In this article in the New York Daily News, award-winning investigative journalist Juan Gonzalez examines the high suspension rates at the Harlem Success Academy charter schools of Eva Moskowitz.
Gonzalez writes:
“Success Academy, the charter school chain that boasts sky-high student scores on annual state tests, has for years used a “zero tolerance” disciplinary policy to suspend, push out, discharge or demote the very pupils who might lower those scores — children with special needs or behavior problems.
“State records and interviews with two dozen parents of Success elementary school pupils indicate the fast-growing network has failed at times to adhere to federal and state laws in disciplining special-education students.
At Harlem Success 1, the oldest school in the network, 22% of pupils got suspended at least once during the 2010-11 school year, state records show. That’s far above the 3% average for regular elementary schools in its school district.
“Four other Success schools — the only others in the network to report figures for 2010-11 — had an average 14% suspension rate.”
The kids pushed out by HSA then go to the public schools, which compare unfavorably to HSA, which got rid of them.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
No surprise. One the ways to get rid of students is to say to the parents, “We won’t put this on your child’s record if you just agree to withdraw.” I wonder how many parents have withdrawn kids and it doesn’t show up on expulsion records. Just wondering.
In related news, DNAinfo.com — what a cringeworthy name for a publication — had a story up today saying that the Success Academy is shooting for 100 more schools “in New York.” Wasn’t clear whether that meant NYC or NY state. It’d be a huge increase in either case. Also wasn’t clear whether this is a plan that Success considers fully baked or a bullet point from a “The Decade Ahead” slide at the end of the PowerPoints that Moskowitz shows potential donors.
And in unrelated news, Bill de Blasio’s now polling at 36%. The Ravitch bump?
Hi All: I as a Native New Yorker find this disgusting. I call the ones in charge that did this the pocket poopers. All the big wigs are interested in is making their money and forget the students. The parents are trying to give their children a “quality education.” Their only fault is the fell for the false promises of the BS sorry but that is the truth. That is false advertising of the worst degree. It also sounds like rather then just turn them away and suffer the consequences they just set these children up to fail. Wake up all parents as the saying goes a bargain is not a bargain the charter is not that great. Public schools are not that bad and they give more of what life holds in the future without the phony sugar coating. Thank you for your time. Have a good day.
Do you think that the students who are not suspended are better off because the suspended students are not in their classes? If so, what weight should we give to giving the non-suspended students a better education?
You underscore the point of this topic — that traditional public schools have to take everyone, but charter schools worm themselves out of the same rules. If public schools could also shut out any one of their choosing, watch their test scores zoom zoom zoom!
Further, charters are under pressure to show they they are “doing better” than the traditional public schools, so these really high “pushout” rates are rather telling. Common sense dictates they are pushing kids out with mere claims of suspend-worthy behaviors.
My comment is not about schools, but about individual students. Dr. Ravitch, among others, speaks of a positive peer effect that good students have when in the company of other good students. How much should we care that good students get a better education when they do not have poor or disruptive students in their classes?
TE Which metric are you using to measure “disruptive” and is your measure discrete or continuous? Shouting out an answer? Falling asleep? Talking to a classsmate? Are children who score low on standardized tests your definition of disruptive? Do you consider a child that requires extra assistance on a concept disruptive and negatively impacting the students who do understand the concept?
TE Which metric are you using to measure “disruptive” and is your measure discrete or continuous? Not sure what your are asking here, could you elaborate?
Shouting out an answer? Possibly if it is done repeatedly
Falling asleep? I would say no.
Talking to a classsmate? Possibly if it is done repeatedly
Are children who score low on standardized tests your definition of disruptive? No
Do you consider a child that requires extra assistance on a concept disruptive and negatively impacting the students who do understand the concept? That would depend on the frequency.
TE, you are trolling right now.
The point here is that Success Academy is held up as being able to be successful with the suspended kids.
And that’s horsefeathers.
Eve doesn’t know how to educate them. She has them kicked out.
For all the talk they give about the “sh*tty” education poor kids get (Michelle Rhee’s word), they don’t know what to do.
As for who going to speak up for the Anne Marie Deacons, reformer Mike Petrilli is going down the road you are that there ought to be schools for the parents who give a damn.
No, not a troll, but an uncomfortable question. The accusation is that these schools only have serious students. Do students gain from being surrounded by other serious students? If so, should we simply ignore this?
Perhaps you have an answer to these two questions. I would be interested to hear what the answer might be,
TE,
Why not supply some answers rather than generating questions?
Because I don’t know the answers.
One poster in another thread suggested that it is impossible for public education to provide a better education for all. That poster may be correct.
When my son, now 29, was in the first grade, he was the youngest kid d in the class, but he was a good student and mature little boy. His class was made up of mostly low functioning students. I was asked if I would like to move him to the other first grade class, but the teacher said to me that the other kids needed him to be there. I decided that there were things he could learn by helping others that he’d never achieve elsewhere. He learned compassion, confidence, tolerance, and how to teach others. It helped to mold him as a person. He always excelled in school and college. I don’t think it harmed him to be taught among those who were less academically adept than he was. And, he did help them and continues to help others, particularly those of other cultures.
It is always difficult to asses the counter factual, especially about decisions that a parent makes about their children. Dr. Ravitch holds the opinion that there are positive peer effects on students, and I agree with her about that.
TE’s point is one that can’t be addressed – simply because of the fact that we can’t move to an alternate reality where a child was in one class of low performers and in a class of high performers and then we saw how they benefitted.
Now, research has shown consistently that high performing students advance the most academically in environments of other high performing students.
