On November 28, the Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece by Eva Moskowitz, CEO of the Success Academy charter chain in Néw York City. Moskowitz claimed that the neighborhoods with the most charter schools saw the greatest gains for their public schools. She called the expansion of charter schools a “windfall” for public schools.
This seems counter-intuitive since charters often have fewer (or no) students with disabilities and few English language learners or disruptive students. This means that the local public schools have more of the students who require extra resources. Thus, the “windfall” is hard to discern.
Fortuitously, young scholar Horace Meister decided to check the data.after working at the Department of Education headquarters for more than a decade, he knows how to analyze the numbers.
This is his analysis:
The Wall Street Journal recently decided to publish an essay signed by Eva Moskowitz, the founder and CEO of Success Academy Charter Schools in New York City. In the essay Ms. Moskowitz defends the role of charter schools in public education. Obviously the editors at the Wall Street Journal did not bother to fact-check her writing, so we will do their work for them.
Ms. Moskowitz attempts to defend charter schools from two accusations 1) that they cherry pick students and that 2) this cherry-picking has negative consequences for local public schools and the students who attend them.
Although she raises the cherry-picking issue she never fully addresses it. We will not let her get away with that. Ms. Moskowitz brags about how many students at Success Academy are eligible for free lunch. She forgets to compare this to the averages at the local public schools. We will do her work for her and for the editors who should have insisted that she do this.
The 2014 Progress Report data, used to compare the performance of all New York City public and charter schools, was released last month. These data show that Success Academy in Harlem serves 9.5% fewer students receiving free lunch, 18.5% fewer students on public assistance, 64% fewer students who live in temporary housing, 46.8% fewer English Language Learners, 44.6% fewer special education students, and 93.2% fewer of the highest need special education students than the average for public elementary and middle schools in District 5 in Harlem.
Whether on purpose or by accident, it is clear that charter schools are cherry-picking students. This may be because they spend most of their marketing budgets, which are vast and had been subsidized by the public schools for many years, on outreach to only specific students. This may be because they refuse to enroll students, even those who win the lottery, if they do not attend pre-enrollment summer school or meet other criteria. It may be because students who misbehave are suspended or expelled at sky-high rates. It may be because the parents of students with challenges do not bother to apply. Whatever the causal explanation, charter schools serve a select student population.
Ms. Moskowitz argues that the data show that public schools in districts with more charter schools had improved test performance over the years as compared to districts with fewer charter schools. Her evidence is of such poor quality that, were it not for her obvious ideological agenda, it is hard to explain how a former professor with a PhD could make such elementary errors. Some errors are of methodology others seem to be outright falsehoods.
One falsehood is Ms. Moskowitz’s claim that District 5 in Harlem now ranks higher in proficiency on New York State English and Math exams than District 29 in Queens. She says this can only be explained by the fact that Harlem has more charter schools. But her whole premise is bogus. Again, looking at the Progress Report spreadsheet, elementary and middle schools in District 29 in Queens have an average proficiency rate in English that is 68% higher than District 5 in Harlem. In Math the schools in District 29 in Queens have a proficiency rate that is 75% higher than District 5 in Harlem. Not surprising given the lower poverty rates in Queens, but also contrary to Ms. Moskowitz’s claims.
Is there a correlation between the proportion of charter schools in a district and improved public school performance? Ms. Moskowitz does not answer this question, although she pretends to. Instead she makes unsubstantiated claims. Charter schools often go into neighborhoods and districts that are gentrifying.
Success Academy, with its expansion into Williamsburg, Park Slope, and Lower Manhattan, despite community opposition, is particularly notorious for employing this tactic. Harlem, the neighborhood that Ms. Moskowitz spends the most space discussing, is a prime example of a gentrifying neighborhood. It is equally likely that changing demographics can account for improving test scores, not the spread of charter schools. Ms. Moskowitz does not bother to control for this and obviously the editors of the Wall Street Journal did not care to ask her to. Why bother if she is saying what they want to believe?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Does Eva Moskowitz have a license to lie from New York Governor Cuomo and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan? And for her lies, she is allowed to pay herself more than $500,000 annually from taxes that were meant to support public schools.
