So Eva Moskowitz proved yet again that charter schools are not public schools, as she closed her schools and directed students, staff, and parents to attend a political rally intended to enlarge her empire. Could public schools so that? Of course not.
Better yet, she claims she wants to “save” children “trapped in failing schools” but her charter applications seek to open new schools in the city’s most successful neighborhoods, in District 2 (the affluent Upper East Side of Manhattan, the city’s wealthiest and whitest school district); in Park Slope in Brooklyn, where townhouses sell for millions of dollars, and in other gentrifying districts where there are no children trapped in “failing schools.” Classic bait and switch. Did she learn this game from her hedge fund backers?
A comment from a reader:
“Diane, I think you should try to publicize the fact that the SUNY Charter Institute is about to approve 14 new Success Academy schools, and many (arguably most!) of them are designed to compete with reasonably strong community schools instead of creating new strong schools where the community school is failing. We just saw a rally that purported to be about the 143,000 students in failing NYC public schools. The SUNY Charter Institute has a chance to address it by approving charters that give lottery priority to the low-income students zoned for those failing public schools. Let’s make sure that the public and politicians are well-aware that SUNY could be approving charter schools that make those students a priority, instead of charter schools that locate in neighborhoods where those 143,000 students don’t live or are shut out in favor of affluent students. If SUNY is showing favoritism to the well-connected charter school that refuses to give any of those 143,000 students lottery priority to attend their schools, then the public needs to know that and ask why. It would show that SUNY Charter Institute doesn’t care about those kids, except as props for rallies.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
You must have no soul if you use impoverished children to embolden the affluent.
Please tweet this powerful message #DontStealPossible
Eva’s goal is obvious—establish a beachhead for her corporate Charter school chain in every sector of New York City and then step by step, one orchestrated political rally after another, with help from her hedge fund allies and the corporate controlled media, she will spread her Charter cancer until the public schools in NYC are dead, and she is another corporate CEO paying herself tens of millions annually.
It her latest applications to open these charters are approved, then it will take a HUGE effort to stop her from spreading the cancer she is promoting.
There is pushback to Eva in Williamsburg and Park Slope. Thank goodness. This is a great site and laundry list of Eva and her ‘success’.
http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/people/eva-moskowitz
There are 31,579 children in District 2 who qualify for free lunch. 19% of the district population is black; 36% is Latino.
There are 15,947 children in District 15 who qualify for free lunch. 18% of the district population is black; 43% is Latino.
Very few of these at-risk kids go to school with the affluent townhouse kids, and the affluent townhouse kids who live in a zone with lots of at-risk kids tend to go to choice or private schools.
That’s New York City for you, where the density obscures the segregation. There are clearly huge numbers of at-risk kids in these districts.
Yet, Tim, what is Eva’s track record keeping and educating, with real success, these kids and how does the student demographics of her current Charters compare to the local public schools at graduation time?
If you read Diane’s site regularly, then you would know that Eva’s track record is dismal at best. Her Charters cherry pick the at-risk students, keep those that are easiest to work with and dumps the rest. And even then, those who stay do not excel as claimed.
The claim was that the network is applying for schools in districts where there are no children at risk. That claim isn’t true. 53% of kids in D2 and 60% of kids in D15 are free-lunch eligible.
The claim you mention that is not correct is not important to this issue.
What’s important is the fact that Eva’s Charters do not deliver on her promises any more than Michelle Rhee succeeded in Washington DC when she was the wrecking ball chancellor of the public schools there.
Rhee set 74 goals—promises that she claimed [boasted] she would achieve to turn those schools around—and she only achieved 2-percent of the total.
What is more important, a claim that was not totally correct as you point out, or a history of results that exist that prove with solid facts that both Eva and Rhee are highly paid frauds bilking the public with false promises that turn out empty over time?