That being said, there is equally compelling evidence that low performing students also benefit from having high performing students in their classrooms.
So, in education school, they teach you about the typical argument for/against homogeneous grouping of students by ability and heterogeneous grouping. My school taught me to prefer heterogeneous (my theory behind that being that if you want to be a teacher in a high poverty system, you better advocate for the system that will bring the most kids up to the minimum rather than push the kids at the highest end).
I do however, favor heterogeneous groupings because it is demonstrable over and over again that if you put too many low performing students together, none of them advance (or at least they slow each other down). While on some academic measures high performing students might benefit more if they were all segregated, that’s not the society they will live in. They can be leaders in their low performing classrooms so long as we don’t put SO many low performing students in there that it becomes impossible for the environment to be one of achievement (we’ve all heard the arguments about learning not being cool, reading is for nerds etc.).
I don’t want a system that segregates students early, dooms many of them to low achievement and pushes only the select few ahead. There are areas where homogeneous grouping makes sense (like AP courses where someone couldn’t handle the content). At the lower levels though, the “negative” to a student’s personal growth is much lower than what they bring to their community, and besides, it’s not like they won’t learn enough in that classroom either. They just may not be *as* far ahead as they might have been – but they’ll still be successful.
It seems to me that you are directly addressing my questions. Strong students do benefit from being in classes with other strong students, but we as a society are more concerned with the benefits to weaker students so we can “bring the most kids up to the minimum rather than push the kids at the highest end”. The laudable goal of this blog, to “discuss better education FOR ALL” may not be obtainable.
I do think that strong students quickly learn that they must choose between having a rich social life and being obviously intellectually driven, so I am more concerned about “learning not being cool”,
TE said, “Because I don’t know the answers.”
TE, have you tried?
Yes. Having meaningful conversations here is part of that process.
TE,
Just by mainly asking questions?
No, also engaging in meaningful conversations when the opportunity arises.
So, why do some people continue to ask off-topic questions that don’t address what is trying to be changed? What is the purpose? It feels like it does when my dog wants to chase a squirrel. Yeh, the squirrel is there, but we are outside to go pottie. So what?
Sure there are things that impact these decisions about schools that have broader implications in our society as a whole. I don’t think this blog is going to “fix society”. As long as there is this over-hanging “question” about what we should do for the advantaged and bright as being the “issue of the day” we won’t make any progress in solving the real problem.
It seems to me that we have been trying to get to the point of the disingenuous behavior and practices of this “corporate reform movement” or whatever we want to call it. The end result is that schools which were presumably formed to HELP even the playing field are doing nothing of the sort. These schools have modest results at best, with some exceptions.
The point is … as our society continues to allow corporate takeover of every facet of our lives, we will become powerless. If public schools, which allow diverse thought are phased out, in essence, we will have a bunch of private/charter schools that teach some dogma or religion or free market or America is for the privileged … schools. The students that they are PRETENDING to be concerned about will be kicked out into the streets. Gee, that is a great improvement, isn’t it?
On Fri, Aug 30, 2013 at 8:57 AM, Diane Ravitch’s blog wrote:
> ** > teachingeconomist commented: “No, also engaging in meaningful > conversations when the opportunity arises.” >
It seems to me that we are trying to discuss a better education for all.
In a post concerning the skimming of students by a school, a discussion of the impact of skimming on the students seems perfectly relevant and indeed rather important.
It is just that there are different opinions as to what “all” means. If it is going to be discussed in the realm of public education, there are already basically “private” school districts, set off by wealth, in many places. There is no need for a study of how effective the education is.
The problem seems to be with those who are disadvantage, who are SUPPOSEDLY being helped by this privatization movement, which, they will be kicked out of for not adhering to strict modes of behavior, learning, and participation. Because they are “private” that is their “right” … but they are not HELPING those who need help.
I am personally not too worried about those who already have advantages or those whose parents are helicopter parents hovering over schools like superior beings. For all I care, they can take their kids wherever they want. They don’t care about anyone but their own kids. And, they can do whatever they can afford to do.
To constantly veer off the topic of using public money to finance private schools (that skim the $$$ off the top) and don’t provide better educational SOLUTIONS for those who are BEHIND for whatever reason (poverty, disability, lack of parental support, etc.)
If these schools are so SUPERIOR, then why can’t they “do what they do” with ALL students, not be “selective” and why can’t they be held to the same (ridiculous) “standards” that public schools must adhere to?
The skewing of the conversation seems to be as ridiculous as talking about providing relief for the victims of Hurricane Sandy and making sure that those in the area adjacent to it, but not harmed by it, receive attention to. It is absurd to say the least to take that route.
So, in this blog, the intent is to right a wrong done to and in behalf of a group of people who continue to be disenfranchised. Kids cannot “help” the conditions into which they were born. But, this discussion continues … with taxes, with schools, with jobs … and with those who want to segregate groups of people rather than to figure out a way to bring those in need UP. Hand-outs from charitable organizations help on a day to day but not a long term basis. If our society continues to view some people as “more worthy” than the rest or if some people want the “best” for their kids at the expense of all the rest, then we will lose the fight for equality.
No, it isn’t perfect. Nothing is. But, selfishness on the part of those who are already successful in a monetary sense doesn’t change things.
And, jobs for those who are “college and career” ready would be really nice.
He’s not really trolling this time, Ed, but I think you’ve fallen into “teaching economist’s” mind-trap with him. He asks,
“Do you think that the students who are not suspended are better off because the suspended students are not in their classes?”
No. Does anybody else ever notice how a culture that relies on enforced compliance hurts all children, and corrupts the adults trying to teach them? How about it, other teachers who actually launched a year this week?
