The Noble Network is the leading charter chain in Chicago. It boasts of high test scores. It is the darling of the Chicago white elite, including such luminaries as former Republican Governor Bruce Rauner and billionaire Penny Pritzker, who served as Obama’s Secretary of Commerce. White apologists and admirers of the strict no-excuses discipline policy claimed that black and brown children needed the tough rules so that they could learn middle-class behaviors. David Whitman published a book praising “no-excuses” schools called Sweating the Small Stuff: Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism, in which he praised the high-performing schools (mostly charters) that enforced “no excuses.” His book was published in 2008; in 2009, he became the chief speech-writer for Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who often lavished praise on “no excuses” charter schools.
The Noble Network wrote a letter to its alumni, apologizing for its strict “no excuses” policy, which it acknowledged was “racist.” Over the years, critics have said that the practices of “no excuses” schools are racist, but they were defended by charter advocates based on their test scores. They argued that the ends justified the punitive and harsh means. To be sure, the “no excuses” practices enabled charters to kick out the kids who did not conform and did not meet the school’s demands. The high suspension and attrition rates contributed to their “success.”
Chicago’s largest charter school network sent a letter to alumni this week admitting that its past discipline and promotion policies were racist and apologizing for them. The apology is notable not just as an acknowledgment of misguided policies, but as a repudiation of the “no-excuses” philosophy adopted by many charter schools during the 2000s.
For years, Noble Charter Network had an ultra-strict approach in which students, for example, got demerits for small offenses, such as not wearing a belt, not following a teacher with their eyes and failing to sit up straight or wear black dress shoes. After a certain number of demerits, students had to pay for behavior classes. If they continued to get demerits, they could be forced to repeat a grade, which led many to transfer out.
The email calls the discipline and promotion policies “assimilationist, patriarchal, white supremacist and anti-black,” according to the email sent to alumni on Monday. “We were disguising punishment as accountability and high expectations. We did not fulfill our mission to ALL students,” the email continues.
The letter set off a firestorm among former students, some of whom feel vindicated and others who say they think it was disingenuous. Some alumni point out the email did not explain what changes have been made, offer any type of reparations or ask for their feedback. Instead, the email includes a survey about whether they would want to participate in alumni events...
With about 13,000 mostly Black and Latino students, more than one in 10 Chicago public high school students goes to a Noble campus. For years, Noble’s “no-excuses, sweat the small stuff” philosophy was well-known and embraced by the school district and by some of the most prominent Chicagoans.
Its founder and chief executive officer Michael Milkie saw this approach as fundamental to the network’s success. He highlighted the fact that his schools, which don’t require a test for admission, out-performed neighborhood high schools. The Noble campuses are consistently highly rated with impressive high school graduation and college-going rates. Charter schools are largely publicly funded but privately managed.
Mayors touted Noble’s success and big donors such as former governor Bruce Rauner and the former U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker and her husband Bryan Traubert lined up to support them financially. The organization’s most recent audit shows it brought in nearly $200 million in fiscal year 2020, the vast majority from tuition payments from Chicago Public Schools, to run its 17 campuses. It also raised $9.4 million last year.
But Noble’s campuses also had high student suspension and expulsion rates. Charter schools can set their own student discipline codes, and even as CPS changed its disciplinary practices to move away from suspension and expulsions in district-run schools, it never held Noble accountable for its practices.
In fact, in recent years, charter school suspension data has not been publicly available through the school district. But CPS officials are now applauding the apology by Noble. “All schools should continually self-evaluate biases and act to change them if a student group is being disproportionately impacted,” they said in a statement.
Noble is one of a number of charter school networks across the country, opened in the 2000s, that touted strict discipline and high expectations. Like Noble, these schools serve mostly low-income Black and Latino students. Facing criticism, many of them have backed away from the rhetoric of no-excuses.
Noble might be the first to ask forgiveness from alumni...
Some students say the super-strict discipline made them dislike school and changed their vision of themselves as students.
“For the most part, it felt like every day going to high school was dreadful,” Collins said. “At most high schools, the goal is to graduate and go to college. When I hit Hansberry, my only goal was to get through the day without getting into detention or getting suspended.”
Collins said she will never get back the innocence, time or money that the school took from her. She said she started getting demerits her freshman year in 2015 for coming late or not wearing a black belt or leaving class to go to the bathroom without an escort.
Up until 2014, Noble charged students for each demerit, but that practice stopped after it was revealed that Noble was catapulting families into debt and sending a collection agency after them.