Lloyd, here is the claim I was addressing, and what I not unreasonably read to be the gist of Diane’s post: “[H]er charter applications seek to open new schools in the city’s most successful neighborhoods, in District 2 (the affluent Upper East Side of Manhattan, the city’s wealthiest and whitest school district); in Park Slope in Brooklyn, where townhouses sell for millions of dollars, and in other gentrifying districts where there are no children trapped in ‘failing schools.’”
Tim mentioned the gist of Diane’s post: “[H]er charter applications seek to open new schools in the city’s most successful neighborhoods, in District 2 (the affluent Upper East Side of Manhattan, the city’s wealthiest and whitest school district); in Park Slope in Brooklyn, where townhouses sell for millions of dollars, and in other gentrifying districts where there are no children trapped in ‘failing schools.’”
Fact:
The city’s public schools are divided up into 32 geographic districts. Those districts are then divided into smaller zones which determine the area served by local schools. Each district has its own superintendent and receives guidance from a Community District Education Council made up of parents and local representatives.
What you have proven?
Even though there are children who lived n poverty and who are minorities that live in those affluent areas of New York City, that does not mean the gist of Diane’s post was wrong or even misleading.
To prove her wrong, the student demographics of every one of the 32 geographic districts would have to be compared to prove that these areas were not the whitest school districts in New York Cit. Have you don’t that? No.
What you did was cherry pick facts to point out that children who live in poverty and who are minorities also live in those areas. That proves nothing.
Charters are granted by school district, not by neighborhood or school zone. To be given the charter, the operator needs to demonstrate that the school will be able to reach at-risk kids. Districts 2 and 15 have plenty of them.
Furthermore, since the great neighborhood schools in the affluent portions of the district are full or oversubscribed, there is little chance these charters will get space in those areas. And besides, wealthy people don’t go for this type of schooling, I’m told. But the at-risk kids locked out of the good affluent schools might.
However, since you asked: two out of the first three districts off the top of my head are whiter and have fewer free lunch kids: District 31 (Staten Island) and District 3 (Upper West Side). I am sure that Districts 2 and 15 are by far the tops in Gini coefficient, if that is any consolation.
Tim,
You are avoiding the issue that I pointed out. The issue isn’t about the need for more Charter schools to teach at risk kids in districts 2 and 15. Instead, the issue is if Eva’s Charter schools are capable of delivering on the promises she makes and the history of evidence says NO!
Here’s what I’m talking about:
“What she [Eva] does to get high test scores is not a model for public education or even for other charters. The high scores of her students is due to intensive test prep and attrition. She gets her initial group of students by holding a lottery, which in itself is a selection process because the least functional families don’t apply. She enrolls small proportions of students with disabilities and English language learners as compared to the neighborhood public school. And as time goes by, many students leave.”
Eva Moskowtiz is a con artist who pays herself more than a half million a year out fo the taxes she is legally stealing from the public schools—-clear an simple. Are you drinking her Kool-Aid?
I suggest you read the rest of Diane Ravitch’s piece on the Huffington Post to learn all the other facts that tell us that it will be a mistake to blindly let Eva have her way based on false promises that the history of evidence says she never delivers.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-ravitch/charter-schools_1_b_5781474.html
Are all f/r lunch children at risk?
Concerned mom, You asked if all kids on free or reduced meals are at-risk. I’d say no but many are.
In fact, the following list of studies may give you an idea of how many of those children are at risk of dropping out or barely graduating from high school with low level literacy skills.
In a nationwide study of American kindergarten children, 36% of parents in the lowest-income quintile read to their children on a daily basis, compared with 62% of parents from the highest-income quintile (Coley, 2002)—-Turn that around, and 64% of those children may be at risk because their parents don’t read to them on a daily basis.
And there’s more: For instance, Children’s initial reading competence is correlated with the home literacy environment, number of books owned, and parent distress (Aikens & Barbarin, 2008). However, parents from low-SES communities may be unable to afford resources such as books, computers, or tutors to create this positive literacy environment (Orr, 2003).
