Areview of: "No Excuses: Lessons from 21 High-Performing, High-PovertySchools"
Samuel Casey Carter (Heritage Foundation, April 17, 2000
Reviewedby: Bruce Biddle and Gerald W. Bracey (July 1, 2000)
Center for Education Research, Analysis, and Innovation
School of Education
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
PO Box 413
Milwaukee WI 53201
414-229-2716
CERAI-00-19
NoExcuses, Lots Of Reasons
Aresponse to:
NoExcuses: Lessons from 21 High-Performing, High-Poverty Schools,
BySamuel Casey Carter
Areport from the Education Policy Project
July1, 2000
No Excuses: Lessons from 21High-Performing, High-Poverty Schools 1 is a report by SamuelCasey Carter, a doctoral student in philosophy at Catholic University ofAmerica. Carter wrote it as a Bradley Foundation Fellow at the HeritageFoundation, which published it.
The message of this 125-page report is thatobtaining high academic achievement in low-income schools is more a matter ofprinciples than of money. It attempts to rebut the idea that what economicallydistressed schools need is more resources. The report issues an earlydisclaimer that it is not formal research. Nonetheless, it suffers inordinatelyfrom research by anecdote and inference by innuendo. It fails even to recognizesome of the factors entering into the success that the report itself contains.
The report is divided into two parts. Part 1,the Introduction, describes criteria for effective schools, extracted from theprofiles of the schools, and a list of effective practices found at theseschools. Part 2, the bulk of the report, consists of short vignettes of the 21schools profiled.
The reports identifies seven traits ascentral to the success of high-performing schools in poor communities:
1 Principals must be free to establishcurricula, hire faculties and set the direction of a school’s teaching style.
- Principals use measurable goals to establish a culture of achievement.
- Master teachers bring out the best in a faculty.
- Rigorous and regular testing leads to continuous student achievement.
- Achievement is the key to discipline.
- Principals work actively with parents to make the home a center of learning.
- Effort creates ability. 2
It is not clear how these traits wereextracted. "Master teachers," for instance, are mentioned in only oneof the 21 portraits of the schools. At least one school deliberately hiresuncertified teachers, and at another, the teachers seem little more than acolytesof the principal. No evidence, except by example, is provided to support thesetraits as those responsible for the high scores.
Methodology
The search for the schools itself might ormight not have been systematic: "After consulting with state educationchiefs, their offices of assessment, state and local think tanks, teachers’unions, not-for-profit organizations supporting research in elementary andsecondary education, family foundations providing financial support tooutstanding high-poverty schools, educational consultants, and researchorganizations developing intervention programs for ‘at-risk’ students, a listof just over 400 prospective schools was assembled" 3
Neither the percent of low-income studentsnor the test scores (for either grade or school) have been audited. Some ofthese data are implausible. For instance, the Marva Collins School in Chicagoreports 70% of its students are low income. Yet it charges $4500 a year tuitionand grants few scholarships. Another school reports a credibility-stretchingaverage score at the 98th percentile in reading in one grade. Marcus Garvey inLos Angeles reports that "some students drive 30 to 40 miles each way tocome to school." It seems unlikely that low income students would have suchready access to automobiles and have the financial wherewithal to drive theselong distances.
This list was winnowed to "125 schoolswith very high concentrations of low-income students and a certain reputationfor academic excellence." Some of these schools did not want toparticipate and some were forbidden to. For some schools, the achievementrecord could not be verified and for some "the verification process itselfrevealed a record of achievement that was not worth reporting" 4
Schools in the study had to have test scoresabove the 65th percentile, and 75% or more of their studentseligible for free or reduced price meals. In 1997, students whose familiesearned less that 130% of poverty level ($21,385 for a family of four) wereeligible for free meals, while students whose families earned less than 185% ofpoverty ($30,433 for a family of four), were eligible for reduced price meals.
The principals of the schools wereinterviewed, after which "site visits and personal interviews with theprincipals, teachers, students, and parents," were conducted. 5
Most of the schools are elementary orelementary and middle schools, two are middle schools, and one contains grades7-12
While the vignettes provide information thatis sometimes richer than what can be derived from test scores, the test scoresthemselves are the only common criterion of success across the schools.Unfortunately, in a number of instances, the scores derive from test scoresprovided by the school itself, presenting a clear instance of conflict of interest.No information is presented on the quality control of the testing process.