In my own case, I’ll see about 120 children reach the age of sixteen this year, and I’ve just met 60 of them. I’ll be spending 80 minutes a day with this group till February of 2014. Miraculously, my class sizes are good.
Boys are drastically under represented in honors sections, and one of my missions is always to catch them (and girls, too) in my college prep sections and use chemistry to move them back up, in time for next year’s science offering: physics. So sure enough, a boy came into my room Tuesday struggling to control the emotional load behind his request. He asked, “I got A’s and B’s last year, and I should have gotten into honors. Can you move me?”
I promised him I would do that if possible, then sat him in his group. I demonstrated the ion flame tests for copper chloride and lithium chloride, then copper nitrate and lithium nitrate. We talked about how names of compounds work. I put up the list of the compounds in next weeks lab, and asked them to discuss it, and each write a hypothesis about whether they would be able to identify them by their flame colors. Half way through, that student came up and said, “I changed my mind. I want to stay in this class.”
By contrast: faced with the very same lesson, many students in both honors sections turned very apprehensive. We have to turn this in with the lab? (It’s a complicated answer: the color comes from the metal partner, not the non-metal, so what you have is a good chance of partly identifying them). “Your hypothesis is good for 5 points, whether it’s right or not”, but no amount of reassurance about grades could calm their queasiness.
I asked one honors class, “How many of you think your parents will put you up for adoption if you make a C in this class?” Over half the hands rise. Laughter. “How many of you own the ground you stand on?”
A few hands go up. Not the same ones, but it isn’t too late to remedy that, is it? Are any of them really well served educationally by getting “losers” out of their classes?
Good demonstration of the debilitation when grade anxiety supersedes curiosity. But he doesn’t “own” the ground he stands on just because it’s a public school. He doesn’t own anything except his own body. Granted he should treat it better by not stressing it over grades. He doesn’t have a “right” to anything in that room, certainly not a right to access to you. The only real rights any of us have are rights not to be hindered. Granted uber testing does hinder development of what’s worth while. I wish education were air, and that we all had a right to clean air, but his good luck in finding you isn’t a right, unless the society MAKES it a right by investing in putting humane chem teachers in every chem lab in the country. But once in, he does have a right not to be impeded in his questioning by unserious, unruly boys. Suspend them and eject them. No excuses. Their civic duty, at which they fall short, is not to impede the learning of others.
I’m missing something in your post. What is it? Is “honors” higher than “college prep.” what’s the point about owning the ground one stands on?
I am not sure how your story about grade anxiety is evidence that the students who are grouped together in a school do not gain if weaker and disruptive students are not allowed to continue in the school.
I don’t know what point this post was trying to make, but I liked it anyway.
Eva blames the students and doesn’t accept responsibility.
After reading about Eva’s excuses, Eva is all about Eva. She mandates her methods of student compliance for the purpose of protecting the adults employed by “success.” It’s clear – employees of Eva’s charter schools don’t have the skills and training needed to redirect student behavior.
Eva is all about student compliance – not learning. She’s a charter profiteer and collects the salary of the 1% for five charter schools. It’s important for parents to know that she’s protected by Klein, Murdoch and Bloomberg.
Parents should withdraw their children from her charter schools. Then, tax funds to Eva will evaporate. Parents have the power to demand high quality neighborhood schools.
There’s something to be learned from the reporters at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution related to the meticulous investigation of test scores.
The only real way to deal with this is to not throw them out of school and send them onto the streets but to send moderate to severely disabled to the specialized special education schools. Unfortunately, LAUSD is planning on closing down their special education schools for the moderate to severly disabled in one year. CORE-CA is out to stop this with the parents, students and all others who care about these students who need the most help. Mainstreaming them has been already tried with their highly gifted with physical disabilities and within one week they are back because of lack of treatments and facilities.
We need to take children with emotional and learning problems and put them with highly trained people to work with the student through their problems. When you look at the alternative in place now, throw them on the streets, LAUSD had over 115,000 in 2011-12 who did not come to school everyday, to taking care of them in real time with the ongoing problem it is much better to deal with the problems at the earlier age instead of waiting for the criminal justice system to do it for a much higher cost later. This is the situation today. Sheriff Baca, L.A. County Sheriff with 18,000 prisoners in county jail, has instituted 7 hour a day education and life skills training to 40% of his prisoners currently going to 50%. Where that is instituted violence in the jails goes to almost 0 and recetivism goes way down. Longitudinal studies also show that arts education works in pre-K-12 and in the criminal justice system also. Why are we removing the best and cheapest tool for assisting in educating the whole person? CORE-CA has been assisting the California Foundation for the Arts to reintroduce arts into schools again. Where Zumba and arts are reintroduced all like it and the changes are obvious even in special education schools. There truancys went down and students to the principal went down. We need to do more help and less punishing as much of this problem is with self worth and image problems which the Arts help to solve. The California Joint Committee on Arts in Prisons has released a book with the studies. You can get one from Assemblyman Ian Calderon. I have a hard copy and went to the hearing in L.A. It was eye opening to listen to people who were in prison for up to 30 years and how the arts changed their lives forever.
Another point that may or may not have been made here is that it is NOT the goal of public schools to “kick out” the “losers” … but, it isn’t right that the public schools be stripped of all the students who are motivated.
The interesting question is if this gives the motivatedstudents a better education.
That’s not the question since Eva collects tax funds and demands a salary in the range of $400,000.00 for five schools. Let Gates, Broad and Walton fully fund her charter adventures without one cent of tax money. I’m curious about the average salary of “success” teachers who are required to push students out since they don’t have the knowledge on how to redirect behaviors.
