In an article in the New York Daily News, which has been an outspoken champion of charter schools and Eva Moskowitz’s attacks on Mayor Bill de Blasio, Noah Gotbaum explains why Eva’s schools are “successful”: they leave out the neediest students. Gotbaum is a public school parent and has children with special needs.
Gotbaum writes:
Eva Moskowitz is up in arms. Her schools are being “closed,” she says, and her students left “educationally homeless” by the mayor’s “war” on charters. She’s even called in the civil rights lawyers.
Truth is, it is Moskowitz and her patrons who are waging war — insisting that autistic and severely emotionally disturbed kids be forced out of their own building to make room for her high-performing “scholars.”
Contrary to the cry of the governor and hedge funders, Mayor de Blasio was absolutely right to reverse Success Academy’s co-location agreement and ensure our most vulnerable kids get needed services and a sound education.
Let’s examine the facts.
In the dying weeks of his administration, Mayor Bloomberg rammed through a record 45 new school-sharing arrangements — including 17 new charters. Late last month, de Blasio allowed 36 of these to move forward, including 14 of the 17 new charter co-locations. Moskowitz’s Success Academies network was handed five new sites. Hardly a war or personal vendetta.
Of the three reversed charter co-locations, two were for new Success charter elementary schools, neither of which has yet to accept a single student. This makes Success’ claims of “closed” schools and “evicted” students disingenuous at best.
The final charter rollback was the proposed move of Harlem Success 4’s fifth through seventh grades into the PS 149 building in Harlem, already home to PS/MS 149; the very-high-needs Mickey Mantle school, which is part of special education District 75; and another Success Academy charter.
To accommodate Moskowitz, Bloomberg’s DOE planned to move one-third of Mickey Mantle’s autistic and severely emotionally disturbed children out of the building, exiling them to three potential DOE sites long bus rides away from their northern Manhattan communities.
According to the city’s own Educational Impact Statement, the co-location would then have increased occupancy in the building for the remaining Mickey Mantle and PS 149 students to 132% — almost 400 students above the DOE’s already unrealistic “target capacity” of 1,200.
To accommodate the overcrowding, students in the public school would have been required to eat lunch at 10:40 am, but not students in Eva’s charter school.
Eva has been playing the victim of a vendetta on national television, but the real victims are the children who are pushed aside to make way for her students.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/de-blasio-fake-war-charters-article-1.1718314#ixzz2vkuKLHpk
So I think it’s safe to say the “Secret Sauce” to Charter success is discrimination?
What seems especially egregious in all of this is her narcissistic insistence that the needs of her students trump those of special needs children. They are especially vulnerable to change or disruption of their routines. This callus lack of empathy is terrifically unappealing in a purported educator. It betrays too her narrow experience, if any, with special needs students. Moskowitz might read Ron Suskind’s NYT piece “Reaching My Autistic Son Through Disney” earlier this week as a starting place to educate herself about this population.
Everything, literally everything, the so-called reformers say is either an outright lie or contains a drop of truth surrounded by concentric circles of manipulation and misdirection.
Moskowitz, because of her egomania and rapacity, is among the worst, but it’s also true of TFA, KIPP, Uncommon Schools – former home of NYS Education Department head John King – and all the other Big Dogs of corporate education reform.
Time for students, parents and teachers to rub the Big Dogs noses in their mendacity.
People people of this great city isn’t it amazing how similar people like moskowitz and bloomberg are so similar?? These are people who are so self serving and will do anything to get there way. Sort of like the spoiled brat kid who rants and screams whenever they do not get something they want. We had to deal with this for 12 LONG years with bloomberg. I think however that bloomberg and moskowitz have something in common (you know the nepotism factor) no wonder why so many people dislike this breed of human.
Mayor de Blasio is right to be demonstrating concern and support for the overwhelming majority of children in NYC neighborhood public schools, rather than showing favoritism for the small minority in charters that aim to expand and displace children in co-locations with existing neighborhood public schools. The voters have spoken and have called for an end to the disgraceful Bloomberg era of cronyism, neglect of public schools and privatization of public education.
Thank goodness for democracy and for the promise of this new mayor!
For your Twitter Feed: Copy, paste and ReTweet as often as possible
Eva Moskowtiz plays vendetta victim on national TV
But real victims are kids pushed aside making way for her students
http://bit.ly/1fuiLof
Deliver us from Eva . . . . . . .
Co-location? Autism? Remember, please, Avonte Oquendo, the 14-year-old autistic student who walked out of a co-located building and drowned.
Oh, but of course, Evil Mo$kowitz and her $tudent$’ needs FAR outweigh those of special education District 75–they’re other people’s children.