One can observe that the description of howthe schools were located itself contradicts the title of the report. Byanalogy, one could say that there are no excuses for man not defying gravityand flying. People tried for centuries without success. Today it is commonplacebecause the resources necessary to fly have been put in place. That scarcelydescribes the condition of schools in low-income communities. It takes a greatdeal of power to break the bonds of gravity, and it seems reasonable that itwould take a great deal of power to break the bonds of poverty on any sizablescale. Indeed, the report itself affirms this contention.
The U. S. Department of Education characterizesabout 7000 schools as low income. By this study’s criteria, only 21beat the odds. This alone should tell us something.
TheSchools And Their Characteristics
| SCHOOLS (P=public; $=private; C=charter) | GRADES | No. of students | % Low Income | Median Percentile:Reading | Median Percentile: Math |
| Portland Elementary, Portland, Ark. - P | PK-6 | 152 | 77 | 59 | 66 |
| Bennett-Kew Elementary, Inglewood, Calif. - P | K-5 | 836 | 78 | 62 | 74 |
| Marcus Garvey School, Los Angeles, Calif. - $ | PK-12 | 285 | 75 | 80 | 82 |
| Cascade Elementary, Atlanta, Ga. - P | K-5 | 379 | 80 | 74 | 83 |
| Marva Collins Prep School, Chicago, Ill. - $ | K-8 | 193 | 70 | 51 | 65 |
| Earhart Elementary, Chicago, Ill. - P | PK-6 | 265 | 82 | 70 | 80 |
| George Washington Elementary, Chicago, Ill. - P | PK-8 | 680 | 76 | 58 | 79 |
| Morse Elementary, Cambridge, Mass. - P | K-8 | 318 | 65 | 72 | 84 |
| Cornerstone Schools Assn., Detroit, Mich. - $ | PK-8 | 625* | 75 | 65 | 51 |
| Owen Elementary, Detroit, Mich. - P | PK-5 | 457 | 82 | 80 | 79 |
| Newberry Elementary, Detroit, Mich. - P | PK-5 | 610 | 90 | 66 | 68 |
| 14th Ave.School, Newark, N.J. - P | K-4 | 210 | 98 | 90 | 95 |
| The Crown School, Brooklyn, N.Y. - P | K-8 | 1342 | 98 | 71 | 78 |
| PS 122-Mamie Fay School, Long Island City, N.Y. - P | K-8 | 1230 | 73 | 77 | 82 |
| Frederick Douglass Academy, New York, N.Y. - P | 7-12 | 1030 | 80 | 73 | 81 |
| KIPP Academy, Bronx, N.Y. - P | 5-8 | 223 | 95 | 69 | 81 |
| Healthy Start Academy, Durham, N.C. - C | K-4 | 430 | 80 | 88 | 91 |
| Stephen Girard/Girard Academic Music Program Philadelphia, Pa.- P | K-12 | 1186 | 82 | 66 | 63 |
| Rozelle Elementary, Memphis, Tenn. - P | K-6 | 507 | 88 | 70 | 55 |
| KIPP Academy, Houston, Tex. - P | 5-9 | 270 | 95 | 61 | 81 |
| Mabel B. Wesley Elementary Houston, Texas - C | PK-5 | 1066 | 87 | 61 | 66 |
We cannot be certain, in the absence ofsupporting data, that the test scores reported reflect achievement that can begeneralized beyond the scores themselves, or even, for that matter, that thescores are real. Even if we assume both to be true, however, several variablesnot mentioned in the "common traits" section of the report maycontribute to success. These variables are described below.
Effort
Over and over in the report, one reads ofextraordinary individuals who make extraordinary efforts. Indeed, David Levin,principal of the KIPP Academy in the Bronx (the name is an acronym for"Knowledge is Power Program") and Michael Feinberg of the KIPPacademy in Houston, state that "to replicate KIPP on a national scale,they would require a pool of educators that does not exist today. In twocommunities that have nothing in common but a group of children abandoned bythe establishment, we have opened schools that work. But what we do isn’t easy.First we need to find a way to make this level of commitment the standard. Thenwe need to make it attractive, livable, and affordable for teachers." 6
In other words, it would not be reasonable toexpect large numbers of teachers to make the kind of sacrifices that Levin,Feinberg and their small cadres of teachers to make.
