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Still seeing schools and leaders priding themselves on policies that include the terms "No excuses / ZT" despite the abandonment of it by early adopters in face of legal issues
But aside from its moral consequences, here's why I find it fails on its own terms.
Still seeing schools and leaders priding themselves on policies that include the terms "No excuses / ZT" despite the abandonment of it by early adopters in face of legal issues
But aside from its moral consequences, here's why I find it fails on its own terms.
Most behaviour systems, if not all reiterate you have to mean what you say. Follow through. The "strictest" ones often emphasis this as though its a novel idea.
But no excuses does not mean no excuses. A child who is late due to their bus crashing, no school would punish that.
But no excuses does not mean no excuses. A child who is late due to their bus crashing, no school would punish that.
So you create this situation where you say no excuses but you do have excuses, becoming the exact thing you set out to not be.
The only difference is the excuses you accept. And the excuses you accept are based on your frame of reference.
The only difference is the excuses you accept. And the excuses you accept are based on your frame of reference.
You accept excuses based on what you believe to be acceptable, based on your experience, your values, the information you have about the child.
You are now the same as every other school except one key thing - how far past yr comfort zone you will go to understand the "excuse".
You are now the same as every other school except one key thing - how far past yr comfort zone you will go to understand the "excuse".
And other schools don't call them excuses - they call them reasons. They understand the reasons to reduce the likelihood of repetition. They gather more information about the child to do this. They are curious. They push aside their own judgement to hear the child's truth.
So a no excuses school is really a school that excuses what it already understands and punishes what it does not seek to understand. It risks bias, discrimination and embedding disadvantage because it says "if we can't see it, we aren't going to hear it either"
And the argument that it raises standards for the disadvantaged - it does not. It makes it harder for them. Through no fault of their own those children have to work harder to get to the same place as their non-disadvantaged peers, and they supposed to feel grateful for that?
If you see a disadvantage and think not acknowledging it will lead to a better outcome for the child, the logic then suggests you should be disadvantaging the rest of your children too in order to get better outcomes for them. Obviously no one would do that, so why believe it?
I hope someday soon we won't see schools excitedly expressing their no excuses ideology as a fair and aspirational policy backdrop. And I congratulate wholeheartedly those who have abandoned it, even if subtly.
