It is a school day in Néw York City. Across the city, over one million children are in class.
But not the children of Eva’s Success Academies! They (and possibly some allied charters) are holding a mass rally at Cadman Plaza Park in Brooklyn. The park is lined with rented buses. As the children and their parents step off the buses, an adult hands them a hand-lettered sign to carry, demanding more support for charter schools.
There are multiple buses for the recording and video services. This is a well-funded, professionally orchestrated demonstration of support for privatization. If public schools closed for a political rally, their principals would be fired.
The children and parents are all wearing identical red tee-shirts, with the slogan “Dont Steal Possible.” This slogan works nicely in suggesting that someone is trying to close down charter schools, and this imminent threat to their survival must be stopped.
In fact, as is typical with reformer slogans, the opposite is true. Eva and her billionaire hedge fund backers get whatever they want from Governor Andrew Cuomo and the state legislature. And they aim to “steal” space and resources from the beleaguered public schools. They merrily “steal possible” from children with disabilities, children who are English language learners, and children who are homeless, none of whom are wanted by Eva’s Success Academies because they might not get high scores.
The theme of the day is “equality for all children.” A large banner across the top of the speakers’ podium says. “We Fight for Equality.” This is ironic since the typical complaint about charter co-locations is that the charters have more resources, the charters get whatever they want, the charters create “separate but equal” schools within the same building.
It is also ironic that children and parents are rallying for “more charters,” because they are already enrolled in a charter. The children can attend only one charter, right? The beneficiaries of the rally are not the children but charter founders. The more charters they open, the more funding they receive.
It is true that Eva’s schools get very high test scores, much higher than other charter schools. If she has the secret sauce of success, why not include all children, not just the chosen ones? Maybe she should take charge of all the city’s 1.1 million students and show what she can do.
If she truly wants “equality for all,” let her bring the hedge fund billionaires and her secret sauce to save all the children. No cherry picking. No skimming. No exclusion of children who have cognitive or emotional disabilities. All means all. Why not find out if she means what she says?
Does NY not enforce child labor laws anymore?
To your suggestion that Eva take charge of all NYC school children, maybe that’s in fact what Eva is aiming for, the Chancellorship?
That would be a pretty drastic paycut.
But then, maybe they wouldn’t make Eva suffer like that.
I doubt she wants to be Chancellor. She wants to be Mayor.
She’s contemplating running for Mayor in 2017 …
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
Eva Moskowitz does what public schools can’t, because it is against the law. She holds funded, staged, choreographed rallies to destroy transparent, community based,democratic public education so she can pay herself more than the half million dollars taxpayers are already paying her to segregate children.
Be careful what you wish for….Eva could be in charge of all NYC schools after the next mayoral election.
Remembering the rheephorm mantra that “charter schools are public schools too!” and “they’re just like public schools only better!”—
From the posting: “If public schools closed for a political rally, their principals would be fired.”
I await the spokespeople of the rheephorm “commentariat” that appear with such frequency on this blog to explain this.
Not rheally. Not even in a most Johnsonally sort of way…
But really. With facts, logic, consistency, respect.
Eva has thrown down the gauntlet to YOU—Silence is compliance.
I’m all ears…
😎
But Sam Chaltain just assured us that the war is over.
It’s ed reform. It doesn’t have to be coherent or consistent or make any sense.
Just know that the Best and Brightest are directing it and they’re great so it’ll be great,
Sounds enriching, attending a political rally. Probably right up there for a ten year old like field trip to a plumbing supply warehouse or an accounting firm.
Whatever the master, Eva, wants, the students and their parents will do….or get thrown out of school, back to the failure factories. Ask Eva, she’s the boss lady.
“Maybe she should take charge of all the city’s 1.1 million students and show what she can do.”
I think there is an excellent chance that your wish will be granted, whether she is elected mayor or is appointed chancellor when de Blasio leaves office. It sure will be interesting!
Tim,
I can’t wait to see what happens when she can’t push kids with disabilities out.
No need to wait. We already know what will happen, it’s happened, or should I say it failed in various places, take your pick New Orleans, Tennessee, Detroit. Which one do you want?
And Tim, interesting? Maybe for the adults who are the bestest and brightestest but certainly not for the students who have to suffer under the edudeformer “success academy” (sic) regimes.
Diane, they would be essentially “warehoused” with sub-standard education. Even though this would be a direct violation of Federal Law.
I am waiting for the lawsuits that will occur, and wondering how the courts will respond.
“I can’t wait to see what happens when she can’t push kids with disabilities out.”
