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A Narrative Inquiry of Charter School Social Work 
and the “No Excuses” Behavior Model

Allison Balogh

Neoliberal education reform has resulted in a growing number of  charter schools 
across the country, many of  which are concentrated in low-income communities of  
color (Kahlenberg & Potter, 2014). Charter schools serving these demographics 
often practice a “no excuses” pedagogy featuring two components: (1) universal, 
precise behavioral expectations and (2) systematic rewards for compliance 
and penalties for disobedience (Golan, 2015; Goodman, 2013; Whitman, 
2008). This article examines overlooked consequences of  the “no excuses” 
model by presenting a narrative inquiry involving 3 social workers from 
charter schools in Harlem, New York. Individual, semi-structured interviews 
were conducted about professional background, roles and responsibilities, the 
school community, and the political context of  charter schools. The collective 
narrative that emerged from this framework describes how participants have 
met their concern that a “no excuses” model creates traumatic or unsupportive 
environments for marginalized students with evidence-based advocacy. This 
article serves to foster the community of  charter school social workers who wish 
to critique the “no excuses” model within their schools and on a broader scale.

Neoliberal Education Reform and Narrative Inquiry

Publicly funded, privately managed charter schools have become a 
major tool of  neoliberal education reform, the system of  market-based 

policies that have increasingly governed America’s public schools in the past 
several decades (Kahlenberg & Potter, 2014). Shiller (2011) argues that the 
relationship between charter schools and the marketplace is twofold: They 
explicitly aim to prepare students for the workforce, and they model their 
structure on the market itself. In this system, schools are commodities that 
rely on academic data to prove themselves a worthy choice for parents to send 
their children. Neoliberal reform’s data-driven, academic-focused climate has 
privileged the voices of  educators, policy makers, and business leaders, while 
devaluing contributions from school social workers. 

Narrative inquiry, the process of  collecting and presenting the meaning 
of  personal experiences within a body of  research (Schwandt, 2007), is a 
promising methodology for incorporating social workers’ perspectives into 
the conversation about charter schools. Connelly and Clandinin (1990) argue 
that narrative inquiry is frequently used in educational research because 

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© 2016 Balogh. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits the user to copy, distribute, and transmit the work provided that the original author(s) and source are credited.

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educational phenomena are constructed by the personal stories of  learners, 
teachers, and researchers. Narrative researchers often shape their reports’ 
underlying structures around participants’ life experiences, as opposed 
to a traditional literature review or theoretical paradigm (Wiebe, 2009). 
By leaving the organization and representation of  personal stories to the 
researcher, narrative inquiry capitalizes on their complex, nonlinear, and 
often contradictory nature (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). School social work, 
carried out through interpersonal relationships that inherently share these 
characteristics, is particularly suited for narrative study.

Recruitment
Convenience sampling was used to recruit social workers from 3 charter 

schools in Harlem, New York, which houses almost 70 percent of  charter 
schools in Manhattan (New York City Charter School Center, 2015). A 
Columbia-affiliated third party facilitated the recruitment of  two participants, 
whose schools will be referred to as Metro Institute and Keystone Prep. The 
researcher independently recruited a third participant, whose school will 
be referred to as Character Academy. Because of  logistical constraints and 
an initial open-ended framework—which did not call for saturation—data 
collection concluded after three interviews.

Methodology
At the beginning of  each individual interview, social workers were asked 

to address four topics: professional background, professional roles and 
responsibilities, the relationship between their school and the community, 
and the political context of  charter schools. The terms “community” and 
“political context” were left open to each social worker’s interpretation 
to foster a degree of  collaboration between researcher and participant 
characteristic of  narrative inquiry (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990). The 
rationale for this structure drew from studies about the diverse roles school 
social workers embody, including clinician, advocate, and policy practitioner, 
as well as their responsibility to employ an ecological perspective (Constable, 
2009; Monkman, 2009).

The Collective Narrative on “No Excuses”
The primary narrative that emerged from this framework describes each 

participant’s ethical conflict and call to action regarding school practices 
unsupportive to students receiving counseling, those with diagnosed 
disabilities, or those who have experienced trauma. In Metro Institute and 
Character Academy, students were expected to constantly sit, speak, walk, 
or have items arranged on their desk in a specific way that reflected their 
school’s culture; otherwise they would face disciplinary action. Maintaining 

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the methodology of  narrative inquiry, this article organizes each participant’s 
stories into a collective chronology (Creswell, 2013). Before elaborating on 
individual results, it is worthwhile to contextualize these behavior models.

Aforementioned behavioral expectations reflect what the literature 
increasingly refers to as the “no excuses” pedagogy used by a subset of  

charter schools (Kahlenberg & 
Potter, 2014). “No excuses” schools 
are known for universal and precise 
behavioral expectations with a 
system of  merits for obedience 
and punishments for disobedience, 
an extended school-day and year, 
a culture of  college preparation, 
a rejection of  street culture, very 

high standardized test scores, and frequent data-driven assessment (Golan, 
2015; Goodman, 2013; Whitman, 2008). They are often concentrated in low-
income communities of  color, such as Harlem, and operate under the notion 
that poverty is “no excuse” for failing schools (Kahlenberg & Potter, 2014).