Collins, who rarely got in trouble in elementary school, got so many demerits at Hansberry that she had to pay for several behavior classes.
Collins said her mother started to see her as a troublemaker. Then, at the end of her sophomore year, her demerits rendered her unable to be promoted. She left and went to Hyde Park High School where she graduated early. She’s now a student at Jackson State University in Mississippi.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Sounds to me like a pretty good case for a class-action lawsuit. The charter has admitted causing harm through racist policies.
YES. Kids have been so terribly hurt as the press looked the other way.
Some districts have adopted this charter practice. We have a rural district here that operates under “no excuses” and they are definitely pushing kids out.
It’s been going on for years and they’re lauded every year as a excellent school by the US Department of Education for high test scores. No mention at all that they get those scores by making the unruly or “different” students so unwelcome they flee to other public schools. The trick is to contact the parents constantly. Parents of children as young as five are called and texted constantly re: “problems” with the child’s behavior. They get the message loud and clear that they their child should leave.
But drive by that school and you’ll see all kinds of awards on the signage out front and the superintendent is constantly in the news calling out other public schools for not having the high scores she gets. Advertising and marketing more than education.
Sounds like the Success Academy formula. Do you get the impression that their PR re: high test scores is sufficient to keep newbies coming in in sufficient numbers? Are they thus (like SA) able to avoid backfilling seats emptied by these measures so as to plump scores/ grad stats for their [thus much smaller] graduating classes?
This is not to endorse Noble’s practices or comment on the school’s decision that the practices are racist, but I DO think you have to have basic order in schools.
Students complain about disruptive students. They don’t think it’s fair that a small group of students dominate classes and control what happens in class. It isn’t fair, if that’s happening. They’re right. I saw both sides of this because I had a child who objected to disruptive students in his public school (he’s quiet and a good student) and then I had a younger child who WAS the disruptive student 🙂
It’s obviously difficult but quiet or reticent or rule-following students should feel welcome and safe too.
The “no excuses” schools take this idea to an extreme. A demerit for talking in the hallway? For not “tracking” the teacher with your eyes at all times? For wearing the wrong belt? For having your shirt tail hanging out? These are not disruptive behaviors.
True, that is different than just keeping order.
The students in the article seem to be describing a really joyless atmosphere, and in my experience that just drains kids.
Chiara, you bring up a very good point, which the lies of charters have made impossible to address.
Having disruptive students is surely difficult for the students who aren’t disruptive. And there is a good and very important discussion to be had about how to address their needs. But the discussion is infused and distorted by the absolutely false narrative that the answer is harsh, no excuses discipline. Given the high attrition rates — which I strongly doubt are likely to be the quiet, reticent and rule-following students – all that harsh discipline is designed only to dump disruptive students.
Furthermore, it serves another, much more truly abhorrent purpose — it turns students who struggle to learn into disruptive students, making them so anxious and self-loathing (which reflects their teachers and school administrators loathing of them) that they act out or act inwardly, doing harm to themselves. And can then be ushered out the door for being “bad”.
No-excuses charters have pushed the lie that they turn all students into high performing scholars, with the very loud and clear subtext that the students who don’t become high performing scholars are entirely responsible for their own failures (if they are in charters).
And someday scholars of racial justice will do a deep dive into why there are so many no excuses charters in low income communities of color and almost none in middle class, affluent white communities.
The entire no-excuses charter movement is infused with implicit racism in which the false narrative of “African American students need white saviors and harsh discipline to succeed”.
In NYC, the so-called liberal media fawns over “miracles” of a few thousand students in no-excuses charters with proficient state test scores.
Does that media notice that over 180,000 NYC public school students who also had proficient test scores? Does that media notice that 180,000 NYC public school students thrived – just like affluent white suburban students thrive – without being subject to harsh discipline and no-excuses?
No, because those students are either invisible to the media, or the journalists are so racist that they believe that with very few exceptions, that the only students who thrive academically in public schools are white and Asian students.
There is a reason that no-excuses schools don’t exist in affluent white communities. And that is because if white students who struggled to learn were treated like students in urban charters are treated, the media would not completely ignore their parents. The media would not push the false narrative that no white student can learn without being subject to harsh discipline and no-excuses. Because the backlash would happen so fast that those reporters taking seriously the pronouncements of charters about how violent so many of the 5 year old white kindergarten children in their suburban charter are would be fired.
