“We aren’t what we say:” discontinuities of teacher beliefs and instructional practice at a “no-excuses” and high-achieving urban charter school

ABSTRACT

As ‘no-excuses’ charter schools (NECS) continue to (re)emerge as a discipline-focused approach, there continues to be limited empirical research documenting the beliefs of teachers within these contexts. This ethnographic study explored the beliefs of White teachers who enact the vision of a NECS, with Black and Latinx learners, in one of the largest U.S. cities. Data revealed that teachers had broader educational goals for students that did not concretely manifest in actual instruction in classrooms with students. Instead, teachers’ pedagogical beliefs became suppressed within the organisational context, which translated to repressive practices in ways that demonstrate implicit racial bias.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher beliefs
• discontinuities
• instruction
• “no-excuses” charter schools
• Black and Latinx students

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. The model with the highest approval rate was ‘diverse by design’, followed by the ‘classical’ model with the second-highest approval rate. Yet, combined, these two models comprised 5% of the charters proposed, whereas the ‘no-excuses’ model was 10% of the schools that were proposed to authorisers.

2. According to teachers’ the ‘at-risk’ designation for Leroy was due to his social promotion from the fifth to seventh grade. One teacher suggested, ‘He was part of the juvenile justice system and is way below grade level in terms of reading and math skills’.

3. According to teachers’ the ‘at-risk’ designation for Jerome was due to his retention of sixth grade and his behaviour. While one teacher suggested, ‘He has low-confidence’, another teacher suggested, ‘ … he doesn’t respect others and thinks if he does something wrong and nobody sees it, it makes it ok’.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Mitchell Leaska Dissertation Research Award and Phi Delta Kappa International.