The two thirds of the original post is about creaming of students. The original post sys nothing about anyone’s salary. Why is salary central to this thread when it is never mentioned in the original post?
Follow the tax funds. Salary is central since Eva’s tax generated salary is her own ATM. Much more than local superintendents who are responsible for tens of thousands as well as state superintendents who are responsible for millions of students.
Federal special education law and civil rights law will be up front and center very soon. Eva has explaining to do about the misuse of tax funds to educate students who SHE accepted at her charters.
Also, at what age should we give up on students? This is a K-5 school!
I don’t even know if it is possible to label a young elementary student as “motivated” or “not motivated”. My child did fine in K, but I don’t think he was necessarily “motivated”.
However, if we are going to accept that some students are motivated and some are not, then why are teachers blamed for failing schools?
The charters should be able to motivate all students if we believe the reformers narrative that teachers and traditional public schools are the problem.
It is not I that am giving up on a student. I am just asking two questions that posters her do not want to answer.
1. Do strong students gain from being in classes with other strong students?
2. If the answer to question one is yes, should we as a society ignore these gains in the hope that having strong students and weak students in the same class will help the weak students while only hurting the strong students a little?
I should ask a third question: how do we convince the parents of strong students to sacrifice the education of their children in order to improve the education of other children? I think that may be the most important question of all.
teachingeconomist,
You ask important questions. It has been my experience that many parents who choose to send their children to private or parochial schools do so not because they perceive that the curriculum or faculty are superior at those schools; indeed, public schools often attract better teachers because they pay more and offer superior benefits, and job security. Parents choose private and parochial schools because they perceive that the time and resources offered at those schools will be spent addressing their children’s education as opposed to addressing the disadvantages brought to the table by some children who attend public schools. In addition they believe that children who attend private or parochial schools will be more motivated since their families value education enough to shell out some thousands of dollars in order for their children to attend. And of course children who misbehave or are disruptive will be expelled. Is it possible that parents who choose to send their children to charter schools do so for similar reasons? This may not be kind or altruistic, but it is reality. In short, altruism ends at the cradle. Ask Barak and Michelle Obama.
It’s time the public knows what the reformers really mean when they say that charter schools do not have to follow the same guidelines as public schools. Often times I feel like giving up, and letting these reformers educate, transport, discipline, feed, counsel and test all the students. If they think they can do it better, the good luck and God speed. I think they are starting to see the reality of educating everyone.
Bruce, they don’t want to educate “everyone.” They want to pick and choose and push out the ones they don’t want. You get to educate their rejects.
Do the students who are chosen get a better education for it? If so, should society place any value on that better education?
Are you so unable to reason, or are you consciously trying to misdirect and hijack the discussion?
The points raised by Juan Gonzalez’ reporting go to the heart of what a public school is, or should be, and whether Success Academies qualify as public schools. Yet you insist on raising points that, while having abstract philosophical merit, have nothing whatsoever to do with the matter at hand.
That makes you a troll.
Michael Fiorello,
I think that teachingeconomist raises some important questions and they seem to me to be quite relevant. He seems to me to be asking a more profound question than whether or not Success Academy is creaming students or eliminating students who are so disruptive that they prevent other students from learning. Let’s say, for argument’s sake that they are and that those students then wind up in their non-charter public school counterpart and that therefore it is both unfair and inaccurate to compare the results achieved at Success and the corresponding PS. As one commenter mentioned here, if the corresponding PS could be as selective as Success they might well achieve similar or even better results. What TE seems to me to be asking is what do we do about those kids and is it good right or fair to expect kids who are capable of behaving to accept a lesser education due to the dysfunction of those children and their families no matter what school they attend?
Dr. Ravitch recently published a post about a book by John Owens entitled Confessions of a Bad Teacher. In it, Mr. Owens describes classroom situations in which it is virtually impossible for him to teach because the students are out of control. They are disruptive, disrespectful, and occasionally violent. He describes a situation in which a student punched a teacher in the face. In addition he must keep his belongings under lock and key and be constantly vigilant because otherwise the students will steal them. When he attempts to contact the student’s parents the vast majority are unreachable. Some are in prison. In some instances the parents are no longer a part of the student’s life and the kids are shuffled around between relatives. Most parents just don’t return his calls. The few who do respond are often as much at a loss as to how to mitigate their child’s behavior as Mr. Owens is. The administration at Latinate, the school where Mr. Owens teaches, offer him no support and instead insist that it is his “bad teaching” that is the issue. There are a few motivated and previously well-educated students. At one point Mr. Owens contacts the parent of one of those students and “hints” that the parent should consider removing that student from the school. Even at the more functional low income-school where Mr. Owens did his student teaching, “functional” is a relative term. Mr. Owens mentor teacher is able to maintain more control than Mr. Owens but he chooses his battles. Thus, Skittles are still being tossed and texts are still being sent during his class period. Are Skittles tossed during classes at Sidwell Friends? What do you suppose would happen to a student who punched a teacher in the face?