Can anyone imagine the NYT reporter writing: “The charter says that huge percentages of these white suburban kindergarten children are uncontrollably violent in their charters and the charter had no choice but to frequently suspend them and punish and humiliate them. Sure their parents complained, and some people who are connected with the anti-charter teachers union deny that extraordinarily high percentages of white 5 year old kindergarten children act out violently because of their own violent natures, but one side cares abut those white kids but knows they are very violent by nature and the other side only cares about the union. But that kind of underlying belief is part of so many of the stories written by the so-called “liberal” media in NYC when it comes to writing about urban charters and the supposedly high percentage of extremely violent children who just happen to win their lotteries and enroll in their kindergarten classes. They all believe it.
Still, Chiara, you raise a thorny issue that is rarely discussed here. What of the effects on the classroom of top-down enforcement of low suspension/ expulsion rates? What of the practice—motivated solely by saving bucks—of mainstreaming ED kids, & telling teachers to ‘just deal’ via ‘differentiated instruction’? Back in my antique day, defiant [&/ or handicapped] disruptors were removed for a period to juvenile detention/ reformatories. That was not equitable. Texas today has done something similar in large districts, & all kinds of malpractice has been revealed. In my chi-chi hi-income NJ district, peer mediation has worked well… This is an issue often brought up by anti-pubsch folks on ed article comment threads.
p.s. back in my day this was not about black kids, of whom we had very few & were not singled out (that I know of/ remember) for juvey. It was about poor rural white kids from dysfunctional families. My sis has worked career-long in the same area, and same issues pertain today (if anything worse).
I’m surprised it took this long for this to come to light. I recall early in the ed reform “movement” where all the wealthy backers were just thrilled with the kids all in uniform and silently lining up. They bragged about it. Charters were miraculous because the kids were silent on field trips and all in uniform.
I don’t know, but it seemed questionable right at the outset, since the silent, rigorously trained students were always African American. I’m baffled why it took them 20 years to see this. The ed reform echo chamber serves a vital “blinding to the obvious” function, it seems.
One other thing I notice with charters is how you never, ever hear from the teachers.
You hear A LOT from the “founders” of these schools and you hear a lot from the paid promoters in charter lobbying groups and university departments, but charter teachers are never heard from.
It’s odd. They’re notable in their absence. There has been so much written about some of these chains, ed reformers have been marketing and promoting some of them for years yet you never heard from a Rocketship or Summit teacher. Just the owners and managers.
I wonder if charter chains are using NDA’s for former employees. Has anyone ever looked? There are so many charters now yet you never hear from people who work there or worked there in the past.
Are they using employment agreements that bar talking about the schools?
They must have NDAs. To see what the teachers say anonymously, go to Glass Door.
Hindsight is 20-20. So what are you gonna do about this, Noble?
Charters are BAD.
Noble Charters
The nobleist of charters
Are oft the very worst
Pretending to be martyrs
While raiding public purse
Up until 2014, Noble charged students for each demerit, but that practice stopped after it was revealed that Noble was catapulting families into debt and sending a collection agency after them.”
“We were disguising punishment as accountability and high expectations.”
How Noble of them.
Noble Charter
We’re racist and supremacist
But Noble as can be
Our CEO’s polemicist
As everyone can see
Slavery was Noble
Slavery was noble
Nobility enshrined
And Lincoln was the trouble
But in the end, was fined
Nobel charters where the “scholars” blow up public education in the cause of school reform. The TNT chain of schools.
Also making money by punishing students!
“One other thing I notice with charters is how you never, ever hear from the teachers.”
“but charter teachers are never heard from.”
“There are so many charters now yet you never hear from people who work there or worked there in the past.”
I’ve talked to a few charter “teachers”. They echo the “it’s not us” narrative.
“We’re FORCED to follow orders, dictated from above…”
“We must do as we are told or risk our employment…”
“We’re not in charge of policy…”
“THEY never listen to us…”
The Noble Prize
The no excuses Charter
Deserves a Noble Prize
Cuz Noble gets you farther
Than ordinary lies
There is a different kind of “no excuses” policy that is essential in schools, and it does not include blaming the students. Instead, it means no excuses from the educators–from the boards and superintendents to the teachers–for not preparing children for adulthood, intellectually, ethically, and socially. AND, it requires continual reflection–by those at the top on down, individually and collectively–“Is this working?” and if not, then “What have we learned and how do we modify or change what we’re doing?” This will not end failure, but it offers a path to improvement rather than excuses, labeling, abandonment, and the acceptance of that failure..
