Immersing readers inside a “no-excuses” charter school, Scripting the Moves offers a telling window into an expanding model of urban education reform. Through interviews with students, teachers, administrators, and parents, and analysis of documents and data, Joanne Golann presents a fascinating, sometimes painful, account of how no-excuses schools use scripts to regulate students and teachers. She shows why scripts were adopted, what purposes they serve, and where they fall short. What emerges is a complicated story of the benefits of scripts, but also, their limitations in cultivating the tools students need to navigate college and other complex social institutions—tools such as flexibility, initiative, and ease with adults.

Join us for a lively conversation and Q&A session on education reform, race and discipline, and the future of charter schools.

This event is co-sponsored by the Department of Leadership, Policy, and Organizations and the Initiative for Race Research and Justice at Peabody College, Vanderbilt University.

Joanne W. Golann is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Education and an Assistant Professor of Sociology (secondary) at Vanderbilt University. Her research has been published in Sociology of Education, American Educational Research Journal, and American Behavioral Scientist, and has been featured in the New York Times, Education Week, Washington Post, Next City, The Atlantic, HuffPost, EduShyster, and The Guardian.

Jennifer Berkshire writes about education and politics for the Nation, the New Republic, the Baffler, the New York Times, and other publications. The creator and co-host of the education policy podcast “Have You Heard,” she teaches aspiring podcasters in the journalism program at Boston College and the Labor Studies program at UMass Amherst. She is the co-author, with Jack Schneider, of A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School.

Scripting the Moves Book Launch