Most if not all of Moskowitz’ salary comes from private sources, not taxes. The kids in her schools are, by and large, much better off being in them instead of the alternative public schools. The agenda here has little to do with what is best for children.
Is that you Eva? Best you define “children” more accurately.
Nah, Eva wouldn’t waste her own time. Not when she has so many parents needing to earn their volunteer hours.
MathVale,
It didn’t occur to me that Thimble was Eva, but the alias fits, because I think Eva’s ability for compassion, empathy and honesty would fit in a thimble with lots of room left over for hot air.
And we’d need a tank that would fit the largest mammal on the earth, the blue whale, to pour her ability to mislead, bully, lie, and chase greed/avarice into—-and then we’d probably fill that tank to the brim and then flood the surrounding area to a depth of several feet covering thousands of acres. Maybe Lake Superior might be large enough if we empties it first.
MathVale: it is much easier to attack straw men than it is to engage in genuine discussion.
I used to wonder whether or not people that support $ucce$$ Academy and the like, and post comments here, ever actually read the postings and comments of those with whom they disagree.
I have ceased wondering.
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Thimble,
How do you justify your claim?
Here’s how I prove you wrong:
Disadvantaged and lower-middle-class U.S. students perform better (and in most cases, substantially better) than comparable students in similar post-industrial countries in reading. In math, disadvantaged and lower-middle-class U.S. students perform about the same as comparable students in similar post-industrial countries.
http://www.epi.org/publication/us-student-performance-testing/
There is an achievement gap between more and less disadvantaged students in every country; surprisingly, that gap is smaller in the United States than in similar post-industrial countries, and not much larger than in the very highest scoring countries.
Achievement of U.S. disadvantaged students has been rising rapidly over time, while achievement of disadvantaged students in countries to which the United States is frequently unfavorably compared – Canada, Finland and Korea, for example – has been falling rapidly.
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/january/test-scores-ranking-011513.html
A report released Tuesday aims to debunk claims that the United States lags substantially behind the international competition in education. The study, released by the Stanford Graduate School of Education and the Economic Policy Institute, argues that looking only at the United States’ average score on international exams is problematic and can lead to unwarranted policy conclusions.
http://www.wiredacademic.com/2013/01/skewed-pisa-rankings-us-students-actually-gaining-on-finland-korea/
Students in American schools, when compared to similar cohorts in other nations, outperformed nearly everyone. … US schools with a poverty rate between 10-24.9% had a 527 average on the PISA, higher than the other comparable countries. US schools with greater than 25% poverty rate? There aren’t nations with a comparable rate with which to compare.
http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs137/1109660143449/archive/1116183879018.html
I see the usual responses. Go up to any parents who has a child in a Success Academy and tell them you want to pull their kids out and see the reaction. You think that unless they can afford otherwise, parents should have to send their children to school where you think they should send them. Not one of you would ever send your kids to some of these public schools in Harlem. That’s the bottom line.
Thimble,
No!
The bottom line is what’s best for ALL of the children in the United states and not just those that were cherry picked to go into a corporate Charter that pays its lying, manipulative, cherry picking CEO more than a half million dollars a year.
If the U.S. followed the example of the countries that rank highest in the PISA test, then every public school teacher in the country would receive better training, better support, have a say in curriculum and how it is to be taught, there would be little or no standardized testing with a rank and yank agenda, there would be an early childhood education program modeled on what France has done starting with children as young as age 2, and much more that doesn’t exist in the United States due to political and religious agendas of the rich and powerful fools, for instance, Bill Gates, the Walton family, the Koch brothers, Eli Broad, etc.
Robert, then be consistent and advocate for shutting down all private schools and throwing all kids in the same kettle. I believe if you looked into the data, you would find that the outcome for affluent students attending private schools is no better than those attending public schools. Don’t just pick on the poor families.
Thimble, I challenge your assertion of “what is best for children”. It seems like the idea at these academies is “what’s best for certain children”. Children with disabilities please do not use the “normal kids only” fountain and enter through the back door. At the very least, Reformers and their supporters should be honest. Cherry picking puts the “A” in “Success Academy” to Reformers because they exclude kids deemed undesirable.
