The Culture of Consent and Compliance Among Teachers at "No Excuses" Charters

• In Event: The "No Excuses" Model of Urban School Reform: Wrenching Truths, Critical Perspectives, and Dissent

Abstract

In this paper, Beth Sondel and Kerry Kretchmar examine the culture of consent and compliance at “No Excuses” schools by illustrating the ways in which CMOs control teacher labor and effectively eliminate resistance to the harsh disciplinary practices teachers are expected to enforce through (a) hiring processes, (b) professional development, and (c) intricate systems of surveillance, rewards, and punishment. Drawing on a tradition of scholarship that integrates theory with empirical research, this paper provides both theoretical and descriptive analysis of corporate reform at a school and teacher level. Data sources included observations and semi-structured interviews with teachers, school leaders, and district level administration from a qualitative multi-case study of two “No Excuses” charter schools in New Orleans.

Sondel and Kretchmar describe the ways the recruitment and hiring processes relied heavily on Teach For America networks and created an echo chamber, wherein the “No Excuses” approach was presented from multiple directions and understood as the only available pedagogy. They likewise examine the use of professional development to create a “commonsense” rationale for harsh discipline policies. Teachers were consistently told students were in crisis due to chaotic and violent communities and the “No Excuses” approach would achieve the test scores and behaviors necessary to get them into college and out of poverty. This narrative is anchored in the anti-black racism and white saviorism often upheld in urban schools, which positions children and communities of color as a problem for intervention, and white spaces as safe, innovative, and organized. Finally, they discuss systems of reward, punishment, and surveillance used to control teachers’ labor. School leaders used instructional coaching, intricate evaluation systems, and (in one case) video cameras to oversee teachers’ practice and consistently reminded teachers that their pay, job security, future job prospects, social network membership, and students’ futures were subject to disposal if they failed to keep students under control. Through an analysis of these systems of control, this paper illustrates the depth of policing culture at “No Excuses” schools and elucidates reasons teachers consent and comply with harsh and regressive student treatment.

Authors

• Beth Leah Sondel, University of Pittsburgh

• Kerry Kretchmar, Carroll University