Children from lower SES households are about twice as likely as those from high-SES households to display learning-related behavior problems. A mother’s SES was also related to her child’s inattention, disinterest, and lack of cooperation in school (Morgan et al., 2009).
Identifying as part of a lower/working class in college has been associated with feelings of not belonging in school and intentions to drop out of school before graduation (Langhout, Drake, & Rosselli, 2009).
Perception of family economic stress and personal financial constraints affected emotional distress/depression in students and their academic outcomes (Mistry, Benner, Tan, & Kim, 2009).
Children from low-SES environments acquire language skills more slowly, exhibit delayed letter recognition and phonological awareness, and are at risk for reading difficulties (Aikens & Barbarin, 2008).
Children with higher SES backgrounds were more likely to be proficient on tasks of addition, subtraction, ordinal sequencing, and math word problems than children with lower SES backgrounds (Coley, 2002).
Students from low-SES schools entered high school 3.3 grade levels behind students from higher SES schools. In addition, students from the low-SES groups learned less over 4 years than children from higher SES groups, graduating 4.3 grade levels behind those of higher SES groups (Palardy, 2008).
In 2007, the high school dropout rate among persons 16- 24 years old was highest in low-income families (16.7%) as compared to high-income families (3.2%) (National Center for Education Statistics, 2008).
If Eva Moskowitz cared about the students who qualified for free lunch, she would give them priority in her lottery! She most pointedly does not. Case closed. When I see Eva Moskowitz giving lottery priority to the students who she just claimed in a rally most need new public schools, I will believe she really cares about them.
By the way, the claim is not that are no low-income kids zoned for failing schools in District 2 or District 15 or any of the other districts where the new Success Academy schools will be located – some may have many failing schools. The claim is that Eva Moskowitz is not giving those kids lottery priority for her schools! So despite all the supposedly “thousands” of students on the wait list, many of whom are likely to be those low-income students zoned for failing public schools, the majority of spots don’t even go to them when the schools are in wealthy districts! If Success Academy would change their lottery preferences, I would begin to believe the PR that their goal was to help those students. The fact that they don’t speaks much more loudly than all the rhetoric about helping them I heard at the rally, in Eva Moskowitz’ op eds, and in her interviews this week.
NYC public school parent,
It is my understanding that until very recently any charter school that used a weighted lottery would imediatly lose federal funding. According to this article in Education Week ( http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/03/18/26charterlottery.h33.html) Ms. Moskowitz was one of the leading critics of the policy.
From the article:
“One of the highest-profile criticisms of the previous federal guidance stemmed from a dust-up between the federal government and the Success Academy charter schools, a rapidly expanding network of 22 schools in New York City.
The network was told by federal officials shortly before holding its lottery for the current school year that it was not allowed to give priority to the admission of English-language learners—something the New York state charter law encouraged—while it was receiving federal aid.
Eva S. Moskowitz, the network’s founder and CEO, wrote a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan calling the decision “both legally and morally wrong.” While the network was allowed to move forward with its weighted lottery, it was told in September that it must hold a nonweighted lottery to continue receiving federal money.
Now that decision has been reversed, but not in time for Success Academy to use a weighted lottery for the 2014-15 school year.”
