights.
Luan, L. (2022). Making Victims Whole Again: Using Restorative Justice to Heal Hate Crime Victims, Reform Offenders, and Strengthen Communities. Temple International and Comparative Law Journal, 37.1.
Paige Duggins-Clay, J.D., is IDRA’s chief legal analyst. Comments and questions may be directed to her via email at paige.duggins-clay@idra.org.
[© 2024, IDRA. This article originally appeared in the August edition of the IDRA Newsletter. Permission to reproduce this article is granted provided the article is reprinted in its entirety and proper credit is given to IDRA and the author.]
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