A parent of two children at the Success Academy charter chain in New York City reaches out to Mercedes Schneider in Louisiana to spill the beans about the chain’s efforts to kick her children out.
The teachers and administrators made it clear that her children should find another school, but she stubbornly hung on. They weren’t problem children, but the older child was “average,” and the younger one needed extra attention.
That was enough to cause the chain to try to shed them, but their mother ignored all the efforts to push them out.
When the pandemic struck and school went virtual, SA was no more nimble than the public schools. The mother realized that SA is all about grading students, not teaching them.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I guess this is victim blaming, but I lost all sympathy for this woman when she re-enrolled her son and even enrolled her daughter after she herself described her son’s situation at SA as “abusive” (I do, however, have very deep sympathy for her children). It’s kind of like saying, “I went to a Trump rally and I was appalled that people weren’t wearing masks or social distancing. They’d better change that for the next rally I go to!” Maybe if you’re concerned about masks, social distancing and other safe pandemic habits, you should avoid Trump rallies, because, judge him all you like, Trump and his ilk aren’t going to change.
Similarly, if you’re interested in educational practices that put students’ interests first rather than the interests of a lucrative charter, you’d best stay away from Success Academy because, judge her all you like, Eva and her ilk aren’t going to change. This piece reads like some kind of “won’t back down” battle against Eva that this mother thought she could win and get justice for her children. But of course she couldn’t – no one can. The only recourse against a private entity is to “vote with your feet” and not patronize the establishment. Instead, she tried to prove a point, at the cost of her child being repeatedly dismissed early and suspended. We don’t really hear his voice in this essay, so we don’t know what the experience was like for him, but I can only imagine what a “failure” he has learned to consider himself and how he must dread school. What a sad situation all around.
“The only recourse against a private entity is to “vote with your feet” and not patronize the establishment.”
I don’t think you realize the entitlement that goes along with that kind of condescension.
If that private entity and the Trump supporting billionaires who support it have systematically undermined and underfunded the other establishments, then many parents can’t afford to pay for a private school if their public school option is not good. Can you?
Your solution is actually the Trump/DeVos/Eva Moskowitz solution. “If you don’t like this charter, you don’t have to attend”. That has been the mantra that has enabled Success Academy to expand and take more and more resources.
I don’t know why you are victim-blaming. Because “Eva and her ilk aren’t going to change? Wow, just wow. It’s like you are saying “shut up because this is the situation we have and you should accept it.”
The way to change it is to FORCE the change by coming forward.
Why give Eva Moskowitz a pass because she “and her ilk aren’t going to change”?
Why not criticize her and amplify the criticism instead of shutting it down by blaming the parent?
She could have come forward during her son’s first year and then gotten the heck out like zillions of other people. But instead she’s forcing her son to continue to endure a situation she herself describes as “abusive”. The fact that she requested anonymity to prevent retaliation indicates she plans to return AGAIN next year! How much abuse is she wiling to have inflicted on her child to make her point?
The simple fact is that there is very little recourse against a private entity other than to not patronize it. I’m not saying that’s a good thing, I’m saying that’s the way it is. If you think a restaurant serves crappy food with poor hygiene, you can write to their corporate offices and protest and sue them and whatever else you want, but you have no control – their corporate executives make all the decisions. Yes, some people have made some positive strides by doing those things, but, in the meantime, while you’re writing and protesting and suing and whatnot, do you continue to eat there? Hell no.
I’m all for people who have experienced SA to speak out and fight back in any way they can. But you don’t continue to subject your child to an “abusive” situation just to prove a point, just as you wouldn’t let your child repeatedly suffer food poisoning just to prove a point.
Why do you keep comparing Success Academy – a private organization run with taxpayer dollars – to a private restaurant which does not get taxpayer dollars?
Why is your focus on the victim? Success Academy is not a private school that parents with means can choose if they don’t like their public school. But you keep making comparisons to private restaurants.
If the parents who are there do not speak up, and just follow your orders and shut up and go back to their real public school that accepts anyone so that Success Academy can replace their kids with higher performing students who are less expensive to teach, what good does that do?