Of course there may be many reasons for disruptive behavior. Mr. Owens states that many of his students should have received special education services that the school neglected to provide. In addition, the school was starved for funds. There was no library, the kids had PE only twice a week and the music program consisted of some drums and noisemakers, which were shoved, in a corner. Mr. Owens contrasts this to the state of the art facilities that the school with which Latinate co-located was able to provide due to lavish funding by private donors. However, the bigger question is, even if Latinate had been able to provide all of the services, programs and facilities mentioned above, to what extent would any of this mitigate the disruptive behavior of students whose families are dysfunctional or non-existent? Should those disruptive students be allowed to ruin the education of students who come to school ready to learn? Should we expect families who wish to escape educational dysfunction, whatever the cause, to forgo that because it will negatively impact the education of the dysfunctional? To what extent can we reasonably expect schools to take the place of parents? Here’s the most loaded question. Are there kids who are doomed? Are there kids who are not educatable due to the dysfunction in their families and their communities? Could Harlan be right? Is there a point at which education is no longer a right, but a privilege extended to those who can control themselves to the extent that they do not prevent others from learning? If the answer to that question is yes, then what happens to the misbehaving kids? Will universal pre-k, universal pre-natal care, more special education services and more arts education solve the problem? What problems can schools reasonably be expected to solve? Please understand that I’m not suggesting that standardized testing and teacher bashing are the answer and I definitely prefer to see my tax dollars supporting education rather than the prison industry. Also understand that these questions are not intended to be rhetorical. I am asking. It seems like a dilemma. I don’t know what the answer is. Do you?
hrh88,
As I stated in my comment, teachingeconomist’s question has merit, but not in regard to the issue at hand, which is Moskowitz’s dishonest gaming of enrollment and statistics, and how that disqualifies Success Academies from being considered bona fide public schools.
If his doing this was an exception or occasional lapse, I wouldn’t care, but it is in fact far more common than his occasional germane comment.
As for “answers,” let’s be clear about the two distinct situations. Moskowitz and other charter-preneurs are notorious for skimming on the front end – through lotteries, pre-enrollment assessments, etc. – and on the back end, via suspensions, threats to hold students back and other forms of “counseling out.”
Rarely do you hear about the kind of disciplinary problems in charter schools Mr. Owens writes about. In fact, most charter students are removed, a la Geoffrey Canada, because they bring the test stats down, or because they can’t/won’t comply with the authoritarian, Skinner Box- style environment of Moskowitz’s sweatshops. That’s a far cry from what teachers in under-resourced, crisis-ridden public schools face.
As for Mr. Owens suggesting to a parent that he/she should consider sending their child to another school, what kind of school would that be? Why, another public school, certainly not a KIPP or SA-type charter, for whom “civility” equals obedience and docility.
In other words, those are simply not fair comparisons.
When it comes to “answers,” how are these for starters?
– a minimum wage that guarantees the ability to live a materially dignified and secure life, and a minimum income if paid labor is unavailable.
– safe, affordable housing.
– universal health insurance.
– funding for (real) public schools that guarantees every child small class size, art, music, physical education, and the supplemental services they might need.
– a tax system that can pay for these expensive services, starting with a wealth tax and a financial transactions tax.
– increased funding for higher education – which has been cut drastically over the years – so that everyone has the opportunity to enrich their lives without being subjected to a lifetime of debt.
– a reduced workload for teachers, so that they can give their students the personal attention they need and deserve.
– a reduced workload for everybody, so they have the time to enjoy the fruits that automation can theoretically provide, and not be endlessly subjected to the “labor discipline” of intimidation, insecurity and enforced overwork or enforced unemployment that so pleases our Overlords.
Readers are welcome to add to, revise or critique this list, which is necessarily incomplete.
Those are all great suggestions. But objections will come up at the words “taxes n the wealthy”. Those people don’t want anything for everyone if the person is poor for whatever reason.
It is difficult to praise or criticize theses proposals without knowing the details. On the ones impacting the labor market, for example, how high should the minimum wage be? How much should an individual or perhaps household get if work is not available? What does “unavailable” mean? What would be the maximum number of hours that someone would be allowed to work and would there be jobs or individuals who would be exempt from the limit?
The devil is often in the details.
Michael Fiorillo,
I do not argue with your contention that Moskowitz is not educating the same kids that public schools are required to educate. Nor do I take issue with your assertion that she is being dishonest in claiming that she does while accepting public funds, nor that she may employ cruel and nefarious methods to get rid of “undesirables”. And it is quite possible that charters eliminate those kids, in part, because they bring the test scores down; however there might be an additional reason that charters skim kids. Those kids who are counseled out are disruptive and they prevent the other kids from learning.
You describe public schools as being underfunded and crisis-ridden. The public schools are in crisis partly because a great number of the students who attend them lead crisis-ridden lives. Many of them don’t have functional families. Schools are not parents. Schools will never be parents. No amount of funding or social programs will make schools become parents. The kids live chaotic lives. They bring the chaos with them to school. The most functional parents don’t want for their kids to attend chaotic, dangerous schools so they try to put their kids in schools like Success because they perceive that Success is not chaotic or at least that it addresses the chaos more effectively than their local public school does. Success is less chaotic because they eliminate the chaotic kids. The chaotic kids wind up in the public schools and the functional kids go to charters. It’s a vicious cycle. Should we force kids who would otherwise be able to learn to attend chaotic schools?
Your “answers” address the under-resourced part not only for schools but also for the communities and the families of the kids in question. Unfortunately, I think that your answers are impractical. How will we pay for them? The wealth and financial tax that you suggest would not begin to cover the cost. If the wealthy are too heavily taxed, they will not hesitate to take their wealth and possibly their persons out of the country. In addition to taxing the wealthy, the middle class would also have to be heavily taxed and we would have to eliminate other expenditures. We might need to forgo much military spending. We might even have to relinquish the responsibility of being policeman for the free world. Who would assume this responsibility? The Europeans? Americans will never agree to cede their national security to another nation. The House of Representatives won’t even agree to raise tax revenues in order to address the crushing national debt. Do you really believe that they or their constituents would agree to support a tax system sufficient to support the expensive services that you suggest?