In other words, she cannot do this?
The video also indicates that this reform movement, in fact, is trying to go back in time not forward in disciplining children.
This parent’s story is a powerful testament to choice. she wasn’t in a million years sending her kid to their neighborhood school and was happy to accept Success’s help in getting her a placement exemption at a public school on the Upper West Side. She didn’t go back to “fix” her zoned school; she happily and understandably pursued a setting that she felt was the best for her child.
Tim, I’d like to see Eva Moskowitz just educate the kids who win the lottery! It’s already a very select group, since they all have parents who care enough about their kids’ education to pursue their charter school. And yet….and yet…. so many of the low-income ones disappear. And her answer to that was…..place schools in wealthy areas and recruit high income parents to hide the fact that so many low-income kids disappear. You can excuse it — as her defenders do — by claiming that children disappear from failing schools. But we both know it is nonsense and that the majority of kids who leave Success Academy aren’t moving out of the city. Success Academy is happy to find a place in one of their other schools when the kids who do well move. And the ones who disappear are rarely leaving because their parents move.
It’s shameful that you don’t care in the least. If Success Academy could educate ALL the kids who won their lottery, THAT would be a miracle. What the heck is the reason that 20% of the 5 and 6 year old get out of school suspensions but only at the low-income schools? And how many parents are discouraged from even enrolling their kid once they go to their first Success Academy meeting? Remember the child in Williamsburg, told she must repeat a grade to enter? That’s a great way to discourage the kids you don’t want to teach, right?
I find it so sad when people like you say that poor kids must be treated like this in order to achieve while rich kids get a pass — and believe me, the kids at Upper West don’t have to follow the rules in any way like the kids at Harlem Success Academy do.
Could Families for Excellent Schools be described as “divisive” or does that only apply when public school advocates rally or protest?
Why can’t Families for Excellent School collaborate or and cooperate, like public school advocates are ordered to do?
By PURE coincidence the Wall Street Journal had an opinion piece praising Success Academy written by a high school principal, all about good behavior, high test scores, and co-occupancy which gives him a privileged perch to preach.
“Why not find out if she means what she says?”
No need to, we already know that she does mean what she says except in her own mind and her mindless followers. Lying liars lie.
She actually says plenty. She’s invited to speak by influential people constantly. The rallies and promotion of the charter chain aren’t even a quarter of her advocacy for The Movement. Her hope is to push this model into every public school in the country.
Here’s she is advising Congress on the economic plan for the lower and middle classes:
Click to access Eva-Moskowitz.Congressional-Testimony.pdf
“Great schools” will solve all economic problems in the country. They eat it up because of course it lets all of them completely off the hook.
In a nutshell, is it racism that has brought us to this point? Why did it get this far? Trickery? Manipulation? Desperation from the economy? All of the above?
I know greed drove it, perhaps. But what gave it the leverage to usurp as much as it did. . .this movement to give up on public schools.
I’m going with racism. I think that is the underlying reason for the temptation to give up.
Greed, yes. Racism, very probably, but even more than racism, “classism.” Poor kids from disadvantaged areas, regardless of race, are seen as requiring more resources (and hence, more money) to teach. As are the disabled. And it’s true, they do require more.
These kids, the poor from terrible environments, the disabled, are not seen as being able to become “productive” citizens.
And of course, they most certainly can, with the proper education, the proper support, and the determination of our society to address the wider problem of economic and social inequality.
Charter schools are the new plantation. Quote me on it. The sad thing is….the attendees don’t seem to know it. Yet.
Greed for profits, from education scams, and greed in avoiding taxes to maintain the “human capital pipeline”.
These are not parents clamoring for more charters. These are those already enrolled being used as stooges for political gain instead of spending the day learning which is really what schools should be doing. There’s nothing better for a corporation to do other than to use children to promote their own self interests.
This is an excellent point. Why haven’t they contact those tens of thousand of parents whose kids are on the waiting list? Is it because there aren’t nearly that many parents and they get turned down by more parents than actually accept? How far down the waiting list do they go?
If those parents really existed in such an exaggerated number, then Success Academy would easily be able to get them to the rally — they have money to burn. Where are those parents?
The reformy movement is propping up the market artificially.
“Democratic presidential candidates are blowing off an education forum that anchorwoman-turned-activist Campbell Brown was expected to host in Iowa this month, and Brown blames pressure from traditionally Democratic teachers unions eager to move the party away from President Barack Obama’s school reforms.”
I keep hearing how popular privatization is, yet Democrats refuse to run on it including President Obama, who never ran on it either.
