Conceptualizing educational inequality as equivalent to the “achievement gap” has fueled the expansion of no-excuses charters, which purport to raise test scores and thereby equalize opportunities for low-income students of color. In contrast, I argue that the individual provision of opportunity is inadequate to address the structural inequalities that create differential achievement, and thus that no-excuses schools cannot be assessed using test scores alone. This ethnographic study examines how no-excuses classroom management shapes students’ development as citizens. My findings suggest that no-excuses classroom management is not a supportive structure that enables academic achievement, but a restrictive and often unfair system that reinforces compliance to institutional authority. I contend that the consequences of this system are more likely to perpetuate than to ameliorate inequality.

This article considers how youth participatory action research (YPAR) can be used to build the civic teaching capacities of preservice teachers working in urban settings. In the final semester of an urban-focused teacher education program, preservice teachers led YPAR programs in the urban schools in which they student-taught the previous semester. This article analyzes what preservice teachers learn through the process of YPAR. Specifically, we found that YPAR supported teacher learning in three areas: cultivating student-centered teaching practices, observing and documenting students’ strengths and capacities, and developing new understandings of the structural inequalities that shaped the lives of the students in urban schools. Drawing on data collected over the past 6 years, we argue that leading children and young people in participatory action research projects can contribute to the creation of the transformative civic educators so sorely needed in urban settings.

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