Friday, January 15, 2016

Exclusive Interview of Michael Yudin, Assistant Secretary of Education - Part III #Yudin, #interview

This is the third post involving our exclusive interview with Michael Yudin, the Assistant Secretary of Education for special education and rehabilitative services. Pretty cool, eh?

His biography is available in a previous post. We are grateful to the Secretary and his staff for this interview.

The format of the interview will be questions by me signified by (JG), and answers by the Assistant Secretary, signified by (MY).  Here is the third segment:

JG: Restorative justice seems to be generating substantial national interest.  At the outstanding CADRE conference in October, there were many sessions on this topic. Is restorative justice something that the Department is following and working on?

MY: I think that there is a lot of great energy and buzz and data around restorative justice and if there are local communities and school districts that are looking at alternatives to suspension that are in fact alternatives to suspension and that are reducing the rates of suspension- those are two thumbs up. Those are great conversations to be having. One of the things that I think is really interesting is that one of the convenings and one of our Google Hangouts featured the Superintendent from a local district in California (Vallejo City School District) who talked about using the tiered framework from PBIS (positive behavior interventions and supports) which is a multi-tiered framework for behaviors and emotional issues, and this particular district has built restorative justice into the framework. It is innovative and exciting and they are getting really, really positive results from that. 

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