APM Presents: No Excuses: Race and Reckoning at a Chicago Charter School

Producer DJ Cashmere, who is white, spent seven years teaching Black and brown students at a Noble Street charter high school in Chicago. Noble followed a popular education reform model called "no excuses," which promised low-income students better test scores and increased access to college in exchange for hyper-strict discipline. After DJ left the classroom to become a journalist, Noble disavowed "no excuses," calling it "assimilationist, patriarchal, white supremacist, and anti-black."