Part One: Ethical Conflict
The social workers from Metro Institute and Character Academy 

discussed their concerns that universally rigid behavioral expectations 
unconsciously perpetuate the disenfranchisement of  marginalized students, 
such as students of  color, those diagnosed with ADHD, or those who have 
experienced trauma:

Metro Institute: It sickens me sometimes to feel like we replicate something 
that can bring up something very traumatic for a student of  color or a 
student of  trauma. So if  you’re a student who has been disenfranchised, 
felt isolation, felt rejected, not necessarily felt heard for whatever outside 
reason, and you can come into this school and on some level we replicate 
that—not on a conscious level, on an unconscious level…I tend to believe 
because also we get students of  color who racially have felt a lot of  stuff, 
that even brings up even more stuff  for them…They battle this idea 
of  “I have no voice. Why do I have to sit in this damn room for eleven 
hours? Why can’t I operate this particular way?” (personal communication, 
November 4, 2015).

Character Academy: My training and practice teaches me that the way to 
support children with certain diagnoses is not aligned with those behavioral 
expectations…A lot of  the children with ADHD were repeatedly spending 
a lot more time in the dean’s office than they were in the classrooms because 
they were physically unable to meet those expectations without scaffolding 

“The primary narrative...describes 
each participant’s ethical conflict 

and call to action regarding school 
practices unsupportive to students 
receiving counseling, those with 
diagnosed disabilities, or those who 
have experienced trauma.”



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them to get there. And it was significantly impacting their self-esteem and I 
was repeatedly hearing in sessions—and ADHD is just one example—that 
they were bad and couldn’t do good (personal communication, December 
9, 2015). 

The social worker from Keystone Prep was not concerned about her 
school’s overall behavior model, which she described as progressive. However, 
she noted that, with Keystone Prep entering its first year of  standardized 
testing, recent organizational changes (e.g., a new principal and many new 
teachers) have shifted staff ’s expectations of  counseling to yield fast and 
specific behavioral results:

Things are very different this year and I feel it in counseling, when I had a 
meeting last week and [staff] were like “in two weeks we need to know the 
progress” (personal communication, November 9, 2015).

Furthermore, each social worker felt compelled to educate staff  about 
how the needs of  students in counseling, surviving trauma, or working with 
disabilities do not always align with behavioral expectations following a “no 
excuses” ideology.

Part Two: Resolution
Each participant described her process of  negotiating her role and 

advocating for students, particularly by drawing on evidence-based practices. 
For example, Keystone Prep’s social worker has chosen to continue 
counseling students the way she has in previous years, despite facing direct 
pressure from staff:

Suddenly I’m going to act different in counseling and I was like ‘no, you 
know what you’re doing and you’re very purposeful about what you’re 
doing.’ So I just do it the way I would do it and just explain to staff  it takes 
time (personal communication, November 9, 2015).

Character Academy’s social worker has taken concrete measures (e.g., 
organizing professional development and creating staff  committees on 
trauma, crisis management, and ADHD) to encourage colleagues to consider 
differentiating behavioral expectations and support. She stressed the 
importance of  presenting evidence to build a united effort among school 
leadership. Similarly, the social worker at Metro Institute stated that drawing 
on resources to educate staff  has become a major professional responsibility. 
She noted the shift in how staff  have responded after she adopted an asset-
based, skill-building model:

Having the language to articulate specific things that kids need allowed me 
to be a part of  the conversation…As I began to shift their lens through 



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conversation and getting them to try things because I was trying it, people 
bought into the fact that, “there may be some benefit to what she’s saying, 
let me try these things within my classroom” (personal communication, 
November 4, 2015).

Supported by evidence-based practices, each social worker found that 
her training in counseling and work with marginalized students provided her 
with tools to effectively challenge universal behavioral expectations within 
her school. 

Discussion and Implications
As the charter school movement expands, school social workers 

have an ethical obligation to be critical of  any practices that cause harm 
to students (National Association of  Social Workers, 2008). To be most 
effective, critiques must acknowledge the diversity among charter schools. 
In continued scholarship, researchers must remain cautious about making 
“no excuses” synonymous with “charter school”—not all charters use this 
model (Kahlenberg & Potter, 2014). There is a limitation with the sample of  
this study, drawn from charter schools already familiar to the researcher, that 
yields results relevant to mainstream neoliberal reform. 

Within this study, Metro Institute and Character Academy may be 
characterized as “no excuses” schools, while Keystone Prep is a noteworthy 
exception. Although Keystone Prep had routinely differentiated its behavioral 
expectations and disciplinary measures, it crept closer toward a “no excuses” 
mentality as state testing accountability concerns grew among staff. The 
implication of  this finding - along with the academic success of  Metro 
Institute, Character Academy, and other “no excuses” schools - suggests a 
clear link between data-driven academic accountability and rigid behavior 
models. This relationship does not exist in a vacuum, and further study of  its 
manifestation across socioeconomic and racial contexts is critical.

