This article, which I co-wrote with Avi Blaustein, an independent education researcher, was cross-posted on Huffington Post.
It explains that Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charters do not serve the most disadvantaged students in New York City; that her school in Harlem (Success Academy 4) that will not expand is NOT the highest scoring school in the state; and that her schools have few, if any, of the highest-need special education students and a high attrition rate.
By Diane Ravitch and Avi Blaustein
The battle between NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio and Eva Moskowitz, CEO of the Success Academy charter chain, has blown up into a national controversy, covered on national television, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.
Mayor de Blasio had the nerve to award the Moskowitz chain only five of the eight charters that it wanted, and Moskowitz has been on the warpath to get all eight, even if it means pushing kids with disabilities out of their public school classrooms.
What is missing from the controversy so far is any interest on the part of the journalists in basic facts. Instead, what is happening is a public relations battle. Moskowitz has attacked Mayor de Blasio in multiple media appearances, and no one in the media has bothered to check any of her claims.
Let’s fill that gap.
On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Ms. Moskowitz claimed that Success Academy 4 in Harlem is the “highest performing school in New York State in math in in fifth grade.” This is obviously an odd metric to use in judging a school. Picking out one subject in a single grade should raise suspicion among the media, but it hasn’t.
It is also not true. On the fifth grade state math test, the students at Success Academy 4 are, in fact, #8 in New York City (tied with another school) and presumably even lower when compared to schools across the state. The fourth grade math test scoresare #54 in New York City (tied with six other schools). The third grade math scores rank #63 in New York City (tied with 6 other schools). The school’s rankings are even worse in English. The fifth grade English test scores rank #59 in New York City (tied with seven other schools), the fourth grade English test scores rank #81 in New York City (tied with five other schools), and the third grade English test scores rank #65 in New York City (tied with eight other schools).
The school is not the “highest performing school in the state” in any grade.
Moskowitz’s interviewers have said that the students at Success Academy 4 are the “most disadvantaged kids in New York City,” to which she assented. She has said “it’s a random lottery school. We don’t know who they are.”
We do, in fact, know who the students at Success Academy are. They are not the most disadvantaged kids in New York City. Harlem Success Academy schools have half the number of English Language Learners as the neighboring public schools in Harlem. The students in Success Academy 4 include 15 percent fewer free lunch students and an economic need index (a measure of students in temporary housing and/or who receive public assistance) that is 35 percent lower than nearby public schools.
Moskowitz’s Success Academy 4 has almost none of the highest special needs students as compared to nearby Harlem public schools. In a school with nearly 500 students, Success Academy 4 has zero, or one, such students, while the average Harlem public school includes 14.1 percent such students. With little sense of irony or embarrassment, Moskowitz has attacked Bill de Blasio for preventing the school’s expansion inside PS 149. Her school’s expansion would have come at the cost of space for students with disabilities. The school has already lost “a fully equipped music room … A state-mandated SAVE room … A computer lab… Individual rooms for occupational and physical therapy … and the English Language Learners (ELL) classroom,” due to earlier Success Academy expansions in the same building.
Moskowitz said, referring to the students in her schools, “we’ve had these children since kindergarten.” But she forgot to mention all the students who have left the school since kindergarten. Or the fact that Harlem Success Academy 4 suspends students at a rate 300 percent higher than the average in the district. Last year’s seventh grade class at Harlem Success Academy 1 had a 52.1 percent attrition rate since 2006-07. That’s more than half of the kindergarten students gone before they even graduate from middle school. Last year’s sixth grade class had a 45.2 percent attrition rate since 2006-07. That’s almost half of the kindergarten class gone and two more years left in middle school. In just four years Harlem Success Academy 4 has lost over 21 percent of its students. The pattern of students leaving is not random. Students with low test scores, English Language Learners, and special education students are most likely to disappear from the school’s roster. Large numbers of students disappear beginning in 3rd grade, but not in the earlier grades. No natural pattern of student mobility can explain the sudden disappearance of students at the grade when state testing just happens to begin.
Moskowitz made a number of other claims during her Morning Joe appearance. She said “we are self-sustaining on the public dollar alone.” In fact, Success Academyspends $2,072 more per student than schools serving similar populations. This additional funding comes from donations by the very same hedge fund moguls who have donated over $400,000 to Governor Cuomo’s re-election campaign (charter supporters in the financial and real estate sector have contributed some $800,000 to Governor Cuomo’s campaign).
Moskowitz has said “in terms of cracking the code that’s what we’ve set out to do.” But we don’t need charter schools to crack the code if the cryptographic key is to keep out the neediest students and kick out students with low test scores. Public schools could do that too. Then they too would have higher test scores and a high attrition rate. They don’t do it because it would probably be illegal. And besides, it is the wrong thing to do. Public schools are expected to educate everyone, not just those who are likeliest to succeed.
