B2 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, AUGUST 5 , 2019
schoolers who needed better
classroom habits right away now
have elementary schools to
establish learning routines.
In general, no-excuses has
become a term loaded with out-
of-date stereotypes. “Our schools’
aim is to connect potential with
opportunity and to encourage
students to develop their best
thinking,” Pinto said.
Golann and Debs acknowledge
that the schools have added
restorative justice and made
other adjustments. “We are
encouraged by the public self-
criticism and reevaluation
happening in these networks,”
Golann told me, although she
said she thinks there has been
less change than I do.
Simplistic labels can obscure
important improvements.
Innovations in both regular and
charter schools, such as the
growth of research writing,
aren’t e ven part of the no-excuses
debate. BASIS and IDEA charters
have made college-level
Advanced Placement their basic
curriculums. That goes far
beyond what most of the five
networks have done.
Golann and Debs made their
own contribution to fresh
thinking by showing in their
article what is happening in
Montessori schools, a century-
old approach reborn. No-excuses
is so 20th century. L et’s talk
about something new.
[email protected]synonyms for that word include
“extreme” and “harsh.”) It is
difficult to see how listening in
class, doing homework and being
polite fit that adjective. “Our
expectation is that given the
same chance of a high-quality
education as their more affluent
peers, our students can and do
succeed at the same high levels,”
said Barbara Martinez,
spokeswoman for Uncommon
Schools.
Punishing violators with
demerits, detentions and
suspensions: KIPP spokeswoman
Maria Alcon-Heraux said “after
much research combined with
student and family feedback,” her
network has discontinued most
of the rewards and
repercussions. Like other
networks, KIPP has introduced
restorative justice for student
misbehavior. Students and
educators sit down to sort out
what happened.
The networks say the word
“punish” is also misleading.
“Every school, every classroom,
every teacher has consequences
when students do things they
shouldn’t. It’s silly to say this is a
charter school move,” Martinez
said.
Even within the same network,
different schools have evolved in
different ways. Some may stick to
old ways, but the trend away
from strict rules has been evident
for many years. Networks that
once started with middle-halls in single-file lines: That is
no longer the rule in these
networks. “Not all transitions are
silent across all our schools,”
Achievement First spokeswoman
Amanda Pinto said. Angela
Rodriguez, spokeswoman for
YES Prep, said, “We expect
students to connect and socialize
with teachers and peers during
class transitions.”
Rewarding with privileges
those who follow stringent
expectations: The five networks
say their expectations aren’t
“stringent.” (Dictionaryhands folded on the table and
eyes continuously on the teacher:
Those were the rules when I
started visiting KIPP schools in
2001, but no longer. All five
networks have moved toward
more student interaction. Kids
are supposed to focus on
whoever is talking, teacher or
not. Success Academy
spokeswoman Ann Powell said
its elementary schools have rug
spots, where students sit not in
straight rows but crisscross so
they can see one another.
Walking silently through theexpectations are rewarded with
privileges, while violators are
punished with demerits,
detentions, and suspensions.”
Do no-excuses schools still
look like that? I found the
following.
Students wearing uniforms:
That continues to be the rule. It is
not unusual. Many private
schools have uniforms. Twenty-
one percent of public schools
require them. Charters, no-
excuses or otherwise, constitute
only 6 percent of public schools.
Sitting straight in class withEducation
scholars Joanne
Golann and Mira
Debs recently
attempted to
define the
important term
“no-excuses
schools” in an
online Education Week
commentary. They got the
common view of those
controversial institutions right.
But the no-excuses model was
born two decades ago. Are the
schools now what they were
then? Education debates should
not depend on what was
happening in the 1990s.
Golann, at Vanderbilt
University, and Debs, at Yale
University, listed five networks:
KIPP, Uncommon Schools,
Success Academy, YES Prep and
Achievement First. They are
good examples of the no-excuses
species. All are successful charter
school groups with mostly
students from impoverished
areas, college-prep curriculums
and longer school days.
Here are, according to the
scholars, the qualities they share:
“No-excuses students are
typically required to wear
uniforms, sit straight, with their
hands folded on the table, and
their eyes continuously on the
teacher. At breaks, they walk
silently through the halls in
single-file lines. Students who
follow these stringent
educ ation
Charter schools make no apologies for the evolution of the ‘no-excuses’ approach
Jay
Mathews
BY JON MARCUSnew york — The quiet of the
summer seemed a good time for
at least one new enrollee to come
fill out his paperwork for the
master’s program in public ad-
ministration at Baruch College,
part of the City University of New
York.
Except for the backpack he was
wearing, it would have been hard
to pick him out as a graduate
student. Like many Americans
who go to graduate school, he
works full time and will attend
Baruch part time for the next
three years in hopes of improving
his career prospects. He’ll pay for
it himself with student loans.
