Steven Singer presents a hypothetical but nutty analogy. He opens this post with a teacher pulling out a gun and shooting a student in the head. The principal hears the gun shot, runs to the classroom, sees the body on the floor, and is about to reprimand the teacher but quiets down and leaves when he realizes that the other students are working diligently. The teacher has used this extraordinary method to encourage students to work harder. Her method is effective. Why mess with success?
This is his commentary on a study that proposes that public schools should absorb the lessons of the no-excuses charter schools. If harsh discipline works for them and produces higher test scores, isn’t that what all schools should do?
Is this what parents want?
Are high scores the goal of education?
I am reminded of something I wrote about a study by Roland Fryer in which he concluded that while bonuses don’t seem to produce higher scores, aversive policies do. For example, pay a teacher $4,000 in the beginning of the school year, and if the teacher’s students don’t get higher test scores, take the money away. That works. I suggested another method that might work, using the aversive method: tell economists that if their predictions are wrong, you will cut off one of their fingers.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I do not think Singer’s post emphasizes the reason for the no excuses approach. They are using this policy to assure that only the students with maximum buy-in get to matriculate in their school. I know individual teachers who have the same approach. My way or the highway. You walk in here without your homework and you walk back out, never to return. Some of these teachers are supported in the community by a very education-oriented group of involved parents. The principal knows who to put in that teacher’s class if he wants to keep parents from lining up at his door.
No excuses charters sound like schools with this philosophy. Coaches have been using this for years. Students may hate the coach, but they love to win, so they put up with his screaming and belittling them in order to be on the team. Makes the team better. Lenin only put committed Bolshevik believers on his team.
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“I do not think Singer’s post emphasizes the reason for the no excuses approach. They are using this policy to assure that only the students with maximum buy-in get to matriculate in their school.”
This is a good point, but from the way “no excuses” charters act, I think it goes even farther than that.
What you see is that students whose parents are affluent and college educated — in other words, just like the students in the suburban publics that always do well academically — don’t seem to experience the same treatment that low-income non-white students experience. It’s quite easy to overlook the little missteps of your affluent and higher performing students who don’t sit exactly straight. But if it is a disadvantaged student not performing up to snuff that you want to remove from your charter, you target every small “infraction” until the stress makes them act out.
Hudson Yards Success Academy (HYSA) is a middle school where 5th grade students from various Success Academy elementary schools were sent. The principal was trained at one of their schools for low-income students but the HYSA population of students included students who came from some of the affluent schools where as few as 25% of the students were low-income.
Somehow I suspect that the parents who wrote this letter below about HYSA were those affluent college-educated ones whose children only experienced the LITE version of “no-excuses” (i.e., “we really want you middle class parents to keep your kids here and would never treat them like we treat the poor kids in other schools if they are not achieving what we demand academically”)
“HYSA faculty broke our children’s spirit and erased their self confidence in less than 3 weeks. Our children who once loved the SA, who were proud of being a part of a great school, rallied in Albany and other events, now simply no longer want to go to school. Some of our children are getting physically sick, experiencing meltdowns, vomiting, having nightmares and/or having sleepless nights and are unable to concentrate etc. Some of our children have even requested to be homeschooled although they had been award winners and popular last year. Intimidation and Detention of the scholars: Since school started most of the scholars were detained at least once for reasons that can hardly justify such an extreme measure. Examples:
• Not locking their hands
• Not completing homework that was confusing, in some cases assignments not even given to them in the first place
• For unintentionally and/or accidentally breaking wind or burping in the classroom…..”
SIMPLY NO LONGER WANT TO GO TO SCHOOL
EXPERIENCING MELTDOWNS
REQUESTED TO BE HOMESCHOOLED
That is how “no excuses” works to eliminate the students who are deemed unworthy of their charter school education — “unworthy” is defined as “not being able to score high enough on standardized exams”. When those children “experience meltdowns”, they are characterized as violent and suspended.
What was the reaction to this letter? Did the “no-excuses” charter operator tell them “my way or the highway”?
Nope. Instead, the school stopped treating their children in the manner that is reserved only for the children of the poor who don’t perform academically.