I stopped watching Morning Joke several years ago after watching Michelle Rhee wow Mika and Joe—they are easily wowed by anyone pushing business solutions on to public services. I should add, watching the critical thinking skills of both commentators, and for that matter everyone who sits around that morning table, it does question the assumption that at some point in our history there was a golden age of schooling where all students graduated with reasoning skills that have all been lost in today’s schools —my tenth grade government class is more thoughtful then watching Joe in action.
“it does question the assumption that at some point in our history there was a golden age of schooling where all students graduated with reasoning skills that have all been lost in today’s schools —”
I agree. The biggest conceit of modern adults may be that they are vastly better educated than children are now. I listen to this nonsense and I can’t believe they get away with it. One would think there would be one adult among them with some measure of humility who would say “Wait a minute. Didn’t most of us go to public schools? Why are we so utterly fabulous?”
Do NONE of them wonder when, exactly, all US public schools became “failure factories”? It must have been the day after they all graduated, right? It’s one of the many, many, many mysteries and contradictions of ed reform theory which seems to have much more to do with the giant egos of prestigious and politically-connected adults than it does with children.
Chiara, you are describing the faux reform narrative. They say public schools are “failure factories,” and only they know how to make successful schools. Eva knows: weed out the kids with low scores. Some formula! What will we do with the kids that no no one wants?
“”Do NONE of them wonder when, exactly, all US public schools became “failure factories”? It must have been the day after they all graduated, right?”
This argument is often paired with the general view that things generally are always getting worse, so you don’t really need to apply a cutoff date for the good old days. I.e., even if I’m an idiot who went to a crappy public school, I’m less of an idiot than the idiots who go to today’s crappier public schools. And it stands to reason that today’s public schools are crappier than the one I attended, because today’s public school teachers are idiots like me who went to crappy public schools.
This narrative also gels well with the very popular notion that Americans are stupid. This stereotype has roots much deeper than the PISA tests, and it’s a stereotype that’s long held by Americans themselves, or at least the ones that don’t think they’re stupid. See, e.g., Twain’s wonderful The Innocents Abroad.
Let’s start with H. L. Mencken’s observation—
“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”
For all the wisdom of those old dead Greek guys, they were by no means immune to falling prey to the same sorts of clichés that, like the zombies of merit pay and firing your way to excellence, never seem to die:
“Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.” [Socrates]
IMHO, a good start is: what, exactly, is better or worse or the same? And how do those different successes and failures and so on work together and influence each other? And what to do with all the inconvenient facts that crop up?
Just for one small point: with public education putting “our nation at risk” how did the USA beat the Soviet Union in the cold war? Makes no sense if you follow the self-styled “education reformers” line of reasoning [and I use the word “reasoning” very loosely]?
Just my dos centavitos worth…
😎
How can we get this to Morning Joe? They were so horrible to Mayor DeBlasio and so smug!
Carol Gamm
Sent from my iPhone
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This study should be sent to all of the news outlets, especially Gonzolez of the NY Daily News, who has been very supportive of DB’s and Farina’s decisions. Also, the NY Times. In addition, you should demand time on Morning Joe to present the truth. If you don’t get it, find a mainstream outlet that will publish THAT fact. Appear on Ed Shultz’s’ show, also on MSNBS.
Eva Moskowitz is shocked, shocked that rules and basic farness may actually apply to her. We need to stop people from monetizing our core democratic institutions.
nice work.
I would not worry about msnbc cable show. This networks ratings are so low (i am a tv ad buyer) that sometimes we have to give advertisers free air space to have them come on and advertise on this network. In a sense, the shows ratings are so low that it should not stay on broadcast however the station is backed by parent company NBC. So, to all you bloggers out there pissed off at this station and this program, I would not get to worried because the network and specifically the show reaches such few people they are basically not relevant in mainstream media.
I guess that explains why they never counter with any facts. They want to keep people coming to talk on their shows.
Charter school chain now claims exemption from zoning laws:
“The South Bay movement to fast-track the opening of charter schools has been dealt a setback, with a court ruling that county school boards can’t override local ordinances while deciding where to place campuses.
In a widely anticipated order, Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Franklin Bondonno has ruled that the Santa Clara County Board of Education lacks authority to exempt charter schools from zoning rules.
The judge affirmed a tentative decision he issued last fall, when he wrote, “If the Legislature had intended to grant the power to override local zoning to county boards of education, the Legislature would have so stated. It has not done so.”
The absolute hubris of this “movement” is something to see, I’m telling ya. Rules are for little people. They just make their own.
You’d like to think one or two lawmakers would step in, but it always seems to be a court. I guess all the lawmakers have decided to “relinquish” all duty and responsibility to private companies.