That’s w hy h e was so perturbed
to learn that, on top of the tuition
he has already budgeted for, he’ll
have to pay the university a
$1,000-a-year “academic excel-
lence fee.” He’s lucky it’s only that
much. In one department at Ba-
ruch, this fee is $2,000 a year; in
another, $8,000.
The student, who spoke on the
condition of anonymity because
of fear of retribution from admin-
istrators for discussing it, said he
didn’t plan for that additional
cost.
“This is not cheap,” he said
outside the university’s Informa-
tion and Te chnology Building.
“It’s like when you’re an under-
graduate,” he said, rattling off all
the fees he paid then. “Technol-
ogy fee. Transportation fee. Stu-
dent activity fee. There’s, like, five
other fees that all have weird
names. You’re already paying for
these services. It’s just another
way of charging extra.”
If undergraduates are tired of
these fees, graduate students are
incensed — and are starting to
push back. This is especially true
among the many who were prom-
ised free tuition and small sti-
pends to work as teaching or
research assistants but have been
surprised to find they have to pay
thousands of dollars in fees with
euphemistic names and indeter-
minate purposes. Some of these
students, who help teach under-
grads and supply labor in campus
labs, are taking out loans just to
pay the fees.
And although there remains
reluctance among graduate stu-
dents like the one at Baruch to
jeopardize their standing by
speaking out, others are trans-
forming their anger into strikes
and protests. A handful of faculty
are taking up their cause.
The total amount of fees
charged by universities and col-
leges more than doubled in the 15
years ending in 2017, the last
period for which the figure is
available, even when adjusted for
inflation. That’s up faster than
tuition, which rose about 80 per-
cent during that time, according
to one of the few analyses of this
little-reported part of college
costs, by Seton Hall University
education professor Robert
Kelchen.
There’s no comprehensive
breakdown of graduate student
fees alone, but many institutions
have increased them. One study
of fees paid by graduate students
at t op research institutions found
they’re $4,653 a year at L ouisiana
State University, $3,622 at North
Carolina State University and
$3,160 at the University of Te n-
nessee.
Baruch did not initially ex-
plain, despite being asked repeat-
edly over five weeks, the purpose
of its “academic excellence fee.”
School spokeswoman Suzanne
Bronski provided a statement
saying that all fees are disclosed
on the website and that an “over-
whelming majority” of similar
institutions also charge them.
Bronski later said the fee paid for
graduate faculty, advisers and ca-
reer services.Figures disclosed in response
to a public records request show
that the school collected
$8.8 million from graduate stu-
dent fees in the academic year
just ended, on top of the
$29.8 million in graduate tuition
it charged.
Many fees similar to Baruch’s
were added during the Great Re-
cession by public universities
when state funding was cut. In-
stead of being phased out as the
economy recovered, the fees have
steadily increased.
The University System of Geor-
gia Board of Regents imposed a
“special institutional fee” of $
a semester as a “temporary meas-
ure” t o make up for state cutbacks
in 2009. It’s s till there, and is up to
$344 a semester for graduate
students, part of a slate of fees
that add up to $1,012 per semes-
ter.
“It may not seem like a lot, but
when you’re making [a stipend
of ] $25,000 and working in a
major city, it’s a major problem,”
said Joshua Weitz, a professor of
biological sciences at the Georgia
Institute of Te chnology.
Weitz depends on graduateteaching and research assistants
and has become a critic of these
fees.
“We would expect that we
wouldn’t be making them pay a
fee to do the work we want them
to do,” he said.
Te rri Dunbar, a doctoral stu-
dent and teaching fellow in psy-
chology at Georgia Te ch, estimat-
ed her fees to be about $4,000 a
year, including for the summer,
when she stays on campus. Un-
able to cover those from her
$20,000-a-year stipend while liv-
ing in Atlanta, Dunbar said, she
has borrowed about $20,000 to
pay them.
It’s not unusual for fees to suck
up large proportions of the gener-
ally small stipends paid to gradu-
ate teaching and research assis-
tants, said Jon Bomar, an officer
of the National Association of
Graduate-Professional Students
and a doctoral candidate in bio-
medical engineering at the Uni-
versity of Maine.
“Taking another 10 or 20 per-
cent out of that, that has a huge
impact on students,” Bomar said.
Universities charge vaguely
branded fees, he said, because“it’s a way to raise the cost of
education without having to
make that very publicly accessi-
ble.” Many graduate students
don’t realize they have to pay
these fees until they have accept-
ed an appointment, because ap-
pointment often offers promise
that tuition will be waived with-
out mentioning the fees, and
some university websites make a
puzzle out of finding them.