Bart: I can relate to this. “Preparing children for adulthood, intellectually, ethically, and socially” is a bit grandiose– although true enough– but I can relate to it more granually as a teacher of my particular subject: one must self-assess constantly. Assessment of your students needs to be daily & constant– & self-assessment needs to kick in immediately as you glean results. You need to have goals for your kids, regularly assess their progress toward those goals, & assess how to change your pedagogy daily in order to help them get closer to those goals.
After school let out, I would drive down Augusta BLVd through the west side towards Forest Park where my wife’s parents live. Kids out on the streets, almost all in khakis and tucked polos until you reached Austin Ave. and then you would see some fashion expression in Oak Park kids. In Chicago, it’s just across the street. Noble is Jesuit school minus the crucifixes and tuition. I feel bad that this issue will divide graduates of this system for years to come, and that so many CPS reunions won’t have some of these disaffected kids in attendance. I knew many as eighth graders, and many didn’t last a few semesters at Noble.
“Noble is Jesuit school minus the crucifixes and tuition.”
And hopefully, minus the pedophiles too.
“Internal church records released in 2013 indicate that the Jesuits of the Archdiocese of Chicago willfully concealed sex crimes committed by Jesuit priest Donald McGuire for more than four decades.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_abuse_scandal_in_the_Society_of_Jesus
I don’t even know what MSS means by “the Jesuit school minus the crucifixes and tuition.” Do Jesuits dominate Chicago parochial schools? I don’t think so, judging from the list of Chicago parochial schools. It sounds to me more likely a slur on Catholic schools in general, regardless of the order running them, suggesting that they are all about ‘no excuses’ for black kids. Is that be true? perhaps I’m out of touch. It is simply outrageous that the Jesuits protected this man McGuire, allowing him to run amok for four decades. It is a serious black mark on the only order that long kept me in the church with its intellectual and flexible take on Catholicism (as opposed to the power-mongering Irish Puritans that run the US church).
A reform school like the Noble Network is an institution to which youthful offenders that are guilty of not having white skin are sent to be programmed to act white and accept 2nd class citizenship status because they are not white.
Sounds like historical Bureau of Indian Affairs schools.
Especially the part about forced assimilation.
#ShortestPossiblePearltoShare1
“To pursue a public policy of herd immunity by natural means is the textbook dictionary definition of Genocide, True or False?
Advice for future diplomats: Always be aware of the huge difference between asking a person yes or no(?), and asking them true or false(?).
&
#NotShortPearl2
A FALSE-SCIENCE belief that Evolution Optimizes Outcomes by
Competition & not Cooperation causes a DEEPLY IMPLICIT Eugenics-BIAS that justifies us v. them & superior v. inferior thoughts & actions.
Truth is that Evolution’s magic-hand is NOT Competitive Self-Interest, it is Cooperative-Group-Interest! PERIOD! – This is NOT A MATTER OF POLITICS!
This use of FALSE-SCIENCE is universal in Western Culture & justifies an “end justifies the means” style of “tooth & claw” competition that is a core source of the negative forces that are driving the world into the coming CLIMATE CRISIS.
&
#NotShortPearl3
“Success neurologically changes how we think & see things as much as adverse childhood experiences, trauma, chronic stress & lack of socialization cause neurological changes such as PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).
Call it APSPC & APTPC instead?
ie; Adaptive-PostSuccess-PersonalityChange & Adaptive-PostTrauma-PersonalityChange?
🙂 More?
Okey-Dokey;
We must Answer these 7 Questions to know how to SAFELY proceed with vaccinations & opening schools-
Q1:Promoting Natural Herd Immunity as public policy is a textbook dictionary definition of COVID Genocide-T/F?
Q2:Healthy Chidren may not die or get ill from COVID often, but evidence shows children do asymptomatically get & spread COVID to each other & adults as readily as adults to adults-T/F?
Q3:A school open under pandemic conditions (of R>1)& dailly mixing& sending kids home is NO DIFFERENT than distributing(randomly) smallpox tainted blankets to Native Americans (dailly!)-T/F?
Q4:This can be called #EugenicGenocide because it primarily kills the elderly, ill, poor & persons of color at rates up to 10× the rate of those that are white, middle-class or wealthy (have health care),& are healthy-T/F?
Q5:A genocidal racist eugenicist would see COVID-victims as potential future “cost-burdens” to society& passers-on of inferior genes-T/F?
Q6:MENTAL HEALTH ISSUE making us Blind& BIASED to #COVIDGenocide is a neuro-imbalance of self-interest v. group-interest-T/F?
Q7:Eugenics-BIAS is rationalized by a (libertarian-capitalist) false-SCIENCE belief that evolution optimizes by competition, not cooperation-T/F?