Again, at the Wesley School in Houston, onenotes another instance of the "Great Man" effect, this time ofThaddeus Lott, principal there for many years. As Gail Chaddock wrote in the ChristianScience Monitor, "Early critics said that replicating Wesley would betough, because you can’t clone Thaddeus Lott, the large-than-life formerprincipal who came to Wesley in 1975, or the meticulous school culture hecreated."7
Even that culture comes with heavy costs:"Turnover is high. There are 20 new teachers this year, out of 49. Someleave because the paperwork is crushing; others bristle at the philosophy,which allows little scope to break away from the text. Those who stay arefiercely loyal." 8 It’s worth noting that the paperwork is notcreated by the Houston administrative bureaucracy but by the record keepingrequirements of the school’s scripted Direct Instruction lesson plans and otherhighly structured programs on which it relies heavily.
Gregory Hodge, principal of the FrederickDouglass Academy in Harlem, states bluntly: "Teachers don’t come to theFrederick Douglass Academy to retire. They come here to make a contribution. SoI ask them: Will they make the time, will they sacrifice their othercommitments, do they have the skills…We spend approximately seven months a yeartrying to recruit teachers. I’ll interview 100 to 150 teachers before I make adecision to hire." 9
Hodge’s stipulations are reminiscent ofcontracts from the 19th century, which often made the contractcontingent on the teacher’s remaining single. If one assumes 22 working days ina month, Hodge’s schedule works out to almost one interview per day, anextraordinary amount of time for one procedure.
At the KIPP school in Houston "students,parents, and teachers all sign a commitment ‘to do whatever it take to learn.’Teachers carry cell phones with toll-free numbers and are on call 24 hours aday to answer any concerns their students might have. ‘Ten calls a night mightsound like a drag,’ says Feinberg, ‘but everyone goes to bed ready for schoolthe next day.’" 10
In short, even "successful" schoolsare not necessarily happy places. One kind of success -- high test scores -- ispaid for with what some people would consider failures: high turnover,frustration, and high levels of paperwork. Yet the ambivalence, even the downside, of such a trade-off seems to be rarely, if ever mentioned in popularmedia discussions of such institutions.
Money
Of course, implicit in the report’s rationaleis the continuing dispute among education reformers about the role of money indetermining the conditions students face. Among many who have studied theproblems of our schools, it’s become widely accepted that there is a directcorrelation between school conditions and the resources available to them; thecounter argument, advanced by organizations that include the No Excusesreport’s sponsors at the Heritage Foundation, generally dispute the connectionand argue that market-oriented reforms, such as charter schools or vouchers,will spur schools to improve without a corresponding increase in funding.
No Excuses fails to report expenditures in a systematic way, andit is especially unclear about funding. What is clear, though, is that for someof the profiled schools, even the public ones, other sources of funds areavailable. For the private schools, of course, there are no public funds.Marcus Garvey, a private school in Los Angeles, charges $492 a month for itselementary grades and $508 a month for high school -- approximately $4,500 ayear, assuming a nine-month school year. (California’s per pupil expendituresin 1997-98 were $5,586.)11 The report contends that most parentscannot pay for a complete education at Garvey and that many come "for ayear or two to get a foundation that their local schools have failed toprovide." 12 The brevity of the students’ tenure makes theirtest scores -- 80th percentile in reading, 82nd in math-- seem all the more remarkable, perhaps overly so.
The report states that George Washingtonelementary in Chicago has "supplemental money" of $350,000 "usedentirely for improved instruction." 13 It doesn’t identify thesource.
The Marva Collins academy in Chicago charges$4,500.00 tuition, a fact not contained in No Excuses but obtained forthis report by a telephone call to the academy. A Collins employee estimatedthat 15-25% of the students receive some assistance in meeting the tuition.14The school reports 70% low-income families. One wonders how they meet thissubstantial requirement. The Nobel system of private schools builds its schoolsin relatively affluent upwardly mobile neighborhoods and sets its tuition at$6,000, a figure the company believes upwardly mobile families find attractive-- and which leaves one to wonder how poor families can come up with $4,500.
A September, 1998 press release onwww.autochannel.com, announced that Cornerstone Schools, a group of privateschools in Detroit, received a $100,000 donation from Johnson Controls, a factthat turned up during an Internet search on Cornerstone Schools. The releaseread, in part, "We are pleased to join Chrysler, Ford, General Motors andmany other corporate sponsors in this worthwhile effort…." 15Another press release from autochannel.com reported that an auto dealer haddonated a car which would be raffled with the proceeds, $350,000 going toCornerstone Schools. The report, which does not mention these specificdonations, acknowledges in passing: "Financial gifts go a long way towardfunding the school’s mission, where the actual cost of an eleven-monthCornerstone education is $5,800."16 Parents also pay an averageof $1,200.00 a year tuition.