Please understand. I agree that America needs to begin to invest in education and more specifically, in its children again. Unfortunately given the economic and political realities, I don’t believe that that will happen any time soon.
hrh88,
You mention how so many public school students lead crisis-ridden lives. My suggestions, politically far-fetched as they might be, seek to ameliorate the web of crises (financial, health, housing-related, etc.) faced by poor, working class and increasingly vulnerable middle class famlies.
The funding for this – questions of political attainment aside – is achievable with a wealth tax, and in particular a financial transaction tax. Over a billion shares are traded on the NYSE alone every day; if a small tax were levied on each share traded – something that was in fact done in New York State for much of the 20th century – immense amounts of money would be generated, with the additional benefit that the tax would be a mild deterrent against speculation.
This does not even include transaction taxes for the bond market, which is far larger than the stock market, or the market for financial derivatives.
You also mention another source of funds for education: the War Budget, since I won’t dignify it b calling it a Defense Budget. By the way, you make a logical error by confusing the US’s role as “the World’s Policeman” with it’s defense. They have little to do with each other.
I have no illusions about the likelihood of creating these means of support for famlies, communities and public schools, given the aggressive class warfare being waged by our Overlords. But nor should anyone have illusions about the likelihood of so-called education reform addressing the problems faced by the public schools and their students, which is zero.
In fact, the problems in the schools are being intensified by the social vandalism that passes under the euphemism of disruptive innovation, and the profiteering Gold Rush mentality that infests the so-called reform project.
That would be good! Tax all those individual transactions that those Wall St wonks do in seconds on their computers, trading faster than any human being could do since the computers “analyze the risk” for them and do the deed. That would generate even more money.
But, no, we’d rather spend the money we have on wars.
And, my, my, we can’t “rob” those hard-working computer guys who sit there and watch the $$ roll in for their corp. Punish those who actually DO work and who do the things that make life easier for the rest. That is they way of Congress these last 5 years. Tired. Of. It.
Michael Fiorillo,
I remain skeptical that taxing the wealthy would be sufficient to properly fund the sorts of initiatives that you suggest. I quote Mr. Owens,
“Perhaps the greatest miracle of all would be America recognizing that saving our educational system will be a long-term, big budget project, similar to the way we tend to look at things like wars.”
I am doubtful that imposing a tax on financial transactions could finance something of this scope, but I would love to be wrong.
The only other area where I take issue with what you suggest is when you refer to our Overlords. To be candid, this seems somewhat facile and it relieves the rest of us, the 99% if you will, of responsibility for the current state of education in this country. Also, it implies that we are powerless to do anything about it. If there are Overlords, they are market driven. If tomorrow every American consumer would only buy clothing that was manufactured in America by American workers, Wal-Mart would sell clothing that was made in America. The Tea Party members in the House of Representatives did not descend from heaven, their constituents voted them into office. In California in 1978, Overlords did not pass Proposition 13. The voters in California did when they decided that they were no longer willing to fund public education. In 1977 the quality of education in California was ranked the best in the nation. Thirty-five years later it is among the worst. In short, “We have met the enemy and he is us”.
While I remain skeptical about American taxpayers’ ability or willingness to pay for your suggestions, I will nevertheless add two of my own. First, as Mr. Owens suggests in his book, we need to invest in special education services for children and especially for children in low-income schools. We need more teachers who are certified to teach special education, but in addition, all classroom teachers need more thorough pedagogical grounding in special education. Second, we ought to encourage and reward prospective teachers to become dually credentialed in both education and social work. With these investments we might begin to address the social, emotional, and academic challenges of our poorest students.
I doubt anyone is hostile to education per-se, but the competing pull is a grumpiness when taxes ascend above 15%. People will pay that before they begin to look for relief. Education, i.e. public education, is part of the big-government syndrome to which the tea party types are reacting, in my view justifiably. The concept of “good enough for government work” pervades the culture, and the public schools too, which can do a wonderful job for a certain type of middle class student. A goodly number of “the rich,” of course, opt for private education where in the best schools true excellence is sought in every subject, in every class, in every activity, every day. As in Sidwell Friends. The money to do everything as right as can be done is made available. But that’s not the “American” way, where only the rich can get a really good education. But what can be done for education when the general depredations of big government sap the cash and will of the taxpayers. If the tax and spend Democrats would just get off everyone’s back, things might be better. There is a glum sense of injustice that the public schools are holding children hostage for more money. Thus the escape to the charters and vouchers. Teachers need to get off their narcissistic horses. Public education is NOT about them. It is not about making kids into fully developed persons. It is ONLY about giving them enough of an economic skill to be employed. It would be nice if the public schools were able to lead the way to providing the kind of education rich men’s children can have. They are trying really heroically to do so in a time of shrinking resources. They claim the rich should educate other people’s children as well as they educate their own. Every teacher a social worker? What if they succeeded? They would work themselves out of a job. No, the social work model of teaching NEEDS the poor and disabled and incompetent and abused to justify their existence. Public schools need poor kids to survive. It’s noble work to try to save everyone, but you’ll only succeed with a few. Think the end of THE GREAT GATSBY. Rowing upstream against the river of time is the American Dream, seeking utopia.
I heard that charters do not have to comply with APPR either. Is this true and can anyone explain the rationale behind this exemption?
They are supposed to comply wth APPR, but regulating agencies turn the other way or put their heads in the sand.
19% of the nations charter school are technically and legally required to close due to poor performance, but they remain open, according to the NY TImes, because those monitoring them have financial interests that prevent closures.