You are repeating the mantra of the right wing Republicans and Eva Moskowitz agrees with you.
I repeat, why do you keep comparing Success Academy to a private restaurant. It is a privately run food bank which takes public money from the other food banks, starving those other food banks of the decent quality food that they need to provide to all the families who attend. The answer is not to blame the parents using the food bank but to blame the food bank for acting unethically.
Something you have yet to acknowledge. Do you not recognize that if everyone takes your advice – which happens to be the exact same advice that Eva Moskowitz and Betsy DeVos and Donald Trump give – it simply empowers charters to take even more resources from public schools?
Why are you blaming the victim?
Criminey you have some reading comprehension issues.
You: “If the parents who are there do not speak up, and just follow your orders and shut up….”
Me: “I’m all for people who have experienced SA to speak out and fight back in any way they can.
Do you see the difference there? Do you see how hard it is to talk to you in good faith sometimes?
I don’t know how much clearer I can make this. SA is a private entity, just like any other private entity. Just because it gets public funding does not make it a public entity, any more than Lockheed Martin is a public entity because it gets public funding. I think you understand that.
As a private entity, the families that choose SA are akin to customers that choose McDonald’s or Olive Garden or whatever. If you are unhappy with Olive Garden, you are most certainly welcome to voice your complaints, but good luck getting anyone to listen to you, especially if you continue to patronize the restaurant. They don’t have open meetings where you can speak. You have no voting power. All you can really do is NOT GO THERE. So if you are unsatisfied with their services, why would you continue to go there, especially while you are trying to speak out about your dissatisfaction?
As a private entity, SA does not have meetings open to the public. You have no vote for any of their corporate executives. All you can do is speak out, which, again I ENCOURAGE PEOPLE TO DO!!!, but as long as you continue to send your child to the school, you are supporting the school and enabling their malpractice.
Furthermore, and, again, I’ve already said this as clearly as I know how, but when you feel your child is in an abusive situation, it is your responsibility to do everything you can to get him out of that abusive situation. Your child is your primary responsibility, so if others are not managing their responsibility toward your child, you must do what you need to do to protect your child.
It sure would be nice if Eva took her responsibility toward children as seriously as she takes her political image and her bank account, but she does not and no amount of fighting, protesting or anything else is going to change her. Like Trump, she is immune to shame and, for now anyway, she holds all the cards. So as long as she is in charge of Success Academy, Success Academy will continue to be an abusive place that parents need to protect their children from.
In any case, I’m done talking to you because no matter how carefully I say what I’m saying, you find ways to twist and distort it, so further discussion is pointless. Have a good day.
Shoot, sorry, I overlooked this: “Do you not recognize that if everyone takes your advice….”
If everyone took my advice and refused to subject their child to Eva’s abusiveness, SA would collapse within a year, same as Olive Garden would go under if no one ate there.
Anyway, now, over and out.
From Survivors of Success Academy on Twitter:
“I took my daughter out of the school at the end of this year because it was mentally and emotionally causing so much pain in our relationship. My daughter constantly told me she felt like a robot.” #insidesuccess
8:57 PM · Jul 7, 2020
MickTheQuickFan@JMRivers17
·Jul 7
Replying to
@SurvivorsOfSA
Hey, here’s an idea: Go to another school.
Socrates@PlatosCave1929
·Jul 7
Replying to
@SurvivorsOfSA
Thousands of families who didn’t get a slot via lottery would dance for joy at the opportunity to get that seat.
And a certain poster on here repeats these pro-charter comments. If Success Academy doesn’t want to teach your child because your child is too much of a bother, just get out so that the kids who Success Academy wants to teach can take their spots.
It is odd that a person who frequently posts on a blog which supports PUBLIC schools is promoting the Betsy DeVos view that education is all about “customers” and if the customer doesn’t like the treatment they are getting at Olive Garden or one of DeVos’ “Christian values” charters, he just doesn’t have to attend it. After all, as long as SOME white Christians love that charter school, that’s all that matters.
Who needs regulations when the market will decide, right? Just leave and ignore the fact that SOME students are treated differently than others because the school wants to teach them and doesn’t want to teach yours.