Of the 210 students at the Fourteenth AvenueSchool in Newark, 76 are special education students. No information if providedon how much money comes along with these students. The special educationstudents are not including in the testing program. 17
The New York branch of KIPP receives moneyfrom the New York Board of Education only for faculty salaries. Everything elsehas to be raised independently. KIPP has a well-regarded string orchestra. Ithas raised $70,000 for instruments, suggesting that its administrators areastute fund raisers.18
The Healthy Start charter school in Durhamreceives $5,300 per child from state and local sources. This compares with perpupil expenditures of $5,541 in the nation and $4,848 in North Carolina, bothfigures from the 1997-98 school year.19 There might be some othersources as well -- starting salaries are $31,000 with a bachelor’s degree and$35,000 with a master’s degree, while public schools in the region begin at$22,000. In addition, the school contributes 8% of the salary to an IRA andawards "merit-based" bonuses from $1000 to $2000 per teacher.20
The Rozelle school in Memphis is affiliatedwith the Modern Red School House program of New American Schools. Legislationhas provided funding at a minimum of $50,000 a year for these schools.
Interestingly, the report does not take asimplistic don’t-throw-money-at-the-schools approach. It notes that theprincipals concentrate their spending on two aspects of the school: curriculumand teachers.21 It accepts the notion that money can make adifference when spent in the service of instruction. We know of no theses thathave argued otherwise. In addition to lauding where principals concentratetheir spending, the report also argues that these principals have found, to anunusual degree, strategies for making small amounts of money go long distances.22
Time
In many of the report’s schools, studentshave more time to study material that shows up on tests. For instance, atEarhart Elementary in Chicago, all physical education, music, art, and libraryprograms were cancelled. Ninety minutes each morning is devoted to reading.Even so, the school has higher test scores in math, where students are in the80th percentile, compared with 70th in reading.23
More often, time allotments differ from usualpublic schools in terms of extremely dedicated teachers, after school programs,weekend programs, and a lengthened school year. For instance, the report claimsthat teachers at Morse school in Cambridge, Massachusetts are in the buildingfrom 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. The private Cornerstone Schools in Detroit have aneleven-month year. Healthy Start in Durham has an eleven-month year and onlytwo weeks off at Christmas. Newberry School in Detroit maintains a four-day,two-hour after school program in reading and math. Frederick Douglass Academyin New York is open from 7:30 a.m. until 8:00 p.m. on weekdays. What occurs inthe extra hours is not specified, but additional instruction is implied. Theschool is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturdays for SAT and AP preparationinstruction.
The schools are also more time-oriented inthat they focus on the future. This might be one of the best qualities theydisplay. Many poor children do not have a sense that they have any future. Inmany of the vignettes, words like "opportunity" appear many times. Itmight be a good thing that at KIPP academy in New York, if the children wearshirts indicating when they will graduate from high school and that if you ask,say, 5th-graders when they are going to college, they can tell you.One principal is quoted as saying "We talk a lot about the future, aboutgood role models, and about careers."24
Size
Little is mentioned about class size exceptin a couple of larger schools, where it is said to be above average. Most ofthe schools themselves are small. For instance, Portland school has 152students in grades PK-6, Marcus Garvey, 285 in grade PK-12. The largest of theschools is P. S. 161 in Brooklyn, with 1,342 students in grades K-8.
While evidence on small classes is clear,there is also evidence that small schools themselves have beneficial effects.As Deborah Meier noted in her 1992 journal article, "ReinventingTeaching," among the characteristics of a good school is that people knowyour name.25 Certainly this is much more frequently possible whenthe schools are small.
Selectivity
There are several ways in which the schoolsin the study are selective. Several have high tuition. Several are privateschools that can admit whomever they please. Two of the schools are charters.While charters in some states must admit by lottery if oversubscribed, therecould well be selectivity in who applies in the first place. How students applyfor and are chosen for the charter schools is not specified in the report.