Charters are mostly a way to semi-privatize the system and get rid of unions. Although, the time is ripe and ready for charters to unionize . . .
Thanks for the info Robert. I actually heard about the exemption in a YouTube Video song about APPR in New York. I did some more research and found the following on the New York State Ed website
O1. How does Education Law §3012-c apply to charter schools?
Public charter schools are not subject to the requirements of Education Law §3012-c regarding the annual professional performance review of classroom teachers and building principals.
However, for purposes of participation in the State’s RTTT plan and receiving allocated funds to implement Section D activities, charter schools must evaluate all classroom teachers and building principals using a comprehensive annual evaluation system that is consistent with the following elements of Education Law §3012-c:
(1) is based on multiple measures of effectiveness, including 40% student achievement measures, which would result in a single composite effectiveness score for every teacher and principal;
(2) differentiates effectiveness for teachers and principals using the following four rating categories: Highly Effective, Effective, Developing, and Ineffective; and use such annual evaluations as a significant factor for employment decisions including promotion, retention, supplemental compensation, and professional development; and
(3) provides for the development and implementation of improvement plans for teachers or principals rated Developing or Ineffective.
If a charter school’s teachers are represented by a collective bargaining unit, the teacher evaluation system must conform to the provisions of the collective bargaining agreement.
O2. What data must charter schools submit?
All charter schools, regardless of whether they are participating in Race to the Top, must report and verify TSDL data (except for the exemptions specified in the list of TSDL data elements in Appendix A of the memo). See Education Law §§215 and 2857(2)(a) and 8 NYCRR 119.3 (a)(3) and (7), (b)(1)(v) and (b)(6).
Charter schools outside of New York City should contact their Regional Information Center (http://www.p12.nysed.gov/irs/sirs/RICBIG5.pdf) for support and guidance on submitting and verifying this data.
For charter schools in New York City, NYCDOE is working with NYSED to determine how best to continue to meet your data collection and reporting needs. NYCDOE will update NYC charter schools as soon as additional information is available.
The specific data elements that must be submitted by charter schools are outlined in the table above and at http://www.p12.nysed.gov/irs/sirs/.
It seems that in New York, charters are exempt unless they hope to receive RTTT funding in order to implement “Section D activities”, whatever those are. Perhaps the actual difference between charter and non-charter compliance is splitting hairs?
Why doesn’t Eva just run a chain of private schools with her own money and own building space…Then she can pick and choose which “rules” to follow without taking funding away from public schools (who must serve EVERY CHILD)
Because hedge funds can double their money in 7 years instead of 12 years as a result of tax breaks and this is just on the property for the charter school. Then there is what can be skimmed off of the top in profits and salaries and moving contracts to your friends. Think about this. The reason Marshall Tuck no longer is CEO of PLAS is that Dr. John Fernandez and myself busted PLAS with receiving from LAUSD the year PLAS took over Roosevelt High School with $9,000/student and the academy in the school received only $4,400 with a $4,600 disappeared. At Santee High School, also run by PLAS, they have about $7,858 to the school and $3,758 to spend. Where is the rest of the money? Santee has gone from 170 teachers to 50 teachers and does not even have a chemistry lab. Real good isn’t it. Praise be charter schools. I guarantee that if you read the DOE OIG report on the total lack of accountability of charter schools in Florida, Arizona and California at all levels you will see that all wrong in those states is also cookie cuttered into your state also.
Making as much as the president of the U.S. and she only runs a few schools. The Chancellor of N.Y. City Schools only makes from $250-300,000/ year and that is for 1.1 million students. Who is really crazy and who cares? Certainly not her no matter what she says.
Eva only cares about her salary and related test scores. In Eva’s world, it’s not about educating ALL students at high levels since she doesn’t know educational practices and she is unfamiliar with child development. Eva only wants the limelight, 400K salary, tax funds, and grants – federal, state and foundation for the purpose of enriching herself.
It’s true. Eva’s a master at creating the perception that her schools are exclusive, and, people want to be where it’s exclusive. Plus she creates the illusion that her school is somehow a haven from the “degeneration” of the public school system by creaming all of the high performing students *wink wink*.
Now, if all of that was the case, then why aren’t her darling students automatically following everything adults say to the letter and doing their work with excellence? Why does she need this culture that’s designed to break down kids into highly productive automatons willing to put everything out to get higher test scores, including their childhood.
Her suspension rate indicates that there are too many poor students in our city, and she can’t help but get some of them and deal with their issues. By creating this atmosphere, she can try to make the no-excuses atmosphere by basically blaming the child for the environment that they were brought up in, and not being able to adapt quickly enough to her inhuman way of doing things.
I don’t think Eva is a philanthropist or that she really cares for children of color. I’d bet she sees herself as being a beacon for these poor souls who she sees herself as better than (since she can collect almost half a million a year from the city).
Everything about Eva screams political connections, money, and prestige – and nothing about sacrificing for children.
Your average teacher has to dip into their own pocketbook for several hundred a year for their students – would Eva do the same?
No surprise at all. I sat in at so many CSE meetings with Success Academy. They are always requesting re evaluations for disabled students. They always talk about how many times the student was suspended and prevented other children from learning. Public schools have to now create programs for every disabled student they service. It is time that the charters follow the same rules.
Teachingeconomist seems to keep missing the irony that being able to teach difficult students is the main achievement claimed by Moskowitz’s schools and other charters. Nobody in the thread doubts that the class most likely does better when you push out the most troublesome students. Seems like it is often hard to really converse with economists.