teachingeconomist, that excuse that Success Academy would lose federal funding and that’s the only reason they don’t give lottery priority to low-income students zoned for failing public schools has been used by Success Academy before, but it just doesn’t fit the facts. The fact is that Success Academy had to specifically go back to SUNY and request a special change in their charter when the Bloomberg administration gave them space in affluent Cobble Hill Brooklyn instead of much poorer District 13 in late 2011. They told SUNY they did not want to give preference to kids zoned for failing public schools anymore (ironic, isn’t it, given the rally we just saw). And of course, SUNY let them change that preference and the rest of their schools followed soon after. That was in early 2012 and it was many months BEFORE there was any glimmer that a misreading of federal law would supposedly prohibit any weighted lotteries (which is why Success Academy had no problem retaining the lottery preference for ELL students at that time). I suspect you already know that, but I will give you the benefit of the doubt that you didn’t realize that dropping the preference for students zoned for failing public schools had nothing to do with any legal necessity to do so. In fact, they had to get special permission from the SUNY Charter Institute to do it! And that’s exactly what they did. What bothers me most is misleading propaganda implying they were ordered by law to drop that preference for kids zoned for failing public schools which absolutely is not true since they dropped it many months before anyone interpreted that regulation that way. By the way, it will probably surprise you to know that many charter schools do give priority to low income students in their lottery and have been doing so for at least 2 years. Despite your contention that it “wasn’t in time to change the preferences” this year.
For the record, I did not say there are no failing public schools or low-income students in neighborhoods in some of the places Success Academy hopes to open its new schools. What I said is that Success Academy chose not to make those kids a priority in their lottery. And since those students don’t make up the majority of students in the Success Academy schools that are already located in those affluent districts, it seems rather odd to locate even more schools there instead of in the places where they would serve the most students failed by public schools (as they claimed at the rally they want to do.) Or at least give them priority in the lottery.
Despite what you may believe, those failing public schools that charter school supporters kept mentioning yesterday need more than wealthy hedge funders underwriting half a million dollars in advertising and sponsoring a rally to “support” them. They need more funding. But since Eva Moskowitz has proven to gullible people that it is possible to educate the exact same students(!) with less money, and get stellar test scores, those schools won’t get it. And that is a very sad thing.
NYC Public,
If Sucess Acadamy had used a weighted lottery, would the have kept federal funding? That would seem to be a simple yes or no question that has nothing to do with SUNY.
I look forward to your response.
teachingeconomist, you seem to want to get into some hypothetical debate instead of dealing with facts. I am simply informing you that when Success Academy approached SUNY in early 2012 because it was requesting a change in its lottery preference, no one in the charter school community had any idea that six or 10 months later (or was it a year?) there would be this ruling that supposedly limited weighted lotteries. In fact, it you look up news reports at the time, you will see that there was controversy at the SUNY Charter Institute when Success Academy’s request for the charter revisions at the Cobble Hill school was considered. SUNY Charter Board trustee Pedro Noguera resigned a few days after that meeting! Wouldn’t it be nice if there were still trustees on the SUNY Charter Board willing to put the needs of low-income students zoned for failing schools above politically connected charter chains?
My point is that the decision to drop priority for low-income students zoned for failing public schools had nothing to do with trying to adhere to a law that came out many months later that seemed to forbid any weighted lotteries. Are you really going to state here that it did? I don’t deny that a year later it provided a great excuse for dropping that preference, and no one in the media bothered to see that the two events were in no way connected. Which should have been obvious to anyone paying attention, since Success Academy had no qualms about having the ELL weighted lottery (and even fought to continue it, as you mention.) If the students zoned for failing schools, or even just low-income students, had been a priority for them, they would have fought to continue that preference too. They did not, since they had already dropped that preference themselves!
And to answer your question, I have no idea whether Success Academy would have been able to keep federal funding if they had kept that preference for low-income students. Success Academy never bothered to fight to keep that preference, although to their credit they did fight for the ELL preference. But why didn’t they fight for both? I suppose that is a pointless question, because they had already dropped the low-income preference before the ruling came out. Why?
NYC PSP,
I thought I was asking a very factual based question:if Success Acadamy had used a weighted lottery to determine admission, would they have lost federal funding? It would seem to me that if the Education Week article is correct, the answer is a very non-hypothetical yes, the students would have lost a portion of thier funding. If the Education Week article is incorrect the publishers might want to look for a better staff and the answer to my question is no, there would be no loss of funding from using a weighted lottery.
In any case, my usual example for a NYC charter school is not a Success Acadamy school, but the Community Roots Charter School in Brooklyn. Do you have any thoughts about that school?
