“In Real Life, You Have to Speak Up”: Civic Implications of No-Excuses Classroom Management Practices

Abstract

Conceptualizing educational inequality as equivalent to the “achievement gap” has fueled the expansion of no-excuses charters, which purport to raise test scores and thereby equalize opportunities for low-income students of color. In contrast, I argue that the individual provision of opportunity is inadequate to address the structural inequalities that create differential achievement, and thus that no-excuses schools cannot be assessed using test scores alone. This ethnographic study examines how no-excuses classroom management shapes students’ development as citizens. My findings suggest that no-excuses classroom management is not a supportive structure that enables academic achievement, but a restrictive and often unfair system that reinforces compliance to institutional authority. I contend that the consequences of this system are more likely to perpetuate than to ameliorate inequality.