Deferring virtue: The new management of students and the civic role of schools

Abstract

The expectation that schools resuscitate civic virtues and create a vibrant civic and public sphere competes with a more powerful contemporary demand on schools, namely, that they generate equal opportunity and mobility, especially for poor and minority youth. This equal opportunity is framed solely in the context of grades on standardized tests. The effort to improve the educational achievement of youth from underserved communities is undertaken through strict behavior management practices, particularly in charter networks that are seen as more successful. These, I suggest, pose the risk of undermining the opportunity students have to develop and practice civic virtues. I raise the possibility that schools teach different kinds of civic virtue to different kinds of children.The common story today about civic virtue is one of decline, and the common story about schools is one of crisis. From MacIntyre's After Virtue (1984) to Bellah's Habits of the Heart (1985) and to contemporary debates on American public values and the state of its youth, the prevailing story is one that laments the loss of civic virtue. Schools are seen by many as one of the culprits of this decline, but they are also charged with reversing it and once again generating a virtuous public who can elevate the level of public engagement and participate in a productive democratic discourse.In this article I suggest that the expectation that schools resuscitate civic virtues competes with a more powerful demand on schools, namely, that they generate equal

Raising Citizens or Raising Test Scores? Teach For America, “No Excuses” Charters, and the Development of the Neoliberal Citizen

“…Meanwhile, research on KIPP, TFA, and "no excuses" charter schools is inconclusive, highly contested, and generally focused on the organizations' ability to raise students' test scores (Clark, Isenberg, Liu, Makowsky, & Zukiewicz, 2015;Heilig & Jez, 2010). This myopic focus on standardized assessment data as the sole proxy by which to measure the quality of education is particularly concerning given multiple reports from TFA teachers that they have been trained to teach to the test (Brewer, 2014;Veltri, 2010) and critiques of KIPP for exhibiting militaristic control over students and an exacting focus on test preparation (Ben-Porath, 2013;Henig, 2008;Lack, 2009;Radding, 2014). Indeed, I have argued elsewhere that students of TFA teachers in "no excuses" charters in New Orleans may outperform their peers due to pedagogy that prioritizes the production of assessment data over providing students with high-quality, meaningful instruction or exposure and training in the dispositions necessary for democratic engagement (Sondel, 2015).…”

The Education-Industrial Complex: A Consideration of Power, Educational Institution and the Political Disengagement of Urban Secondary Students

“…How terms are understood and used are important as bases for collaborative efforts and thus are primary in a project of engagement among parties a school environment (K. Chang, 2014;Cravey, 2013;Mather & Hanley, 1999). How terms are understood and used given the parties involved become forms of power that beg the question to know more if one is to analyze the engagement of a stakeholder in an education system (Apple, 1993;Ben-Porath, 2013;Boggs, 2000;Lukes, 2005;Morriss, 2002;Perrow, 1986;Picciano & Spring, 2013). Context and systems that encompass and maintain such power will be the main foci for the balance of this response.…”

Why character education?

“…Many parents and teachers accept the harsh discipline of these schools as providing children of disadvantaged backgrounds with the hope of escape from poverty, but students are not engaged in the kinds of deep and self-directed learning that would prepare them to succeed in college when they get there. Nor is there discussion or examination of issues of the kinds that would be conducive to civic education, moral reflection, or the development of judgment (Ben-Porath, 2013). In sum, it would be premature to claim that 'grit' provides an actionable focus for character education, let alone one that has a proven track record.…”

“…Paul Tough has promoted KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Programme) schools in the US as models of character education focused on the development of grit (Tough, 2013;Birdwell, Scott and Reynolds, 2015, 19;Kristjánsson, 2015, 1-8), but close observers of these schools have argued that what they provide is not character education but a form of 'totalizing' behavioural control that is imposed with a singular focus on rote learning and test scores (Ben-Porath, 2013;Lamboy and Lu, 2017). Resilience would presumably be promoted by enabling children to process and overcome disabling emotions associated with trauma, but the 'coordinated, institutionalized response to expressions of grief, anger, sadness, or frustration' in KIPP and related forms of 'No Excuses' schools has been to reprimand teachers for sacrificing instructional time to find out why children as young as 4 and 5 years old are crying (Lamboy and Lu, 2017, 222).…”