The Paradox of Success at a no-excuses charter school (2015), sociology of education
No recent reform has had so profound an effect as no-excuses schools in increasing the achievement of low-income, black and Hispanic students. In the past decade, no-excuses schools—whose practices include extended instructional time, data-driven instruction, ongoing professional development, and a highly structured disciplinary system—have emerged as one of the most influential urban school-reform models. Yet almost no research has been conducted on the everyday experiences of students and teachers inside these schools. Drawing from 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork inside one no-excuses school and interviews with 92 school administrators, teachers, and students, I argue that even in a school promoting social mobility, teachers still reinforce class-based skills and behaviors. Because of these schools’ emphasis on order as a prerequisite to raising test scores, teachers stress behaviors that undermine success for middle-class children. As a consequence, these schools develop worker-learners—children who monitor themselves, hold back their opinions, and defer to authority—rather than lifelong learners. I discuss the implications of these findings for market-based educational reform, inequality, and research on non-cognitive skills.
conformers, Imitators, Adaptors, and Rejecters: How No-Excuses Teachers’ Cultural Toolkits Shape Their Responses to Control (2017), Sociology of education
In the past, sociologists have provided keen insights into the work of teaching, but classic studies by scholars like Dan Lortie and Willard Waller are now decades old. With the current emphasis on teacher evaluation and accountability, the field is ripe for new sociological studies of teaching. How do we understand the work of teaching in this new context of control? In this article, I use the case of an urban, “no-excuses” charter school to examine how teachers responded to the school’s intensive effort to socialize them into a uniform set of disciplinary practices. Drawing from 15 months of fieldwork at a no-excuses middle school, I find that teachers varied in their responses to school control based on their cultural toolkits—their preferences and their capacities. Based on teachers’ adaptation strategies, I introduce four ideal types: conformers, imitators, adaptors, and rejecters. This article makes the following contributions. First, I extend classic theories of teacher self-socialization to a new context of control. Second, I offer new ways, beyond sensemaking theories, to analyze how and why teachers adopt (or fail to adopt) new teaching practices. Finally, I provide timely insight into teacher experiences in no-excuses schools—and into these schools’ efforts to redirect teacher education towards a more prescriptive, skills-based approach.
Do No-Excuses Disciplinary Practices Promote Success? (2017), Journal of urban affairs
The urban education reform landscape is being transformed by the rapid spread of charter schools. Leading the way is a group of high-performing, no-excuses charter schools, represented by networks like KIPP, Achievement First, and Uncommon Schools. Although critics have raised concerns over these schools’ highly structured disciplinary practices, these schools have justified these practices on the basis that they increase student achievement. In this article, we provide the first review of literature on the impact of no-excuses disciplinary practices on various measures of student and organizational success. We find little evidence to support the connection between no-excuses disciplinary methods and students’ academic performance on standardized tests—and some evidence that these methods may undermine non-academic outcomes, such as students’ social and behavioral skills.
NEPC Review: Charter Schools and the Achievement Gap (2018), National Education Policy Center
A report, Charter Schools and the Achievement Gap, finds that, though charter schools on average perform no better than traditional public schools, urban “no-excuses” charter schools—which often use intensive discipline to enforce order—demonstrate promising results. It recommends that these schools and their practices be widely replicated within and outside of the charter school sector. We find three major flaws with this conclusion. First, the report’s recommendations are based solely on the academic success of these schools and fail to address the controversy over their use of harsh disciplinary methods. No-excuses disciplinary practices can contribute to high rates of exclusionary discipline (e.g., suspensions that push students out of school) and may not support a broad definition of student success. Second, the recommendation that schools replicate no-excuses practices begs the question of what exactly should be replicated. It does not confront the lack of research identifying which school practices are effective for improving student achievement. Third, the report does not address many of the underlying factors that would allow no-excuses schools and their practices to successfully replicate, such as additional resources, committed teachers, and students and families willing and able to abide by these schools’ stringent practices. Thus, while the report is nuanced in its review of charter school impacts, it lacks this same care in drawing its conclusions—greatly decreasing the usefulness of the report.