It is beyond shocking that a so-called progressive Bernie supporter believes that the right thing to do when a charter doesn’t want your kid but does want other kids is to obey the orders of the charter and leave instead of fighting for what is right.
One of the central critiques (from this parent who is opening up to Mercedes) is that Eva boosts the number or percentage of high scoring students — and overall scores — by, in part, weeding out or kicking out low-scoring students. She does this regardless of how well those low-scoring students behave and adhere to Eva’s extreme, militaristic regimen. Sure, it’s great if they behave and follow every single, gosh-darn rule, but even if they do … if they also score low on tests, and/or are innately less intelligent, which leads to low scores …. OUT THEY GO!!!
Well, John Merrow confronted Ms. Moskowitz with this accusation … one backed up by countless people to whom Merrow spoke — former Success Academy students, teachers, administrators and also the public school administrators that must take on the burden of educating the students Eva dumps — Eva was not happy.
Eva wasn’t havin’ it, and this prompted her classic “crazy talk” reply.
She uses the word “academics” in referring to the high scores having resulted from kicking out certain kids boost SA’s academics. In using that word, what she’s referring to is the school’s overall test scores from the remaining students whom she doesn’t kick out.
at 7:48
MERROW: “Do you ever use out-of-school suspension as a way to (air quotes with his hands and fingers) persuade parents that … to … ”
(Merrow’s voice trails off, but the implication of what he would have said next is “get the parents of low-scoring, special ed, and/or non-cooperative students to choose to withdraw their kids from Success Academy.”
This was done so that Eva could later claim that *we didn’t kick ’em out. Those parents “chose'” to leave.8 )
EVA: “No … we don’t suspend in order to boost our academics. Like (saying) that … That’s just … crazy talk!”
Freeze-Frame at 9:16 …. you’re looking into the face of pure evil. The way she leans forward and shoots vicious glares at Merrow … Jesus. And this is how she behaves in front of cameras. Just imagine how intimidating and terrifying this woman must be behind closed doors.
I’m not transcribing any more, but the exchange continues with Eva attempting to refute that accusation, pointing to how “the statistics” don’t show that accusation to be true.
Merrow’s narration then contradicts that, saying that no, the statistics show the accusation is exactly true.
Page 6, Fox and Daily Mail reported a few days ago about one of Success Academies’ benefactors, John Paulson.
Paulson complained to the Spence School ($50,000 a year tuition school that his white daughters attended) that the school had anti-white bias.
The site, BlackSpenceSpeaksOut, evidently, thinks the bias goes the other way.
Regarding Paulson- rich, white, male privilege skews perception and/or motives for school privatization are suspect.
While I do feel sorry for this parent for the inappropriate treatment her children received at Success Academy, these stories are nothing new. We knew two families who were in the inaugural kindergarten class of Upper West Success Academy. One family left within a few weeks of the school opening. The other left by Christmas. The family who left quickly had a child with a learning disability. The mother said that Success Academy’s private funding was based on test scores, so they kicked out children who tested poorly. In the other family the child had a horrible experience. The parents told me that the child hated school. They compared Success Academy and it’s punitive disciplinary measures to a Catholic school of yesteryear. The desperation of the mother to remove her child from Success Academy and find another seat in another public school was very sad. Both of these students graduated from eighth grade this June.
Given that the school clearly was a fraud from the beginning, I have been incensed by the preferential treatment it has received from the city and state and the kid glove treatment in the press over the years. There are clearly very powerful and well-connected interests behind Success Academy. These are wealthy people who want to defund public education and break the teachers union. Success Academy’s pr spin obscures these nefarious aims.
However. these fraudulent organizations would not have been possible without decades of union and public services bashing from libertarians. In fact it has been documented that the Koch Brothers were specifically against public education because public schools build community. While the coronavirus pandemic is clearly a tragedy, one thing that I hope will happen is the recognition that public services are essential, particularly to working people. The extent to which the coronavirus has deeply impacted everyone with the exception of the most wealthy will hopefully galvanize public sentiment towards a greater collective good.
a helpful summation in times of larger confusion and worry: “The extent to which the coronavirus has deeply impacted everyone with the exception of the most wealthy will hopefully galvanize public sentiment towards a greater collective good.”