Rather than close private schools as you suggest, I think at times we should start a constitutional amendment to close down all public schools and privatize everything. Let the public decide: either they fully support public schools or they want to turn from democracy to corporatization. America just seems to limp along in a limbo of lukewarm support and constant interference in the classroom. And just outlaw teaching as the public seems to care little. Every family for themselves in a Randian utopia of individualism and free market forces. I often wonder, does America even value teaching and schools anymore?
Lloyd Lofthouse: glad to see you didn’t fall for a cheap debate trick. I read and heard about it while still in high school.
When it becomes impossible to argue the merits of one’s positions, simply ignore what has actually been said and written, attribute fictional and damaging views to those with whom you disagree, and when challenged on your dubious assertions and outright falsehoods claim that nobody is giving you a fair shake.
That is, change the whole history and nature of the conversation to play to your strengths and to avoid your weaknesses.
So when the above posting and many of the comments show how Eva Moskowitz and $ucce$$ Academy are severely limiting—and beginning to eliminate—choice and voice for public school students and parents and staff and communities, claim without the slightest evidence that the posting and many of the comments—
Are about limiting, or eliminating, the choice and voice of parents whose children are in a $ucce$$ Academy.
¿😲?
And this shameless switcheroo will go unnoticed on “Diane Ravitch’s blog A site to discussion better education for all”?
Why attempt it at all? Perhaps it’s an unintended compliment:
“Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.” [François de la Rochefoucauld]
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Thimble: When you say “go up any parent” which parents are you referring to? Do you mean the 40% of parents whose kids are still left at a Success Academy by the end of elementary school? Or should we ask the 60% of parents whose kids were encouraged to leave/ kicked out/ suspended/ not the right fit/ not provided with the appropriate special education services at Success Academy?
Lloyd, I strongly agree with what you say about teachers. I’m afraid if you talked to Andreas Schleicher, you would find you are misinformed about standardized testing, which is prevalent in all top performing countries. I also doubt you would let me pick where your children go to school for the better good. Along the same lines, I don’t think you should have the right to tell a parent where she can send her child to school, particularly when that child is doing just fine where she is. Go up to a lawyer or doctor and tell her that she has to pull her kid out of a private prep academy for the common good and see where that gets you. The truth is you only can pull that off by going after poor people. I don’t give two hoots about Eva or what she is paid or what anybody thinks of her. I care about whether children in the Success Academy schools are doing well, and that very much appears to be the case. If it can be demonstrated those results were obtained by cooking test scores, then by all means shut her down.
From the Wikipedia page on Andreas Schleicher: “At 10, Schleicher’s elementary school teacher judged him unfit for an academic secondary school (Gymnasium). His father removed him from the state school system and sent him to the Waldorf school.”
Figures. A guy who’s pushing standardized testing on the rest of the world never had to take one himself in school.
Dienne, what an amazing discovery about Schleicher!
@Thimble You claim to “care about” children enrolled in Moskowitz’s lucrative empire, but make no mention of those who have had resources stolen from their schools because of the precise reasons of selectivity, discrimination, and others discussed above. In other words, you “care” about some students at the expense of others. Where I’m from a system that allows some to benefit at others’ expense is not only considered the opposite of equity, it’s oppression. The fact that you’ve extended the ability to oppress others to a handful of folk outside of the typical over-privileged group doesn’t make it any less oppressive.
Oops, I got my threads mixed up. See above, Robert. Great conversation, everybody!
If a doctor, lawyer or Indian Chief PAY PRIVATE MONIES TO SEND THEIR KIDS TO PRIVATE SCHOOL, that is no one’s business. When charters, and for that matter, vouchers, are used, from the public taxpayer pool, and you have the likes of Eva Moskowitz’s success academy residing in the same building as public school, and it is a matter of Eva’s school half getting new paint, new desks, new equipment, etc., and the other public school getting the shaft (when all along it too needed new paint, desks, equipment), and the taxpayer is footing the bill for Eva’s hefty $500,000 annual salary, and yes, this IS to the detriment of “those kids” in the public half of the building, then taxpayers DO HAVE THE RIGHT to speak up about what is not just, and how the monies are spent, and, yes, STOLEN from the public kids. So, Thimble, what say you?