If the lottery pool had the same demographics, in portion to the general population, as the surrounding area then there would be no need for weighted lotteries. If the pool does reflect the general population and the school does not, someone needs to audit the lottery itself.
Even if low income students are given a priority, the school can still end up with a much difference make-up if the targeted students don’t apply. Are charters going to properly market themselves to these people?
Once again. I will argue that if SA wanted to prove their methods are superior to traditional public schools, they would fight for a true random assignment of students so there would be no lottery applications at all. If I were a pro-charter politician with the ability to make charter rules, instead of giving her a co-location, I would give her a failing school with condition that she has to keep all the current students (and accept more as they enroll throughout the school year).
teachingeconomist, here is a timeline to make it very clear:
Fall 2011 — Mayor Bloomberg gives Success Academy school space in Cobble Hill, District 15, an affluent neighborhood, but there are low-income students living there. The charter had been granted for District 13 or 14, districts with much poorer students.
Early 2012 — Success Academy applies to the SUNY Charter Commission for permission to drop the preference for students zoned for failing public schools. Permission is granted and in early 2012, Success Academy Cobble Hill no longer gives any lottery preference for those students.
April 2013 — Eva Moskowitz writes a letter to Arne Duncan in which she says Success Academy was “recently advised” they would have to drop their ELL preference or they would lose funding. No mention of all was made of any desire to have a preference for the students zoned for failing public schools, or any low-income students, since that had been dropped well over a year earlier and obviously whether or not it was allowed was not of concern to Success Academy.
Early 2014 — The DOE clarifies its position and says it is completely fine to give preference to ELL students AND low-income students if state allows.
October 2014 — Despite the fact that it has been months since the clarification of that ruling, there has been no attempt to change the lottery preferences for low income students in Success Academy schools.
Actions speak louder than words.
It’s easy to teach those that don’t really need expert teaching to succeed, and then claim victory. They should be focusing efforts on giving more opportunity to poverty students. Isn’t this supposed to be the mission of the charters? That is the real challenge in urban education. Let’s hope the parents have strong community ties to the public schools and that these public schools offer the students a well rounded public education. Do the charters offer sports and music to students? Do they put on school plays for the community? Lots of middle class parents value co-curricular options for their children. Participation in community and after school activities are viewed favorably on college applications. Can the charters offer these activities?
Affluent? or impoverished? is beside the point. I would never begrudge any parent acting in the best interest of their child. I do begrudge the charter industry from claiming they are “public schools” while they get to play by a very different and advantageous set of rules. I do begrudge charters from skimming desperately needed money and space from public schools. I do begrudge the charter practice of culling what are already self-selected and cherry picked students. And I do begrudge the use of students in red t-shirts to score political points. And I do begrudge the use of students in red t-shirts to maximize their profits. That my charter friends is where you lose your argument.
NYS,
It seems to me that magnet schools and programs get to play by a very different and advantages set of rules as well. Magnet schools skim money from traditional school budgets, they compete for space, the certainly cherry pick students if they are qualified enrollment schools and self select if not.
Do you begrudge the magnet school movement for these actions as well?
Do they dress their students in red t-shirts and bus them to rallies on school days to score political points and increase their profits? Please TE you have fallen of this horse so many time you must be pretty sore.
NY Teacher,
If that is the most serious objection you have to charter schools, it will not be very persuasive. Why not concentrate on cherry picking? I know that is an argument against magnet schools, but you might consider the possibility that your argument leads you to object to qualified admision magnet schools.
If you bothered to do a close read of my post you would realize just how damning a comment it is.
And by the way selective admission magnet schools are public schools, not quasi-public schools. They admit selectively but do not actively counsel students out, and distill their enrollments to suit their bogus claims. And they do not take money for student that they do not serve.
