Abstract
Most studies of No-Excuses charter schools are distributive in nature. They answer a question of distributive justice: do these schools adequately close the academic achievement gap that exists in America between white and Black or Hispanic students? When discussion of No-Excuses schools is limited to their distributive worth, critics of No-Excuses schools are trapped. Are they really against high academic achievement, supporters of No-Excuses schools might say. This analysis seeks to escape this trap by proposing and doing an analysis of No-Excuses schools using relational justice. A turn to relational justice recognizes other educational goods schools might deliver to their students. By focusing on relational justice, the author moves the debate over No-Excuses schools into a register in which both their supporters and their opponents can work toward common aims. The author uses Anthony Laden’s relational justice to analyze No-Excuses discourse and practice and then offers recommendations to both No-Excuses schools and education theorists.
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Notes
Brighouse et al. (2018) list several charter schools using No-Excuses policies: the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), Uncommon Schools, and Achievement First (136). These schools only served 117,070 students in 2020 (Miron et al. 2021). The schools listed by Brighouse and colleagues is not definitive so it may be the case that some other of the 1.83 million students who attend charter schools run by education management organizations also attend No-Excuses schools.
I thank the anonymous reviewer for pushing me on this point.
I take this example from an example Lemov (2010) gives for No Apologies. He describes how he taught inner-city students how to speak Chinese and how exciting it was to tell outsiders of his students’ success (p. 54).
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Acknowledgements
I began working on the ideas here as a graduate fellow with funding from the Spencer Foundation in the Center for Ethics and Education. I thank Harry Brighouse, Anthony Laden, Paula McAvoy and the other graduate fellows who pushed me on these ideas and gave challenging comments to previous versions of this paper. I also am indebted to Bryan Warnick who challenged me to compare No-Excuses schools to actual alternatives students have rather than some ideal. Last, I am thankful for Amy Shuffelton and anonymous reviewers who pushed me to organize my thoughts in a more compelling way. Any extant misunderstandings or mistakes are my own.
Funding
This research was supported during the academic year 2018–2019 by the Spencer Foundation through a McPherson Fellowship at the Center for Ethics and Education.
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Smith, S.J. Adding a Register of Relational Justice: A Fuller Picture of the Debate Around No-Excuses Schools. Stud Philos Educ 41, 287–305 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-022-09815-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-022-09815-x