I suppose it would have been awkward for them when voters found out their K-12 agenda is identical to that of Jeb Bush or John Kasich or Chris Christie. Maybe they can keep that under wraps again until the election is over, although I doubt it.
http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2015/10/bowing-to-unions-2016-dems-skip-campbell-browns-education-forum-000272
The “secret sauce” of success (CC test scores) is a southern recipe from Atlanta.
That recipe certainly doesn’t seem to be available for SHSAT success.
Good one, NYS Teacher!
Eva Moskowitz will announce her intentions regarding the 2017 mayoral election tomorrow at 10:15.
Wikipedia lists the New York Mayors salary as 225,000.
We’ll have to take up a collection. No way the poor dear can survive on that.
If Eva announces for mayor, that means a pay cut from $600,000 to $225,000. I wonder if it is legal for the hedge fund managers to pay her a stipend on the side?
I hope you are joking. I can’t imagine her spending all that money and “strongly encouraging” all kids to be there by closing schools, and then having it all be the launch of her Mayoral campaign. It’s unseemly, but maybe she has been so enabled by the powers that be that she truly believes she can do no wrong.
It would be more than unseemly, NYC public school parent- if this is her intention, it would be totally unethical.
Check the posts coming out with the #dontstealpossible hashtag on Twitter if you’ve the stomach for it.
maybe we need to create a hashtag #dontstealpublicschools
Where is the UFT’s response to this rhetoric? Cannot some avid public school parents and PTA’s organize a rally to counter these actions and unfounded hype? The defenders of public education are missing in action.Our presence in the media should be much greater than it is.
Mulgrew is less than worthless. Time for a no confidence vote.
Shelly, “they” pay big bucks for PR. Public education doesn’t.
Of course, I know that. Nevertheless, our leader’s public responses to all of the abuse over the past few years has been paltry at best. We need to have a much stronger presence in the media and an answer to their obnoxious slogans. If I weren’t a full time teacher, I would try to work with the UFT to coin phrases and rhetoric to counteract theirs. I really wish some parents could organize a counter movement. I just feel so bashed and know that many students and parents love their public schools and teachers.
The PTA (national) took money from Gates. TIME ranks its reporters by benefit to advertisers. The opportunities to defeat democracy, with money, may be finite but, at this point, it seems unending.
PIX11 did a piece on this tonight that was riddled with propaganda. Shortly thereafter it aired a pro-charter ad that urged the mayor not to trap students in “failing schools.” Ruined my dinner.
Again, Raging Horse blog nails it:
———————
School Children Again Used as Props as Taxpayers Pay for the Opening Salvo in Moskowitz’s Mayoral Campaign
October 7, 2015
As I write thousands of New York City charter school students and their parents are unwittingly preparing to play their vital roles in what is being billed as a Rally for School Equality. In actuality, the event is not merely a massive, insidious and grossly unfair attack on Mayor Bill de Blasio, but the publicly funded opening volley in education entrepreneur Eva Moskowitz’s mayoral campaign.
Moskowitz, the founder and virtual queen of Success Academy Charter Schools which have received unconscionably preferential treatment from both the Bloomberg administration and Governor Cuomo, has made no secret of both her outright contempt for de Blasio and her lust for political power.
The rally will consist of students drawn solely from publically funded privately managed charter schools. Accompanying the charter school students will be hundreds of charter schoolteachers, charter school administrators and charter school staff. All will be on the clock and paid by public funds provided by NYC taxpayers.
Those wondering why not a single public school teacher, administrator or staff will be present at a rally ostensibly for school equality are advised to ponder NYC Department of education Chancellor’s Regulation D-130, which states: “Personnel may not be involved in any activities, including fundraising, on behalf of any political organization during working hours.”
Rest assured, any public school student who participated in this rally would be marked absent and the school held accountable. More to the point any public school teacher who participated in such a stunt would, at the very least, have their pay docked for thief of services and be brought up on disciplinary charges. Any principal would be seriously reprimanded and may well find his or her job in jeopardy.
Somehow this inconvenient fact, like so many inconvenient facts, has escaped the attention of Eva Moskowitz and Families for Excellence Schools in their heroic efforts to create equality in schools.
To circumvent the unseemly, if not out right reprehensible reality of using school kids as political pawns and public funds for a political rally, Moskowitz and her allies have done what Moskowitz and her allies do: they abuse the language and call it something else.