“When the pandemic struck and school went virtual, SA was no more nimble than the public schools.”
Betsy DeVos strongly disagrees. NYT reporter Erica Green tweeted this July 8, 2020 at 12:16pm:
“So far, DeVos is reiterating almost verbatim what she told governors on a call yesterday, and calls out Fairfax County Schools again as a “disaster.” Gave a shout-out to Success Academy in NYC for its successful distance learning in one week.”
Anyone who believes that SA established “successful distance learning” in one week also believes that “Betsy DeVos has the talent, commitment, and leadership capacity to re-vitalize our public schools…” That person would be Eva Moskowitz herself.
We all recall that Eva Moskowitz made it her personal mission in 2017 to demand that the Senate confirm Betsy DeVos for the good of students everywhere — Moskowitz gave media interviews and wrote op eds endorsing DeVos and took every opportunity to reiterate her love for DeVos and how they shared the same values. It is only fair that DeVos return the favor and praise Moskowitz and return Moskowitz’ love and admiration for her. They are two peas in a pod who both recognize the real value of children and share a very similar respect for truthfulness and integrity.
There is a twitter feed called “Survivors of Success Academy”, where teachers and parents share their experiences.
One parent of a 5th grader posted a letter (with names blacked out) received about their child being given an out of school suspension just this past February for “Defiant behavior by refusing to follow directions and repeatedly yelling at school leaders”. It’s shocking that the overpaid “educators” at Success Academy cannot come up with anything other than “suspend that defiant 10 year old and don’t let the child set foot in this school — that will teach them!”
But the real villain isn’t just Eva Moskowitz, just like the real villain isn’t just Donald Trump. Trump alone, without Mitch McConnell, William Barr, and a host of other white male enablers in the Senate and White House could not do all the harm he has done.
And Eva Moskowitz could not continue her policies to make the children who she doesn’t want to teach feel so terrible about themselves without the SUNY Charter Institute board members. According to the website, those trustees are 4 white men – 3 lawyers and a former politician/police chief – and Merryl Tisch.
Lucky for the SUNY Charter Institute board, the NYC education journalists believe their job is done if they idly wonder on twitter whether SUNY will ever take action instead of being journalists and asking SUNY over and over again why they have done nothing and why those white men and one white women have absolutely no concern about why the 9th grade class at Success Academy High School had 191 students and yet only 99 students graduated 4 years later. Anyone think the 4 white men and one white women at the SUNY Charter Institute who cheer on Success Academy instead of doing their job would have a little more concern about the fact that out of 191 freshmen, only 99 are graduating if those students where white just like their own children are? How much does racism affect their belief that the only African American and Latinx students who matter are the ones that white woman Eva Moskowitz deems worth teaching, and what happens to all the other African American and Latinx students at Success Academy is not a concern to them at all? What else but racism explains why the white SUNY Charter Institute board members seem to believe that a white charter CEO who graduates barely half of the 9th graders in her high school in 4 years is a miracle worker? Would those white SUNY Charter Institute board members think a high school with mostly white students who graduates barely half of their 9th graders in 4 years is performing miracles? Would the white journalists who cover education in NYC believe that, too? Would Elizabeth Green at Chalkbeat be overpraising a charter school – as she has – with that kind of incredibly low 4 year high school graduation rate if those students weren’t almost exclusively African American and Latinx?
Maybe if there were real journalists who covered education in NYC instead of charter enablers who never ask too many inconvenient questions or dutifully write down whatever the charter CEO tells them without following up, the white folks at the SUNY Charter Institute who enable Eva Moskowitz might start caring about the other SA students who disappear instead of embracing the racist notion that the only ones who matter are the ones who give white charter CEOs and the white SUNY Charter Institute board members bragging rights.
I don’t understand why any school would want to get rid of a student who was not doing well. When I was a teacher I often had such students, but it was my job to help them get better. And that worked all the time. A studen’t problems can almost always be solved. It’s just a matter of showing you care abought him or her and then giving a little extra attention and help. To do such things is an important part of the teaching job.