To and Through: "No Excuses" Charter Graduates Reflect on Their K-12 Preparation for University

• In Event: Alternative Schooling: Competing and Contradictory Visions of Education

Abstract

“To and through” is a self-affirming but under-researched mantra used by many “no excuses” charter schools (NECS) referring to their broader mission of getting students “to” and “through” college. To investigate the experiential realities of these outcomes, researchers interviewed graduates of NECS now currently enrolled at four-year colleges in order to: 1) investigate how students’ implicit and explicit understandings about learning, citizenship, identity, and education were informed by their NECS experience, and 2) explore students’ feelings of preparedness for four-year university. Drawing on Sondel’s (2015, 2016) explorations on citizenship development pedagogies in NECS, findings suggested that while NECS leave students feeling prepared in some ways, areas where they feel unprepared have important implications for understanding how “neoliberal racism” (Giroux, 2003) intersects with students' feelings and perceptions of autonomy, success, and responsibility in college, specifically within the contexts of the predominantly white university space.

Authors

• Celina Martinez Nichols, University of Texas

• Stacia Cedillo, The University of Texas at Austin