The Social Field of No-Excuses Charter Schools

• In Event: 49.055 - Context Matters: How Social, Legal, and Professional Settings Affect Charter Schools and School Choice

Abstract

The question of how to best educate students of color in high poverty urban settings is one of the fundamental debates in urban education. But a new orthodoxy is emerging among a group of teachers, educators, and administrators who are attached to “No Excuses” charter management organizations (CMOs) such as KIPP, Uncommon Schools, and Achievement First. In this paper, I unpack the social field of No Excuses charter schools and the theory of practice that guides the work done in these schools. This paper uncovers a fundamental contradiction within the model: an interest in achieving transformational educational change by eliminating structural social inequalities belied by the implementation and reproduction of dispositions and actions which reproduce structural inequalities.

Author

• Andrew Frederic Miller, Boston College