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There’s been a sea of change in school discipline over the past five years. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was convinced that the striking racial disparity in school suspensions was “not caused by differences in children.” According to Duncan and others, students of color were being discriminated against by their teachers, fostering a “school-to-prison pipeline [that] must be challenged every day.”

So, the Obama administration issued federal guidance putting school districts on notice that even if their discipline policy was “neutral on its face” and “administered in an evenhanded manner,” they could be subject to a federal civil rights investigation if minorities were suspended at a higher rate. Partly in response to federal pressure, over 50 school districts, serving 6.35 million students, implemented reforms and 27 states revised their laws regarding school discipline.

No one bothered to ask students or teachers whether this was a good idea. If new evidence from New York City is any indication, discipline reform is hurting the people it’s trying to help and hitting students of color the hardest.

An examination of the NYC School Survey shows that, in the eyes of students, school climate has deteriorated significantly from the 2013-14 to the 2015-16 school years. The deterioration was most dramatic in schools that serve 90+% students of color, and especially striking compared to those same schools in the last two years of the Bloomberg administration. Under Bloomberg, physical fighting became less frequent at 30% of schools and more frequent at 28%; under de Blasio, it became less frequent at 14% of schools and more frequent at 50%. Under Bloomberg, peer respect improved at 36% of schools and deteriorated at 30%; under de Blasio, it improved at 19% of schools and deteriorated at 58%.

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These results should be alarming, and not only to families in New York City. Fewer than half of the major school districts that have adopted these reforms have thesurvey tools in place to even monitor what’s going on in their schools, and many have seen reforms much more aggressive than New York City’s.

To make the case that reforms in St. Paul, Minn. had gone awry, Ramey County attorney John Choi noted that the number of assaults against school staff tripled from 2014 to 2015, terming it a “public health crisis.” That’s a tragic result for a policy intended to make school discipline more fair for students of color.

Concerned teachers’ union leaders have commissioned teacher surveys that suggest that discipline reform hurting the students it’s trying to help in many other cities. In Tampa Bay, Fla., 66% of teachers said that the new policy did not make schools more orderly. In Santa Ana, Calif., as well, 66% of teachers said the new system was not working. In Denver, Colo., 75% of teachers said that the new system did not improve student behavior. In Madison, Wis., only 13% of teachers thought that discipline reform was having a positive effect. But in Baton Rouge, La., 60% of teachers said there was an increase in violence or violent threats from students, and in Syracuse, N.Y., two-thirds of teachers said they were worried about their safety at work.

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The press coverage has been alarming as well. After the federal government pressured Oklahoma City to revise its discipline policies, one teacher, quoted in a Daily Oklahoman editorial, said teachers “were told that referrals would not require suspension unless there was blood.” In Buffalo, Marc Bruno, a teacher who got kicked in the head by a student said: “We have fights here almost every day.... The kids walk around and say, ‘We can’t get suspended — we don’t care what you say.’” Judy Kidd, president of the Charlotte Classroom Teachers Association, said, “[T]here are some administrators who would rather ignore the behavior to get their suspension numbers down. ... In some schools there’s no structure and no expectation of behavior.”

These press accounts and one-off surveys have been largely ignored by education reformers as merely anecdotal. But if New York City is any indication of what’s happening across the rest of the country, schools have become less respectful, more disorderly places for millions of students. The bitter irony is that the effort to limit the “school-to-prison pipeline” has likely only increased its flow.

But the Trump administration can take a big step to reverse course. The Obama administration issued “guidance” coercing school districts to second-guess their teachers’ judgment on how to maintain discipline and order. The Trump administration should rescind that mis-guidance, enabling teachers and school leaders to work hand-in-hand once again to make schools safer, more orderly, more nurturing places for students to learn.

Max Eden is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. 

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