NY teacher, selective/exam NYC DOE middle schools and high schools absolutely do counsel out students and/or see children leave voluntarily for a variety of reasons (the work is too hard, too much homework, child is getting bad grades and is worried about college, commuting issues, etc.). The number of children who leave is significant enough to require the DOE to administer a separate section of the SHSAT to fill seats in each school’s incoming 10th grade.
Do selective admission magnet schools include teacher reviews like these?
http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Success-Academy-Charter-Schools-Reviews-E381408_P2.htm?sort.sortType=OR&sort.ascending=true
NY Tecaher,
I tend to look at schools from the viewpoint of the student rather than the teacher. If schools that cherry pick are a problem for students, ALL schools that cherry pick are a problem for students, not just some of the schools.
Tim,
How about reading the entire comment. Counsel out students and distill enrollment in order to support BOGUS CLAIMS. Magnet schools don’t keep the money for the students they no longer serve. And magnet schools do not have attrition rates bordering on 50%.
I have never heard magnet schools claiming they are model schools for how all those failing public schools can improve education. I have never heard magnet schools claiming that their success demonstrates that any school can get their results if they only use their curriculum and teachers. But here is what Eva Moskowitz published this week: “…there is another even more pernicious myth: that poor and minority students can’t learn or could only do so with some massive and fiscally impossible infusion of resources.” And the proof: her charter schools that supposedly can educate any child who wins the lottery! They don’t need any more money or resources!!! If you don’t find that misleading, then I don’t believe you truly care about kids in failing public schools.
NYC Public School Parent,
I am more interested in what schools do than what representatives of schools say. Qualified admission magnet schools like Brooklyn Technical High School do many of the things that NYS Teacher begrudges.
So you are telling me it is okay for Eva Moskowitz to say that those failing schools don’t need anymore funding, because her schools prove that they don’t need any? I don’t think I have ever heard anything so absurd in my life. I am not even certain you believe it yourself.
Eva’s schools do have extra funding. She has a few Wall Street billionaires on her board. Last time she had a fund-raiser, she collected $7 million in one night. Sure beats bake sales.
Should her students not benefit from the additional resources? Some elementary schools in NYC are able to raise a million dollars a year from the wealthy parents living in the catchment areas. PS 321 must have some unbelivable back sales.
I doubt any school outside of a chosen few get $7 million in extra funding, TE. In my district, you can qualify for matching grants. HOWEVER, you have to get donations to qualify. My low SES school doesn’t usually qualify because we can’t get the donations in the first place. So the rich schools get richer and we get poorer.
Threatened,
You might remember that Dr. Ravitch’s grandchildren attend a “public” school where the PTA raises a million dollars every year in extra funding. These schools would apparently be common on NYC.
Here is a NYT piece about the PTA budgets at the city’s wealthiest zoned public schools, whose student populations are jarringly different from the system and city, racially and socioeconomically.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/06/03/nyregion/at-wealthy-schools-ptas-help-fill-budget-holes.html
The two mothers quoted at the end of the piece are pulling their punches: donations would plummet if these schools of privilege had to share with everyone else.
Here’s a bit of a conundrum for charterites and privatizers and free market fundamentalists: if you disagree with my characterization that the “education reform” model is really a cover for a fraudulent business plan reminiscent of others—which is why I sometimes label it the Potemkin Village Business Plan for $tudent $ucce$$—
Then why, when Eva M makes choices about expanding her franchise, does she consciously and deliberately goes where the ROI is greatest and the need is least, and not where the ROI is least and the need is greatest?
*Yes, I am overstating it a bit, but not by too much.*
Inquiring minds want to know…
And answered by a very old and very dead and very Roman guy:
“For greed all nature is too little.” [Lucius Annaeus Seneca]
You don’t need a Greek guy to tell which way the wind blows… [apologies to Bob Dylan]
😎
I would be willing to bet that very few teachers at public magnet schools have observations like these:
http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Success-Academy-Charter-Schools-Reviews-E381408_P2.htm?sort.sortType=OR&sort.ascending=true