I don’t want to hear you cannot educate almost all students. If my friend could turn around a school with daily gunfights and the principal shot in their office you can do it now. Is there a school in the U.S. that bad today? Guess what, Richard is still alive and soon I hope to see him and pick up his manuscript about his life story and type it up as it is handwritten and his health is failing. It is how he came to his decision which led him to fix the worse school in the U.S. and later to found one of the highest performing schools, Whitney High School in Cerritos, CA. Since I met Richard over Ebonics and stupid math I know it can be done, I have met others who have also done this and no one wants to listen to them they want to pay large sums of money to consultants with no track record. As I tell people who do not like my methods. Talk to me when you have the win record. I wish it worked your way but it does not. If the new board will become, once again, ready to work with the public as it used to we will all be glad to reinstall that methodology. Warfare is introduced when they will not listen and put a sharp hot stick in your eye and laugh. Tomorrow at Monica Ratliff’s first Committee Meeting at 10:00 A.M. we will begin to see. According to reports I have had from friends is that the beginning of the good change is going into place as I thought it would. There will not be dramatic changes immediately as there should not be. The older members have seen enough shock therapy to understand that it does not work. It must be a process with public buy in.
http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/when-an-adult-took-standardized-tests-forced-on-kids/2011/12/05/gIQApTDuUO_blog.html
There are JJV teams, JV teams, and Varsity teams. Isn’t that a legitimate metaphor for education and for classrooms too? Grouping by talent. Happens all the time. What’s the beef? Seniors are sometimes elevated to the Varsity as a matter of courtesy and are allowed to play for a minute or so in non-close games. Should such players be kept down in the JV even though s/he is a senior? Every meritocracy is operated by sifting.
You’re leaving out an important distinction, Harlan: charters such as Success Academies dispute that they sift students, claiming to public schools open to all.
JV players, their parents and the public at-large are under no illusions that the Junior Varsity is equivalent to the Varsity team.
Moskowitz, on the other hand, tries to play it both ways, maintaining the fiction that her schools are open to all, while simultaneously marketing them in such a way as to confer status and exclusivity.
Any good school that cares about students has a special education admin who incorporates extensive training to it’s staff in how to deal with behaviors. The goal is deescalate & resume academics in quickest time possible without too much disruption for all. When you see teams of teachers utilizing these techniques, it’ll melt your heart; how quickly they identify a student’s needs and enable them to make sense of it and get back to work. You also witness huge amounts of empathy from other classmates. Of course this takes money and a time investment from admin. These students then need follow ups with outside therapists & ongoing monitoring. This allows growth for those students who learn over time how to cope & learn. Checkout Crisis Therapeutic Intervention training offered
Through Cornell.
One of the mst disruptive students I ever had (4th grade) was one of the most brilliant students I hsve ever met. He was frustrating to the other students in every way imaginable. So, no, I wouldn’t say disruptive students are necessarily low achievers.
The highest suicide is highly gifted. My highly gifted has a son who was in college at the age of 6. I was lucky. I am 66 and in high school, not a public school, I and some of my classmates were put into highly accelerated classes as we should have been. Many highly gifted act our as they are soooooooooooooooooooooooooo booooooooooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrred. These are the students who will get society out of its problems and we trash them.
If you cannot deal with the least of you you have no business being in education period. This principal does not deserve to be in charge of children with this lousy attitude which she is spreading to her students as their role model. Terrible model for society. If charter schools had to deal with the same problems that regular public schools do they would be on the bottom of the wood pile and even with their special advantages they are still mainly below the norm for regular public schools and with the “Correction Factor” they are real bad.
What information has motivated this panic to change American education? The realization that we are outnumbered coupled by the fact that corporations don’t care about people. They only care about money.
The question s posed have obvious answers if all we care about is spewing out identical students much like Hershey Kisses on an assembly line. People came and come to America seeking the freedom to become individuals. Shoving the “chaotic” kids out the door creates segregation. Some are quite happy to do so. People love to compare and categorize and condescend. That is not the world that I want my kid to grow up in. We don’t benefit by trying to stuff the genie back in the bottle.
Take a look a the 5 min video on YouTube. It explains the panic. It is called “Did you know?”. This video set panic in the hearts of many in recent years. Look for the updated version. (2012).
Is it name calling to say you are a “utopian idealist”?
Is it now appropriate to ask you to quit commenting on my posts? Thank you.
Read the 8-30-13 article in the L.A. times on I.Q. being lowered by stress in the latest study. Many things are at play. The bottom line is that you can not directly compare a system which has to take all and one that cherry picks. When the cherry pickers don’t do better than the has to take all the cherry pickers are total losers and have no business in this business.
In March, he got a 15-day suspension for “stomping on a teacher’s hand” and “throwing the teacher’s cell phone to the ground.”
Am I the only one who sees the above actions as grounds for suspension?
From Mr. Gonzalez’s article it seems that special needs children shouldn’t be held to a certain standard. That because they have an IEP, bad behavior should be tolerated. This shouldn’t be the case. Special needs or not, all children deserve to be taught and should not be allowed to hinder the learning of other children.
The DOE has been providing children in NYC with a mediocre education for years and do not like that a school such as this actually holds kids accountable for their actions.
They do not allow disruptive children to prevent others from learning. What is wrong with that?
Why aren’t parents upset that their children are receiving a less than standard education?
Why aren’t parents demanding their kids receive the same type of education this school provides to better the chances of kids actually learning something?
Aside from complaining about a school, what are parents doing to hold the DOE accountable for cutting programs? It seems like the DOE is using this school and other charter schools to take the focus away from what they are not doing to provide kids with a proper education.