Only one charter chain gets special treatment in New York City, and that is Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academies.
Principals have beenr told they had 24 hours to clear and clean the space where her schools will co-locate rent-free. The city hired hundreds of workers to get the space in order.
The 1 million children who attend public schools are second-class citizens.
Eva’s 7,000-10,000 students are extra-important and privileged. After all, Eva not only gets free public space, she may expand and kick out kids with disabilities if she wishes. Her billionaire friends on Wall Street control the legislature. She can hold a dinner and raise over $7 million on a single night.
Really, she should be chancellor and show what she can do to raise scores and work her miracles for all children. Why limit her magic to only those who win the lottery? Let her take responsibility for the kids with disabilities, the English-language learners, the homeless kids–all of them, not just the ones she chooses.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I don’t want her to get a single classroom more until she publicly accounts for all of the children she did NOT get to graduation.
I agree. Her wealth (no pun intended) and breadth of knowledge should be shared with others. How selfish of her to hold back when the one million plus children of NYC could benefit. Cripes! Why stop there. Perhaps she can find a place down here in DC and complete the coup. Watch out Arne! Watch out!
Correction: first sentence should be: I agree with you Diane.
Can’t wait for MSNBC to get a hold of this story
Only Ed and Chris would care. The rest…well everyone has a price.
You know it would be high praise of Eva and demonization of the (union-fueled) critics…right?
Exactly.
i am afraid that this latest posting says little good about the new mayor. apparently the mayor, having gotten publicly thrashed by the governor, has shelved, or conveniently forgotten his promises to new yorkers to protect the nyc public schools. i hope there is news yet to come that casts the mayor in a better light. if not, randi weingarten, move over you’ve got company.
Randi may as well move over. The mayor has just endorsed the reelection of Sen. Jeff Klein, the charter hound.
I am disappointed, but not surprised. No doubt, he will spout any number of rationalizations for selling out the public schools and its students the thought if the mayor sitting at the table with Randi Weingarten, congratulating each other on their wise political decisions makes me noth sick at heart and sick to my stomach.
Had Mayor de Blasio not appeared too bloodthirsty and vengeful back in the early winter when he had the chance to make real progress in favor of public schools, Eva Moskowitz would not have won the pubic relations war. Even those of us who wholeheartedly supported the Mayor’s point of view were left cringing at how he destroyed his leverage on this issue. He was just not savvy about it. He had the momentum, but he blew it. Sadly, since that time, Carmen Farina and himself have pulled way back, like wimpering lost dogs, on fighting the charter school epidemic and this is a huge disappointment.
One of my friends who lives in Akron, home of Ohio’s main charter school profiteer, has a kid in the marching band and pays $1,000.00 to participate. Shame on all those who favor the colonization of our public institutions.
Disgusting. Why on earth do the wealthy think that showing paternalism in the form of shoving obscene amounts of wealth at a few while defunding the many is a good idea? Why isn’t the union, or SOMEONE, speaking for the vast majority of students in true public schools?
and what union might that be? there’s the rub
The onus is on the public school boards of education. If they are not informed about the issue, a community member must make them knowledgeable.
Website, Plunderbund, published the letter of an Athens, Ohio school board member, which can be used as a sample for the charter issue. In the letter, which “was sent to almost every school board in Ohio”, he asked the local boards to contact the state board of education.
Charter laws are born at the state level. Only 8 states do not have charter laws. Why are taxpayers allowing charters to be exempt from most of the school districts laws and regulations? Why are taxpayers expected to support a dual public school system? This does not make sense especially since many people believe charters are excluding special education students and English language learners. The exclusion of these students into charter schools are most certainly the civil rights issue of our time. It is time to pressure state legislators about amending these laws to follow all the districts laws and regulations or repeal the charter laws in each state. Someone in each state needs to file a class action suit against charters on behalf of special education and English language learner students.
What an absolute disgrace. What gives people with money more priviledges than those with less? These are children who deserve the best of what we have to offer. Parents send us their best and what a shame that these children will be discrimintaed against.