Collecting Video-Ethnographic Data for Policy Research (2019), American Behavioral Scientist
Despite growing recognition of the critical role of parents in children’s early development, parenting education programs and interventions typically have had limited impacts on children’s outcomes. To design programs and policies that are more responsive to families’ needs and constraints, policymakers need a better understanding of the lived experiences of families. In this article, we argue that qualitative video-ethnographic approaches offer an innovative and useful supplement to policy researchers’ usual tool kit. Taking a holistic approach to parent–child interactions and filming families in their natural environments over an extended period provides policy researchers with new data to inform future parenting initiatives. To assist researchers interested in undertaking a video-ethnographic study, we discuss our experiences with the New Jersey Families Study, a 2-week, in-home video study of 21 families with a 2- to 4-year-old child. This is the first time anyone has attempted an in-home naturalistic observation of this breadth, intensity, or duration. We highlight the potential of this method for policy relevance along with its associated challenges.
"To Be Strict on Your Own”: Black and Latinx Parents Evaluate Discipline in Urban Choice Schools (2019), American Educational Research Journal
The proliferation of urban “no-excuses” charter schools has been justified by arguing that Black and Latinx parents want strict discipline. In this article, we examine what discipline means to Black and Latinx families at two popular choice options: a no-excuses charter and two public Montessori magnets. We found that parents viewed discipline as more than rule-following, valuing also self-discipline and academic discipline. While no-excuses parents supported an orderly environment, many found the discipline restrictive. Parents in the Montessori schools, by contrast, praised student autonomy but questioned whether the freedom was preparing their students academically. Our findings reveal a gap between what Black and Latinx parents want and what choice schools and local school choice markets have on offer.
Toward a multifaceted understanding of lareau’s “sense of entitlement”: bridging sociological and psychological constructs (2020), with Jennifer Darling-Aduana, Sociological compass
In her influential ethnographic study, Lareau proposed that intensive middle‐class parenting strategies produce in children a “sense of entitlement” that can be used to gain advantages in schools and other institutional settings. In this article, we review both sociological and psychological studies to propose a multifaceted understanding of a sense of entitlement that challenges the assumption that the consequences of entitlement are exclusively positive. We also compare “sense of entitlement” with four psychological constructs—academic entitlement, help‐seeking, interpersonal control, and agentic engagement—that provide critical clues for subsequent empirical efforts. Our study highlights the benefits of bridging sociological and psychological work, not only to connect related disciplines and concepts, but also to assess and refine theory.
Prendre en compte les référentiels des enseignants dans la réforme éducative aux États-Unis (Accounting for teacher toolkits in education reform in the United States) (2020), with Anna Weiss and Karin Gegenheimer, Revue internationale d/education de Servres
High-stakes accountability policies have become a controversial centerpiece of American education reform. This qualitative case study of a “no excuses” charter school examines how teachers respond to school efforts to tightly control their practice. To find a fit between the school’s prescriptive pedagogical and disciplinary methods and their own preexisting values and practices, teachers exhibited a variety of responses, choosing to conform, imitate, adapt to, or reject school policy. Our findings suggest that policymakers and administrators need to take into account teachers’ cultural toolkits, allowing teachers sufficient autonomy and discretion to modify practices to align with their values and skills.
how principals balance control and care in urban school discipline (2021), with ashley jones, urban education
School discipline has been a site of contention and reform. In this study, we draw from 17 interviews with traditional and charter school principals in one mid-sized urban school district to examine how principals use discipline as a tool to both maintain control and demonstrate care. Our study calls attention to different strategies principals use to establish this balance, including reducing suspensions, moderating “no-excuses” systems, and building positive student–teacher relationships. We also make a theoretical contribution by showing how schools and school leaders respond to competing institutional logics in developing practices and policies.
An Integrated Framework for Studying How Schools Respond to External Pressures
The changing educational landscape requires new organizational frameworks to understand how schools and universities make sense of and respond to broader institutional forces like accountability, diversity, and the market. In this article, we draw on recent innovations in organizational theory to propose a model that identifies two general processes through which pressures from the environment shape educational practice in schools: filtering and local adaptation. We review three areas where researchers have studied filtering and local adaptation—routines, sensemaking, and networks—to illustrate how these processes are currently being applied in education and how this work can be extended. We also identify studies that have begun to integrate these different areas of scholarship and propose directions for future research. This article offers education researchers new to the field conceptual tools for guiding their analysis and assists more seasoned researchers in situating their studies in a broader context of institutional maintenance, change, and heterogeneity.