Lawmakers might want to reconsider this “relinquishment” approach. They should watch that. We may decide they’re completely irrelevant to our daily lives.
http://www.mercurynews.com/education/ci_25321994/san-jose-court-ruling-spells-setback-rocketship-charter
I can attest to the poor ratings this channel gets. Basically, the station reaches approx. 200,000 households and there are 8 million households in NYC and over 100 million households in the US. So, as my readers can see, MSNBC is basically a lemonade stand that is watched by few…
MSNBC is not the only station that has covered the de Blasio-Moskowitz controversy. And there still remains the basic issue of which claims are true, which can be established by reading the record. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are national newspapers.
So it was posted to the Huffington Post. Do any serious journalists read the Huffington Post? Do serious journalists actually exist as a class or are they few and far between? I suppose it is an insult to serious journalists to equate them with talking heads. I hope they are at least subversive and sending their leads anonymously to the news organizations who will report them. That’s what we all need to do is to cultivate an active underground.
IMHO, the Huffington Post is an absolute cesspool and serious journalists should refuse to give it a single page view. The “content aggregation,” the “sponsored content,” the “user-generated content,” the “search engine optimization,” the link-bait headlines — everything about the HuffPo is destructive to the notion that content has value and that journalism is a serious profession. Even Drudge is preferable to the Huffington Post.
Check plus on that.
Every self-respecting writer should boycott Huffington and refuse to be one of their content-providing serfs.
It seems to have gotten sleazier too.
Don’t forget that Gates, et al, are now part of the billionaires media club, that includes Huffington.
Wall Street writes the narrative Moskowitz runs to the bank with her earnings. Probably those same fund managers were at the President’s fundraising activities in Manhattan yesterday. Handshakes / slaps on the back were had by all as they probably gave speeches thanking each other for their service to the destruction of public education.
Word is that Bill de Blasio was the token “poor person” at the fundraiser.
For Twitter: copy and paste into Twitter and then ReTweet as often as possible.
Eva Moskowtiz battles honest NYC Mayor deBlasio
Via corporate controlled media propaganda lies to profit off children
http://bit.ly/1idhgv7
I find the co-located charters especially heinous. “Upstairs Downstairs” used to be popular on US TV when I was a kid. Anyone remember, the show about the kind of classist society the American revolution was fought to end in America (when they valued equality over freedom itself, said de Tocqueville in 1835)? It was quite charming, at times even quaint.
I have a lesson plan for those who support a two-tiered education system. It’s not complete, perhaps some other teachers will undertake a collaboration online and help me finish it, but I hope it’s a start.
In this lesson learners will develop critical thinking skills by experiencing discrimination in the form of harassment. Harassment is behavior that is known to be unwanted but persists. Most free countries, including the United States, have laws protecting citizens from specific forms of harassment in public spaces. Please read the instructions and then perform the role-playing exercise described.
Close your eyes if it helps you imagine. You are on the playground or in the hallway of a co-occupied school building in New York City. You could see the Statue of Liberty from there back when the school was built. You hear a familiar schoolyard chant.
“Nya nya nya nya nya, you go to ______ school.”
Fill in the blank. Is the word “charter,” or “public?”
(Ask students if they chose playground or a specific area of the school-cafeteria, auditorium, locker room, hallways, time of day etc. – where the separated groups might encounter each other, and socialization/interaction might take place. Are teachers or other adult monitors present? How do other kids act? Encourage learners to be “in character”).
Why did you pick the answer you chose? Do you think children would sing such a song? Do you think such behavior would be desirable? Will you grow up with personal dignity, learning mutual respect and tolerance in a school like this? Why or why not?
Follow up and extension activities, contingencies for different levels, learning styles, and the special needs or gifted students in your classroom, and ongoing formative assessment required beyond this point.
Should more American parents be joining with Letitia James to fight the two-tiered anti-public charter movement and the supermarket/fast food model of education they’re selling?
Thanks for taking the time to provide a thoughtful response to Eva and Morning Joe. I saw Joe and Mikah fawning over Eva with effusive, inaccurate statements!
Speaking of schools that don’t enroll a representative percentage of New York City students, the New York Times noted on March 11,
“The numbers disclosed by the Education Department showed that of the 28,000 students citywide who took the Specialized High School Admissions Test, 5,701 of them were offered seats. Although 70 percent of the city’s public school students are black and Hispanic, blacks were offered 5 percent of the overall seats and Hispanics 7 percent — the same as a year ago. Asians were offered 53 percent of the seats, compared with 50 percent a year ago; whites were offered 26 percent of seats, compared with 24 percent a year ago.”
http://ht.ly/uvIXT
Joe:
Those are some pretty potent and telling numbers.
These elite quasi-private selective magnet schools have been around for much longer than charters – and clearly are not serving a representative sample of students.