Charter school lobbyists do an end-run around elected officials in Texas:
http://www.texastribune.org/2014/07/02/tea-chief-goes-around-state-board-charter-school-v/
Wow. When’s the last time you read about a governor’s office making personal phone calls on behalf of a public school? When’s the last time you read about any positive attention from any lawmaker toward a public school?
Adding insult to injury, Success Academy at Mother Cabrini campus in Washington Heights found their new taxpayer digs just so roomy that they’ve decided to put their Administrative offices in the building too – nevermind that District 6 students are in overcrowded classrooms and trailers just blocks away. (see link to Daily News article)
While my tax dollars are paying a contractor to rush renovate new offices for Eva’s minions, (not to mention paying the rent), our local K-8 public school sits 2 blocks away and is currently embroiled in budget negotiations with the DOE for literacy and math teachers. We hold our head high – but it’s a struggle to sit back and watch state sanctioned tax fraud be perpetrated right in your own neighborhood.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/uptown/parents-success-academy-moving-heights-article-1.1802725
Eva’s “success,” if that is what it is, is high test scores, although even that can be disputed. But these test scores are the result of merciless test prep and drill, Saturday and after school remedial work, and extra hours in school to the detriment of other subjects, i.e. those not tested like phys ed. art, music, social studies ( what is that?) and in ‘off” years, science. Students are made into test taking robots in the service of promo ting Success Charters. If tests were not used to judge schools, especially Charters, some of them might even take special ed. and language challenged students.
Also, if Eva’s funders were made to provide for the schools in which they co locate, by giving the public school students laptops just like the charter students, by providing the teachers with copy machines and color printers, by giving all classrooms Smart Boards, and by renovating all the bathrooms in the building, not just theirs, that might be a small step toward separate but equal.
The disadvantaged children that Eva turns away should file a discrimination case against her. How easy people can be dazzled by bull$#*!.
As a naif as to Eva’s schools, I do not have a clue as to their effectiveness. Political clout has zero relevance to effectively advancing kids to the point that they are thoroughly prepared for college or for the workplace, as the kids may chose on their own.
Test scores are meaningless. Are the kids getting into regular college classes or are they doomed to the Purgatory of development ) i,e, remedial classes?
All that matters is: what is the most effective program to get the kids thoroughly into the middle class,
Let;s have a bit more light along with a bit less heat.
Which program is doing the best for the advancement of the students!!!
That program should take over resources squandered on the least productive programs.
2 blocks away from a newly opened SA sits an 800 student nyc public school. 46% title 1, 12% IEP population, 58% hispanic/black, 11% ELL, over crowded and financially starved year after year by the DOE – yet this years graduating class includes a number of students that gained entry into specialized high schools (unlike SA -http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2014/06/eva-moskowitz-and-success-not-so.html ) No cherry picking, no laser-focus on test prep, bake sales – not 7 million dollar galas. You tell me – which is doing the best for the advancement of students? The answer is clear to me. So why the preferential Eva treatment? Seems she’s best at lining the politicians pockets.
That school also features large achievement gaps between white students and Latino/black students, but especially in math and in the middle-school grades overall. There is a distinct racial discrepancy between the tracked “advanced” class and the rest of the classes in each grade. How many of the handful of kids who gained entry to a SHSAT school aren’t white or Asian?
This is also the school that reacted with cries of “save our neighborhood school!” when a proposal was floated to eliminate zoning lines in District 6, which is 88% Hispanic, 87% FRPL-eligible, 15% special ed, and 34% ELL. Open enrollment would have allowed this school to serve its fair share of the district’s disadvantaged students, and the school community fought against it venomously.
No one is forcing anyone who is fortunate enough to live in the zone for this school to apply to Success, but I’m betting Success will be a popular choice for the other families in District 6 that this school’s community told, essentially, to drop dead. Success’s failure to backfill seats after the first day of third grade remains an abhorrent practice, of course.
Today’s NY Times reports that teachers are leaving their private school positions in droves in order to get the benefits and higher wages offered by the NYC DoE.