(See the use of “scholar” for “student.” )
In this case, the transparent political nature of the rally is deemed irrelevant by calling the event “a civics lesson.” The public are meant to perceive it as a kind of gigantic field trip, if one in which the hedge fund managers and billionaires who bankroll Families for Excellent Schools just happen to fund buses, lunches, and entertainment (in the form of Jennifer Hudson ), as well as tee shirts, hats, balloons, and posters. The entire latter items are branded with the slogan – “Don’t Steal Possible” – that is of itself a political accusation, if one that is highly ungrammatical.
By its name alone The Rally for School Equality should be seen by people who respect language as a transparently political event. At any rate, any conceivable room for debate was rendered absurd by the FES’s shockingly cynical and massively aired video in which a voice oozing concern and outrage tells of a white child is said to be going off to college while a black child, condemned to a “failing school”, is headed to hell.
The ad ends by blaming such a situation, itself a lie, not on Mayor Mike Bloomberg who ruled NYC schools like a deranged king for twelve long years, but on de Blasio who has had do deal with the deliberately destructive policies of his predecessor.
Other than allow people like Eva Moskowitz and Families for Excellence Schools to privatize the public school system, it is unclear what the protesters want de Blasio to do. Close schools certainly and fire mass numbers of teachers to be sure but they can’t come right out and say that. They seem to suggest that all de Blasio need do is wave his magic wand and make “equal” what people like Eva Moskowitz and organizations like Families for Excellent Schools have done everything in their power to systemically make unequal for years now.
What else can result from cheery picking students, booting out all who threaten to fail the sacred tests, commandeering any and all public school space they can get their hands on; above all, swathing their students in the ill-gotten largess of their hedge fund backers so as to make public schools children feel like decidedly second class citizens.
Their cynicism is as is breathtaking as their stated goal is irreproachable. After all, what decent person can be against school equality?
That Moskowitz and her confederates would use children as political pawns and public funds for political rallies should only shock those who have not been paying attention for the past five years or so. That she is has been allowed to do so again and again and again should enrage and disgust us as it reveals the rank cowardice of our elected officials, Danny Drum being a very notable and courageous exception. Despite all this, we expect favorable coverage from all local TV networks. Expect glowing editorial praising Moskowitz and FES in tomorrow’s New York Post and Daily News.
This is the place we have fallen to in what was once the most sophisticated of American cities.
Addendum: This concerning Ms. Moskowitz from the ever watchful Perdido Street School: http://perdidostreetschool.blogspot.com/2015/10/eva-moskowitzs-city-hall-steps.html
Don’t steal possible is not even correct English. So they’re asking you not to steal a description.
They probably stole part of the idea from me. Months ago I posted on the NYSAPE website ” Don’t let governor Cuomo steal our public schools.”
Eva is stealing. Stealing my idea, stealing from our public schools.
Unbelievable. That this shyster is out in public with children when they should be in school, asking them to scream like a pack of wild dogs. Some educator. Pathetic. Disgusting. Disgusted.
From what I gather, current Success Academy parents attend the rallies because they want to support the “cause” and give back and/or they are afraid their school will be closed.
Look up Twitter user @FatimaFarax for a first-person account from a “failed” Success Academy mom. #dontstealpossible
Hmmm.. use to go to the lovely farmer’s market at Cadman Plaza regularly. Perhaps Eva could “come down to earth” long enough to get a few organic tomatoes thrown at her@!
They were out in full force today, drinking the koolaid, even if they were force-fed the koolaid. Campbell Brown’s panties are all in a twittered bunch tonight. I don’t know how she can contain her glee. Its all over Facebook about not stealing possible – and doncha know, it isn’t about public vs. charter now, its about …. ZIPCODES…and the only way to get kids out of those failing public schools in the zip codes where they live and are forced to go is by…..opening charters. Yup. Eva doesn’t make enough money from the taxpayers and her billionaire cronies who pony up cash on the mere snap of her fingers – no – she needs more. She’ll be happy when all the public schools in NY are closed, replaced with her silent-treat-kids-like-prisoners academies and her annual salary can grow and grow. I would imagine Jennifer Hudson is hard up for a buck for appearing there today, or hard up for the publicity, or was duped by families for excellent education – I just don’t get it. I literally saw a post “Eva for Mayor” – and that is what is coming down the pipeline next. Get ready people. You know what I really don’t get the most? Black and brown people are walking lockstep with Eva. They don’t seem to realize that charters are the new plantation.
Here is an interesting read from 2013. This is exactly what is happening with Charter schools – they are a trojan horse, and a cash cow. http://mytruesense.org/2013/10/02/the-agenda-behind-educating-black-and-brown-children/
Thanks for the link.