No one is telling people that their kids have to go to public school – but charters aren’t the panacea; they are the cut vein that makes all other schools bleed and starve.
Standardized tests measure only what is on the standardized test. You have to take a leap of faith to link standardized tests to some definition of intelligence, learning, or your assertion of “performance”. The reliance of standardized tests to rank and yank is confounded by the fact standardized tests are developed by people who do well on standardized tests.
It is not the prevalence of standardized tests that is the problem, although we have seemed to pass a point of reasonableness and are over testing children. It is how they are used. No one disagrees that a blood test as part of a routine physical is a bad idea. But we do not do blood tests every day for healthy people. Nor do we (yet?) publicly rank all doctors based on cholesterol levels of their patients. We have completely lost focus on standardized tests as a diagnostic tool and now use them as a political weapon to punish students and teachers.
As far as parents chosing, most private schools, save for the most elite, could not be as successful if not for public schools. If parochial schools had to accept all students and actually teach all students, they would struggle and fail. It is easier for private schools to just turn away those students they do not want to teach.
Thimble,
I want to go back to an earlier comment that I left in this thread where I provided evidence and links that the public schools in the United States are not failing and, in fact, are succeeding.
Why did you ignore all of that solid evidence with links, and why did you change the subject?
NCLB, RTTT, and the Common Core agenda all lead to shutting down and replacing pubic schools with corporate Charters that make a profit for someone, based on the FALSE claim that the U.S. public schools are not doing their job.
But, a mountain of history,facts, evidence, and data proves that claim wrong not once but many different ways and times, and I provided links to a small sample of that information in one of my previous comments that you ignored when you changed the subject and focused on some parents of Success Academy students loving their child’s corporate Charter where Eve Moscowitz pays herself more than $500k and enjoyes the support of Wall Street and Hedge Fund billionaires who pour millions into her coffers to fight PR wars that cripple anyone who says no to her and misleads parents to recruit more students from public schools, and these parents then think they got lucky and won the lottery for their child.
The corporate supported charter movement alleges the U.S. schools have failed and they have based the entire war on public education on that accusation, and they are WRONG, they are LIARS!
The public schools have not failed and this invalidates every thing that’s been done to destroy public education in the United States since Reagan was president.
Based on this lie from the fake reformers, there should be no vouchers for parents to make choices to move their children out of public schools into corporate Charters that leads to profits for corporations and all corporate Charters should lose all public funding.
Now to your claim that other countries give students standardized tests—there may be tests in other countries but they are not being used the same way—as a tool to destroy the public schools.
First, in Finland, they give one test near the end of k-12, and the results are not used to rank and yank teachers or close public schools. In fact, 99.9% of the schools in Finland are public schools. I remember reading that there were a total of 30 private schools in Finland and they had to follow all the same rules and laws that the public schools do meaning that even the private schools operate the same way the public schools do. Not the double standard that has exploded in the U.S. where Democratic public schools are transparent and must follow all ed code laws both state and federal, but the corporate Charters are allowed to be opaque—that means they don’t have to show where the money goes or what or how they are teaching children—and don’t have to follow any of the rules or restrictions, for instance, public schools msut accept all students but corporeal Charters may reject any student they want to kick out for any reason.
Second, in China, there are three major national tests that are used to determine who moves on to the next level and what school they will go to—-there is no choice. If you score high on one of these tests, the child is assigned to a highly ranked school, but If the child scores too low and there are no seats available even in the lowest ranked school, the child is offered vocational training.
In China, about 190 million children go through kindergarten but about 20-30 million graduate from high school and between 10 – 15 million go to college but only after they score high enough on the final k-12 exam to insure a seat in one of the country’s colleges.
In Singapore, the schools are highly stratified and test scores are used to rank and appoint students seats in schools where all of the other students scored in the same percentile.