We know how this will turn out, as they fail to earn their tenure and their “Highly Effective” ratings in four years.
We also know how this corporate driven experiment by the Educational/Industrial Complex will turn out for the current generation of children — i mean “scholars”.
The problem is that the new, more efficient system of for profit education is NOT about educating and preparing the future work force for the marketplace, but providing a basic, “good enough” education for the masses, and siphoning off a profit stream for the corporate “job creators”. It is about privatizing and voucherizing public financed education.
The irony (to me, at least) is that we’re mostly creating low paying jobs in the US, as we continue to outsource and export our skilled labor by sending manufacturing, & service jobs to China & India and other developing countries where the labor is cheap.
This practice has destroyed the domestic communities all around the US. So that no matter well or how poorly graduates are educated, there won’t be any high paying jobs that will allow them to enter the middle class here in the US anyway.
Some here might enjoy (be horrified?) to read this warning talk at the 26th Annual Ethnography in Education Research Forum Center for Urban Ethnography, Graduate School of Education University of Pennsylvania, February 25, 2005. I have followed the late Gerry Bracey and Susan Ohanian on these matters for over 13 years. They saw this coming and tried to warn others. It’s good that people are waking up to reality but there are far too many who claim incredulity and puzzlement as to the “why” and “when”. Read this and you will begin to understand a little better, I hope.
From Susan Ohanian’s website under “Research That Counts”:
http://susanohanian.org/show_research.php?id=90
Moskowitz never shuts up about the Success Academy test scores, but unlike real public schools, charters are allowed to grade their students’ high stakes exams in-house. Yet somehow we are confronted with a contradiction between Moskowitz’s claimed miracle test scores and the fact that not a single Success Academy student passed the exam for the NYC specialized high schools.
We already know from statements published on this blog by a Success Academy teacher that Moskowitz’s schools are privy to Pearson’s materials, which gives the schools an unfair advantage over the public schools.
Despite the political bloodying Mayor De Blasio suffered at the hands of Cuomo and Moskowitz, he and the Chancellor can – if they have the political courage – begin an investigation of how Success Academy schools can simultaneously be among the highest scoring on state exams, yet fail miserably on the exams for the specialized high schools.
Will De Blasio have the courage to do so?
Even though the mayor and chancellor have to house charter schools, as you know they have no say in their operations. Perhaps the public advocate or comptroller could call for a third-party investigation, but anything with teeth would have to come from Success’s authorizer.
I agree that the results don’t pass the smell test. At the very least they suggest that kids at Success do little other than prep for NYSED tests; at worst they suggest fraud. Remember, this cohort scored about as high as 8th graders in any school in the state with the exception of g&t schools.
Yes, you are correct: the channels used for investigations in public schools do not apply to charters, much to their benefit.
Given that, public officials have little more than their bully pulpits, should they choose to use them. I have a hard time seeing Eva’s authorizers conducting a serious investigation of this or any other matter regarding her.
Until all public school teachers and administrators decide to unite and walk out of our
schools together, trash like Moskowitz will keep expanding like a cancer.
Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Agreed. MLK would be out there on the school doorsteps blocking black kids from getting the education they want.
With all due respect, John, sarcasm only works if the person using it is actually informed as to the facts and does not succumb to the knee-jerk arguments used by those who claim that charters mean “choice” for any parent who wants it. Additionally, when classes are overcrowded, students are over-tested, and schools are under-funded, “unruly” students increase, and it is not the teachers who are failing them. I am sorry if that ruins your narrative.
As a New York City taxpayer I’M PISSED !
Who cares if the kids are learning in her classes and trouncing their peer schools? Kids should be forced to go to the bad schools. They are not privileged citizens who can get the education they want. That is for whites only, we dont need blacks in college. We need more money for the schools and teachees who have been failing them for decades. Unless the same people get more cash me must keep up the fight to get them kids that want to go to other schools. Thank you for keeping up the fight to keep these kids in their place! If they don’t want to go to school with unruly kids, too bad! Better that kids live in fear then adults worry about losing their jobs to competition.