Earhart elementary in Chicago is a magnetschool, although that phrase is never used in the report. Magnet schools inChicago can select students, and Earhart would clearly be selecting, as not allparents and students in a geographic attendance area would be interested in the"Afro-centric" curriculum Earhart states that it provides.
The one high school that is represented inthe report is clearly selective: At Frederick Douglass Academy, a Harlem grade7-12 school, "in 1998 the middle school test scores ranked 12thout of 235 in New York City." 26 If children are scoring sowell in grade 7, they are doing so when they’ve only been attending for perhapssix or seven months -- hardly enough to add on the order of 30 percentileranks. Therefore, although the report does not discuss it, some form ofacademic selection is almost certainly taking place.
At the very least, however, we know that theschool is quite plainly selective: "Frederick Douglass is a local public school ofchoice that draws 80 percent of its students from Harlem’s District 5, with therest accepted on the basis of an interview and two written recommendations."27 (Emphasis added) The principal even says outright, "If
you’re notinterested in hard work, then FDA’s not for you… It’s pretty self-selecting."28
Schools might also select via contracts withparents. It is difficult to know how this is accomplished with public schools,but the report states, "Many of the schools studied here use a writtencontract signed by parents, teachers, and students alike." The typicalcontract outlines the school’s mission, sets a demand for high achievement,explains the school’s expectations for parental responsibilities, academicstandards, and conduct, and outlines the penalties for non-compliance. Parentswho are willing to abide by such contracts might well differ systematicallyfrom those who are not.
It cannot be known, of course, to what extentthe contracts are enforced. Rothstein, Carnoy, and Benveniste found that privateschools were more successful at obtaining parental involvement because suchcontracts could be made a condition of admission.29 They also found,though, that the resulting involvement of the parents was mostly innon-academic areas.
The schools are also highly selective aboutteachers. The report contends that only "a fraction" of the nation’sschools could be staffed with teachers like those found in the 21 schoolstudied. As noted, one principal interviews 100 to 150 candidates before makinga hire.
Testwiseness
Whatever else the children in these schoolslearn, they learn how to take a test. Testing occurs as often as every seven oreight days. Tests administered three times a year are common, and these areoften preceded by "mock" tests. One wonders about the proximity incoverage and format of the mock tests to the real ones.
It is in its approach to testing that thereport uses innuendo to suggest a perspective on testing that does not reallyexist. Early on it states that the education establishment is guilty of ademography-is-destiny mentality that these schools refute. When it comes totesting it claims that "opponents of standardized tests even claim thereis an inevitability to the results…making the official use of theseexams positively dangerous and their authoritative acceptance in accountabilityprograms only a tool of further division." 30 We are unaware ofany group who holds this view. While those who accept the thesis of The BellCurve might accept the "inevitability" clause of the report’sstatement, they also accept tests. Conversely, the arguments against testingare much more complex than the straw man that "there is an inevitabilityto the results" allows.
Missing Data
The previous sections have described problemswith data that are in the report. Equally important, though, are data that aremissing.
- Longitudinal data. Most of the schools in the study do not extend beyond grade 6. The children have thus completed only half of their schooling. What happens after grade six? One looks in vain for data. There are a couple of testimonials. In the section on the one high school in the study there is reference to sending students on to prestigious colleges, but, as noted earlier, this school is selecting high-achieving, or at least, very highly motivated, students at least as much as producing them. In addition, despite recent anti-affirmative action decisions, high-scoring minority students are likely to be in demand at colleges and universities.
The ChristianScience Monitor profile of Wesley Elementary in Houston that Thaddeus Lott,the original principal, is having difficulty replicating his success at themiddle school he now administers.31 One would think that someonelike Lott or Marva Collins in Chicago would have collected testimonials fromalumni. They have been in business since the 1970’s and thus would have hadample opportunity to obtain such tributes.
2. Specification of test data.Although the tests involved are mostly the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, thenorming dates are not given. Chicago Public Schools is still using 1988 normswhich, in and of itself, could produce inflated scores.
3. Specificationof poverty data. It is not clear where the report’s poverty figures comefrom. Moreover poor neighborhoods are not all alike: those composed ofsingle-family homes may have far less crime, drugs and violence than thosecomposed of high-rise housing projects. According to a Chicago teacher, povertydata are typically determined by the number of free lunch forms that the schoolcollects and forwards to a regional office. These data are not audited,however, and can yield statistical anomalies that make them difficult to use indrawing general inferences. This same teacher reports that his own school’spoverty rate was 95 percent, in a neighborhood where the median price of asingle-family dwelling was more than $200,000.32
4. Specification of funding.The report does not provide a systematic looking at funding sources or amountsacross the schools, and omits some references to the private sector, as notedpreviously.