In none of these countries are test scores used to rank and yank teachers or close public schools. In none of these countries do students and parents have school choice unless they have the money to send their child to a private school without state support.
In France, the national early childhood education program is run by the public schools—-not by corporations in the private sector.
In all of these countries, teachers go through a year of training and then have follow up support.
@Donna I couldn’t have said it better myself. If Success Academy was a private school, I would really care less about what they did. However, when they take public money and public space, close down their schools and force families out on the street to picket, spend millions of dollars corrupting the political process, and then are almost universally described as “not being a good fit for every student” by insideschools.org in spite of being a GenEd, yes, we should voice our opposition LOUDLY.
I think it’s interesting that she feels she has to mention a benefit to public schools although calling her theoretical benefit to public schools a “windfall” is ungenerous and nasty: a “windfall” is an unearned benefit. She won’t even give them credit for her claim of improvement.
Still, claiming a benefit to public schools is a change in ed reform political rhetoric. They’re probably aware that at some point they have to claim some benefit to existing public schools because most kids attend public schools.
The claim was they would IMPROVE public schools, not replace all of them. That’s what they sold to the public. At some point people are bound to start asking how this “movement” improves public schools.
Eva Moskowitch is an evil self centered creep who is laughing all the way to the bank. She goes to the Wall Street Journal trying to “reach” that wall street journal market with some bull shit that is an outright blatant LIE. This creep takes home $500 thousand and the chancellor of NYC schools makes less than half that salary – Moskowitch is a creep just like all of her cronies who “pretend” to be for the students first – what a fuc*** joke. And for the record, Moskowitch should go to a dermatologist and get those warts removed from her face and who knows where else….
Moskowitch is a fake just like her $schools…..She bought Cuomo and New Yorkers are catching on to the bull crap of how these charters perform so well…….Lets look at cohort OK people….the cohort of Moskowtich first class was what ??? Original cohort 82 students ….graduating class 33 students…..The graduation rate did not include the cohort of original 82 students making this witch a fake –dont send you kids there
Moskowitch is a fake just like her fake schools…take special ed students then we can talk
“Today, CREDO published a report on the academic performance of Ohio charter schools. It found that Buckeye charters, taken as a whole, continue to produce mediocre results. With state test scores in math and reading from the 2007–08 to 2012–13 school years used as the outcome measure, the study found that, on average, Ohio charter students are falling behind their counterparts in district schools. Students lost, on average, fourteen days of learning in reading and forty-three days in math over the course of the school year.”
It doesn’t matter. The ed reform politicians and lobbyists who run this state will continue to pour money into charter schools and starve public schools.
What we need is a study on how these clowns have damaged Ohio PUBLIC schools with this insane reckless promotion of an alternative school system that does WORSE then the public school system it was designed to replace.
Good work, Ohio ed reformers. You managed to harm both charter school students AND public school students. It’s lose/lose.
http://edexcellence.net/articles/credo-issues-another-reality-check-for-ohio-charters
I have been part of the grassroots fight against charter schools coming into our public school buildings, taking away space and public monies. In particular, we have fought Eva and her $uce$$ Academies. She is using those poor families, and now more middle income families, for her own economic gain not because she cares about educating children. She could set her schools up in her own buildings if she truly cared, but that would put a crimp in her take home pay. She is also out to grab as much public property as she can. Look at the buildings in the gentrfying neighborhoods she has demanded and has been given. Eva will tell you she knows not where her schools will be placed. We know that is not so. She is no fool. She just fools a lot if folks who think their children are getting the best. We all want what is best for our children, but it should not be at the public expense.
True. Bloomberg allowed her to open her grammar school in the Brandeis High School building and now D3 parents complain that there are not enough high school seats for the District. Upper West Success Academy should move out of the high school and into their own building paid for by their own donors.
Thimble was outclassed here before she even hit send. She attempted to have a battle of wits with a bunch of heavily armed, highly trained opponents. Her attempt at bowing out gracefully is what passes for an admission of defeat and also indicates the possibility of paid troll status to me. It was not a “great conversation”, Thimble simply got repeatedly body slammed. What a loser troll.