“I don’t think it’s inaccurate to
say they’re hidden fees,” Bomar
said.
Ye t as angry as they are, “a lot of
grad students get scared that
they’ll get kicked out of their labs
if they speak out” about this,
Dunbar said.
That’s beginning to change.
More than 1,500 graduate teach-
ing and research assistants at the
University of Illinois at Chicago
went on strike in March, partly
over increases in the fees they were
being charged while making wages
that started at $18,000 a year. The
students won a slight bump in pay
and reduced fees.
Graduate students at the Uni-
versity of Colorado at Boulder
have held repeated demonstra-tions against fees that come to
$2,088 a year for law students
and $1,732 for other graduate
students. They’ve had some suc-
cess, too: A task force set up in
response to the protests recom-
mended that mandatory fees be
dropped for graduate students
who teach and do research — over
time, and assuming funding be-
comes available.
The University of North Caro-
lina at Chapel Hill, where gradu-
ate students pay $2,035 a year in
fees, has announced that “some,
but not all” mandatory fees will
be eased “in most cases,” begin-
ning in the fall, for graduate
students who also teach and do
research. But that will happen
only if the students’ departments
decide to subsidize the fees on
their behalf, or if the grants that
subsidize the students’ work can
be used to pay the fees. A spokes-
woman said there was no way of
estimating how many students
would benefit, and to what ex-
tent.
The University of Colorado at
Boulder graduate students said
the mandatory fees they pay con-
sume nearly 10 cents of every
dollar of the $22,000-a-year sti-
pends they receive for teaching
and conducting research. “It’s
pretty absurd to have to pay to do
your job,” s aid Alex Wolf-Root, an
organizer for the graduate stu-
dent union.
The University of Colorado
task force report gave a rare
glimpse into why universities are
quick to add and reluctant to
reduce fees. On that campus, it
said, every $13 reduction in un-
dergraduate and graduate fees
would cost $1 million.
At the University of Colorado,
there’s no timeline to respond to
the task force’s proposal, a
spokeswoman said, which the
task force estimated would cost
the university an estimated
$3.3 million a year.
Weitz, at Georgia Te ch, said
fees on graduate teaching and
research assistants “may make
sense as a way to raise revenues,
but they create a strange disin-
centive and penalize a class of
workers who are at the very low-
est end of the salary range.”
Graduate students are “a core
engine of research and discovery,”
he said. “By imposing these fees,
we’re limiting our talent pool.”
[email protected]Th is article about graduate students
was produced by the Hechinger
Report, a nonprofit, independent
news organization focused on
inequality and innovation in
education. Sign up for our higher
education newsletter.Grad students push back against costly fees
Promised free tuition and work stipends, they have been surprised to learn that they have to pay thousands of dollars toward nebulous expenses
ANDREW LICHTENSTEIN/CORBIS/GETTY IMAGES
Students at the New School in New York protest increasing tuition and fees in May. Some grad students are taking out loans to pay fees,
and while there is no comprehensive breakdown of graduate student fees, many institutions have increased them.ASTRID RIECKEN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
A KIPP DC charter school in Washington. KIPP, Uncommon Schools, Success Academy, YES Prep and
Achievement First are five charter school networks that adhere to the “no-excuses” education model.Not a PostPoints member yet?
It’s free. Sign up and get rewarded.
washingtonpost.com/postpointsTHE DAILY QUIZ MEMBER EXCLUSIVES DID YOU KNOW?EARN 5 POINTS: Find the answer, and then go to
washingtonpost.com/postpoints, Quizzes to enter the
correct response.Good for the Soul: Free Tickets to Algebra
Blessett on August 17 at City Winery
The Grammy-winning artist delivers a fresh, expansive creative vision on second
album Recovery. There are no gimmicks here, just timelessly soulful and accessible
music. “It’s a poised and unhurried work on which every crisp detail has been
thought through.” (TheGuardian.com) “Thisalbum definitelydeserves 5 starsout
of 5.” (SoulSavviness.com) See details at washingtonpost.com/postpoints, Events
& Contests.No Joke: Free Tickets to Comic Russell Peters on
August 17 at The Theater at MGM National Harbor
The funnyman – one of the highest earning comics in the U.S – has sold out
arenas from Madison Square Garden to the Sydney Opera House. He has
performed on Jay Leno and Jimmy Kimmel Live. “There’s a saying that it takes
someone truly special to turn a story into something truly amazing – Russell
Peters has certainly honed it into an art.” (Bakchormeeboy.com) See details at
washingtonpost.com/postpoints, Events & Contests.PostPoints members can enter for the
chance to win a pair of tickets to Tyler
Hilton on August 18 at City Winery.
Hilton starred alongside Taylor Swift in
which of her music videos?
(Hint: Sign in to your account for the answer.)