To use your sports analogy: The coach on the Little League team was “strict” with all students, but targeted his belittling and raging toward the players who were clumsy while the superb athletes were celebrated and the athletes who were decent pushed hard to get better. Players who did not improve might then become targets like the most un-athletic ones had been. Eventually, those who were belittled and raged either improved enough to no longer be a target, or if they did not, they would leave. Since the league rules were that all players got equal playing time and this team’s weak players had left, the team did well, attracting more strong players and more players overall. Some of those new players were weaker than the coach wanted, and those players were screamed at and belittled until they left, making the team play even better since all their opponents were playing their weakest players as much as their strongest, while this “no excuses” team ended up with only strong players.
Harsh discipline doesn’t necessarily work to raise test scores. It works to get rid of students with weak test scores who bring down the average.
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From my perspective, these are valid points.
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“tell economists that if their predictions are wrong, you will cut off one of their fingers.”
Unfortunately, that would only work for the first ten times. Then they would just figure they had nothing more to lose.
PS No one ever said (or ever will say) that economist logic made sense.
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YES: So many lauded as “great economists” are then seen being interviewed after a huge economic disaster saying “I don’t know what happened, I didn’t see it coming…”
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As funny and satirical as it is, the idea of a teacher shooting a child repulses me, and I would not re-blog it.
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This teaching repulses me even more, because this is not just an idea but reality
http://wd369.csi.hu/apu/sa_math.mp4
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Punishment does not produce better test scores, selective admission and casting off those that are not compliant or willing to do the work are. Some public magnet schools maintain high standards by choosing students on the basis of test scores and interviews. Schools like the Bronx High School of Science and Styvesant have outstanding test scores because they are highly selective. Neither imposes “no excuses” discipline which, I believe, is a colonialist expression of order reserved for children of color.
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Wendy Edelberg, economist, gave tesitmony at the following Congressional hearing dedicated to throwing more people off “entitlements and welfare.” She said: “if you lower the income of people, they will work harder.” That was exactly what the Republicans wanted to hear. When she was pressed, she made the distinction between income (multiple sources) and wages and also said the effect size was very small.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?440771-1/congressional-budget-office-officials-testify-oversight-hearing
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On the other end of the spectrum, and much more humane:
A New Push for Play-Based Learning: Why Districts Say It’s Leading to More Engaged Students, Collaborative Classmates … and Better Grades | The 74
https://www.the74million.org/article/a-new-push-for-play-based-learning-why-districts-say-its-leading-to-more-engaged-students-collaborative-classmates-and-better-grades/?
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The 74 million is pushing play-based learning? One of the rephorm outfits that has done the most to narrow “education” down to a single BS Test is now pushing play-based learning? Now they’re worried about being more “humane”??? How @#$%!!!ing hypocritical.
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“tell economists that if their predictions are wrong, you will cut off one of their fingers.”
Diane, your suggestions are becoming more explicit—I love it.
When was the last time anybody experimented with economists, or just suggested experiments with them?
Because they suggest the weirdest human experiments, don’t they? I wonder why they get to do that.
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I believe in punishment.
I believe that jerks like Harvey Weinstein should be punished.
I also think that kids who act like jerks at school should be punished.
My middle school –mostly white, middle class, suburban –needs to mete out more punishment. Even the kids are saying they’re dismayed at how badly kids treat teachers. Now that CA schools are being scored on the number of suspensions and expulsions they give out, administrators are loathe to give out punishments for even egregious and chronic behaviors. As a result, bad behavior proliferates. If it’s this bad at MY school, I can’t help but imagine it’s not far worse at schools with many more high-risk kids. These are not traumatized kids acting out their trauma; these are kids who are choosing to be jerks and who know they can get away with it. Before anyone attacks me for being a bad teacher who hates kids, let me say that I’m pretty happy with my 183 students this year. But it’s crazy outside my classroom, and many other teachers are suffering and complaining mightily. I hear what happens and I can’t help but think that some kids need a big comeuppance.
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I’m waiting for teachers’ #metoo moment.
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What grade do you teach?
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There are ways to manage adolescent behavior by building respect to prevent misbehavior before it occurs. When poor behavior occurs, taking time to discuss feelings can build better relationships and teach important lessons. Only when rule breaking is egregiously foul or hurtful should undesirable consequences be applied.
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I don’t need a #metoo moment. I am just glad I survived the #Rheetoo moment. She tried to tape everyone’s mouth shut and beat us with her broom. Now that woman knew how to punish her way to the top!
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