People frustrated with these schools helped start charters and other innovative district schools around the country.
Really, Joe. Show me all these charters and “other district schools” that are serving everyone who cannot attend a magnet. Plus calling magnet schools quasi-private schools that use admission tests to consciously screen out special needs and many students from communities of color implies that those students with disabilities or from minority communities who do attend magnets feel like they are being treated unfairly because of their handicaps or their skin color. I seriously doubt that you will find much support for that position.
I do not have trouble with specialized programs but entrance criteria are problematic. We definitely want to strive for equity which is different than equality. With that goal in mind summer workshop programs that are open to anyone that introduce students to magnet programs may be one way to prepare more students for admission to these programs. I know there are many college/university programs that provide such opportunities to minority communities.
The point at which we really disagree is probably over funding and governance. Public funding for public programs with “public” governance.
Actually, the late Senator Paul Wellstone – one of the most liberal people ever elected to the US Senate, was a strong opponent of magnet schools that operate as quasi-private selective admissions tests. He helped lead a successful effort to reduce start-up funding for such schools.
Joe, we agree! Magnet schools were intended to increase desegregation, not to provide havens for the elite and the select.
Yes, there does need to be a democratic debate about magnet schools, but as you continually refuse to acknowledge, this is a false analogy, since specialized schools and magnet schools are upfront about the fact that they don’t enroll everyone.
Charters, on the other hand, deceptively claim to be open to everyone, while cherry-picking students on the front end, and having a de facto policy of encouraging high attrition of poor test-takers on the back end.
More falsehoods, as always.
It seems I see a lot more variation among schools, whether district or charter than you do.
I don’t know how many magnet schools NYC has, but I do question whether there are so many students that are so brilliant that their educational needs should not be met within the regular public schools. As a society we seem to have declared a public education to be a public good. Unfortunately, we do not fund our schools in a way that allows them to have a wide and rich range of opportunities. I don’t know the answer. I do know that taking more money out of an underfunded system to support charter schools with all the flaws that have been identified seems even more egregious.
We could eliminate the quasi-private magnet schools that use admissions tests to screen out many students with special needs…and many students from communities of color – but of course that won’t happen – and they won’t even be criticized cause they are run by local boards.
Once again, might I add–scores on STATE tests? Are you all serious–would these be state tests published by Pear$on? The same test company that gave us the “Pineapple Question?” Certainly, whatever tests Pear$on publishes has similar questions/answers as found on the “Pineapple ?” test. That’s why there is such increased test security–Pear$on doesn’t want teachers or parents or administrators reading their flawed and faulty tests–you know, those with impossible to answer questions, those with no right answers, those with more than one correct answer, those whereby the wrong answer is scored as the correct one & the correct answer is scored as incorrect. You know, tests given at grade level to special ed. students not reading nor doing math at grade level. You know, those tests given to ELA or ELL students who barely speak English, let alone read/comprehend the written word. You know, those tests scored by unqualified people in warehouse settings, with test scores sometimes being “juked” by visiting state officials.
To reiterate–these are NOT “standardized” tests–they have–time & again–been found neither to be valid nor reliable. And, Duane, please follow up my comment with your (in)famous Wilson paragraphs.
In short, the test scores mean NOTHING, NADA, ZIP whether in Evil Moskowitz’ “success” (more like SUCKcess{pool}) schools or in any other.
I’ve noticed troubling parallels between the information war currently being waged by Eva Moskowitz and Vladimir Putin’s propaganda attack on Ukraine. These two seem to follow the same playbook: prepare one’s own version of the truth, blast it loudly and repeatedly in friendly media outlets, ignore anyone who points out holes in your story.
What I find particularly frightening is that these tactics work. There are millions of people out there who honestly believe that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is legitimate and desirable, as is Eva’s “invasion” of the NYC public school system. And well-reasoned articles like this one don’t seem to make a difference. Because people naturally gravitate to catchy slogans (save our kids!) and easy explanations (Charter good, public bad). And because Eva’s narrative dominates the media. Not feeling too hopeful these days 😦
Those same tactics work for the Obama administration too, especially with the ACA.
Not quite an honest analysis. The unasked question is whether the Success Academies actually educate the children they choose to keep.
I would be suspicious of the number if ELLs that SA 4 claims to have. My school collocated with them and the last few years they did not give the NYSESLAT Test which is mandated for all ELLs. They did not even know what the NYSESLAT was.
We also have many if the kids they kick out. At least 10% of our population comes from charter schools and they come to us from second to fourth grade. All if them are needy, with either academic or emotional concerns. Rarely do get come with a history of services provided. SA does not do that. We take them in, and help to fix all the problems that were not addressed at the previous charter school. But it comes with a cost- to our scores, among other things.
Reblogged this on Like a scream but sort of silent and commented:
Charter schools must go!