Proponents of  “no excuses” charters use high standardized test scores 
to argue that public schools cannot justify citing poverty or systemic racism 
as causes for failure (Kahlenberg & Potter, 2014). A data-driven environment 
makes it easy to assume that universal, unwavering high expectations serve all 
public school students equally in the face of  these traumatizing external forces. 
However, this study demonstrates that focusing on accountability data alone 
obscures the exclusion and harm done to students on the margins—those 
who accumulate disciplinary infractions for not fitting the mold believed to 
serve their best interests. The social workers from Metro Institute, Character 
Academy, and Keystone Prep illuminate that these students are often those 
with diagnosed disabilities and trauma stemming from a host of  sources, 



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most significantly poverty and racism. 
Beyond the risk to these students, the ethics of  a “no excuses” system 

even towards those who appear to benefit from it are questionable. Whitman 
(2008) argues that “no excuses” schools demonstrate paternalistic, middle-
class values, which is valid 
on the surface due to their 
rejection of  street culture and 
emphasis on college. However, 
Golann’s (2015) analysis reveals 
that interactional skills taught 
to the middle class, such as 
self-assertion, independence, 
negotiating authority, and taking initiative, are absent from “no excuses” 
schools, which instead emphasize submission to authority, rote behavior, and 
self-constraint. Golann (2015) presents the paradox that “no excuses” schools 
aim to grant working-class students access to middle-class institutions without 
cultivating the skills students will need to navigate them. When working-class 
neighborhoods are synonymous with communities of  color, as in the setting 
for this study, it becomes even more crucial to consider the extent to which a 
“no excuses” model is enabled by systemic racism. 

Among the few studies that have brought us closer to addressing these 
concerns by examining everyday life in charter schools (Carr, 2013; Golan, 
2015; Seider, 2012; Shiller, 2011), even fewer have underscored first-hand 
accounts from social workers. School social workers are not entirely spared 
from the accountability concerns that grip teachers and administrators 
when their work is expected to yield results that serve a “no excuses” 
model. However, they are additionally accountable to the ethical and moral 
obligations of  the social work profession. When they answer the call to 
uphold these ethics—like the social workers at Metro Institute, Character 
Academy, and Keystone Prep have—advocacy for students most vulnerable 
to marginalization when there are “no excuses” is possible and powerful. 

References
Carr, S. (2013). Hope against hope: Three schools, one city, and the struggle to educate America’s children. New York: 

Bloomsbury Press.
Clandinin, D., & Connelly, F (2000). Narrative inquiry: Experience and story in qualitative research. California: 

JosseyBass.
Connelly, F., & Clandinin, D. (1990). Stories of  experience and narrative inquiry. Educational Researcher 

19(5), 2–14.
Constable, R. (2009). The role of  the school social worker. In C.R. Massat, R. Constable, S. McDonald, 

& J.P. Flynn (Eds.), School social work: Practice, policy and research (pp. 3-29). Illinois: Lyceum Book, Inc.
Creswell, J. (2013). Qualitative inquiry & research design: Choosing among five approaches. Los Angeles: Sage 

“When working-class neighborhoods 
are synonymous with communities of 

color, as in the setting for this study, it 
becomes even more crucial to consider 
the extent to which a ‘no excuses’ model 
is enabled by systemic racism.”



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Publications.
Golan, J. (2015). The paradox of  success at a no-excuses school. Sociology of  Education 88(2), 103-119.
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price? Educational Researcher 42(2), 89-96.
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(pp. 3-29). Illinois: Lyceum Book, Inc.

National Association of  Social Workers. (2008). Code of  ethics of  the National Association of  Social 
Workers. Washington, DC. NASW Press. 

New York City Charter School Center. (2015). Find charter schools in New York City. Retrieved December 20, 
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Seider, S. (2012). Character compass: How powerful school culture can point students toward success. Massachusets: 
Harvard University Press.

Schwandt, T. A. (2007). The sage dictionary of  qualitative inquiry. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Shiller, J. (2011) Marketing new schools for a new century: An examination of  neoliberal school reform 

in New York City. In Kovacs, Philip E. (Ed.), The Gates Foundation and the Future of  U.S. Public Schools 
(pp. 53–79). New York: Routledge.

Whitman, D. (2008). An appeal to authority: The new paternalism in urban schools. Education Next, 8(4), 
53–58.

Wiebe, N. (2009). Miriam Toews; experience of  writing A Complicated Kindness: Implications for how writing can be 
inquiry in narrative inquiry. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of  Western Ontario. 

Allison Balogh will be graduating from Columbia School of  Social Work in May 
2016 with concentrations in Advanced Generalist Practice and Programming and 
School-Based Services. Her primary interest is in the power of  transformative 
education to inspire sustainable social change. She is currently a Youth Development 
Facilitator at the Harlem Educational Activities Fund, where she has helped students 
cultivate social-emotional skills that support academic success and personal growth.