5. Specificationof staffing. No information is given on staff education or experiencelevels except in passing. For instance, it is reported that the Healthy Startschool in Durham deliberately does not hire certified teachers. Other than thiskind of anecdotal report, no descriptions of teacher characteristics appear.
Conclusion
No Excuses provides little information that might be used in anysystematic attempt to improve the education of children in poverty areas. Ithas located exceptional principals who apparently hire exceptional teachers andwork them very hard. While these might indeed be the kinds of people needed tocreate success, there is little reason to expect them to show up in greatnumbers. Indeed, some of the principals in the report’s schools state firmlydeveloping such personnel would be an enormous effort.
No Excuses begins by stating that it is not formal research andthen acting precisely as if it is. Even accepting the disclaimer at the beginning,one wonders why it was published. With its reliance on anecdote and an absencequantifiable data, it would seem unlikely to be accepted as a dissertation at auniversity or accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
The unavoidable question, then, is why theHeritage Foundation chose to publish and publicize such an unfortunately flawedreport -- one that could cost the Foundation credibility and contribute to aperception that it is an unreliable source of information about data bearing onsocial issues.
One possibility, of course, is that Heritagemade a commitment to put the work in play and is now stuck with that. Equallyplausible, however, is the interpretation that the Foundation uncriticallyembraced the research because it supported its ideological position and eitherignored, or presumed the public would not notice, the flaws in its analysis. Itis quite possible that the Foundation has decided that rather rely ontraditional forms of propaganda, it is better to hide flawed data under themantle of "research," preferably with a big publicity push.
The Foundation may also have reasoned thatreactions to the document would have less impact than the document itself,simply because it appeared first. There was bound to be some time-lag betweenthe appearance of No Excuses and any deconstruction of the report.
Finally, the report offers no real solutionor means to a solution for the tens of thousands of schools that it purportedlywishes to assist. In the Forward, Adam Meyerson, Vice President for EducationalAffairs for the Heritage Foundation, states baldly: "Most principals ofhigh-poverty schools do not come close to the standard set by No Excusesprincipals. They should be replaced." 33 Given that the reportlocated only 21 "No Excuses" principals, the question would have tobe, "By whom?"
Contributors
Bruce Biddle
Gerald W. Bracey
Endnotes
1. Carter, SamuelCasey, No Excuses: Lessons from 21 High-Performing, High-Poverty Schools.Washington, D.C., The Heritage Foundation, 2000
2. Ibid., pp. 8-11
3. Ibid., p. 115
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid. , p. 116
6. Carter, No Excuses, p. 86
7. Chaddock, Gail, "‘No Excuses’ Is theMotto at this Urban Texas Start," Christian Science Monitor, April6, 1999.
8. Ibid.
9. Carter, No Excuses, p. 20
10. Ibid., p. 95
11. American Legislative Exchange Council, ReportCard on American Education, Washington, DC, 2000., p. 50
12. Carter, No Excuses, p. 47
13. Ibid., p. 58
14. Personal communication, Marva CollinsSchool, May 2000
15. Johnson Controlspress release, available at:http://www.theautochannel.com:8080/news/press/date/19980924/press017492.html
16. Carter, No Excuses, p. 65
17. Ibid., p. 71
18. Ibid., p. 86
19. Ibid., p. 88
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid., p. 31
22. Ibid., p. 32
23. Ibid., p. 53
24. Ibid., p. 17
25. Meier, Deborah, "ReinventingTeaching," Teachers College Record, Summer 1992
26. Carter, No Excuses, p. 81
27. Ibid., p. 82
28. Ibid., p. 83
29. Rothstein,Richard, Martin Carnoy and Luis Benveniste (1999) Can Public Schools LearnFrom Private Schools? Case Studies in the Public and Private Sectors. Washington,DC: Economic Policy Institute.
30. Carter, No Excuses, p. 23
31. Chaddock, Gail, "‘No Excuses’ Is theMotto at this Urban Texas Start," Christian Science Monitor, April6, 1999.
32. Personal Communication, George Schmidt,former teacher, Chicago Public Schools, May 2000
33. Carter, No Excuses, p. 4