New York City’s vaunted Success Academy, which boasts the highest test scores in the state, the highest teacher turnover rate, and very likely the highest student attrition rate (unsure because unreleased by city authorities), has announced that it will be all-remote until at least January.
Success Academy is famed for its strict no-excuses policy and its readiness to eject any student who does not comply.
Problems, as the New York Daily News reports.
Under the plan, kids as young as 5 have to log on by 8:50 a.m. wearing their checkered orange and blue uniforms, and sit still with their hands clasped for nearly seven hours of live video instruction.
They also have to ask permission to use the bathroom — and can get a virtual boot and be suspended if they act up, which would turn off their cameras and microphones for a day or more.
“I don’t think it’s right for a 6-year-old … they have to sit there like a robot with their hands folded,” said one mom of a Success first-grader in Far Rockaway, Queens, who asked to remain anonymous because she fears retaliation from the school.
“Every day she cries and says she doesn’t want to go to school,” the frustrated mom told The News.
The article includes the news that Fabiola St. Hilaire, a teacher at Success Academy who sparked a controversy over racism at Success Academy last year, has resigned, saying she could no longer be complicit.
“Working for this organization has truly showed me that as long as I stand with the inaction and blatant disregard for child morality and healthy development it in turn will make me complicit, which I will never be,” she wrote in her resignation letter, a copy of which was reviewed by The News.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I cannot muster sympathy for the Mom who is complaining about the screen-based gulag being imposed on her six-year-old by Success Academy. Remaining anonymous “based on fear of retaliation” is all too common.
My thoughts exactly. Just how bad do you have to think public schools are to inflict that on your child? And have any of these people actually checked into their local public schools? Or do they just drink the Kool-Aid?
It’s a parent’s responsibility to protect a child and failing to do so because you “fear retaliation” from a school that has no hold over you is cowardice.
Incidentally, so these parents were perfectly supportive of their children having to sit with hands folded and not using the bathroom for seven hours in person, but now that they have to witness it themselves, now they’re upset.
Talk about blaming the victim.
I am very critical of Success Academy but I never blame the parents for choosing it. If you have a child who is perfectly easy to teach and you can send that kid to a school with plenty of money to lavish on the “good” kids that they want to keep, you may very well be satisfied, especially if your other choice is an underfunded public school that has to teach high percentages of extremely disadvantaged children.
In fact, the attrition rates are incredibly high at Success Academy, so those kids do leave! Success Academy wants them to leave. Success Academy is delighted that they leave. Some parents are complaining because the school is treating their child the way a school treats a child they don’t want to teach. And those parents haven’t yet realized it.
Parents send their kids to Success Academy because they believe the over the top hype they read in every single NYT and NY Daily News and Chalkbeat article about how Success Academy achieves miraculous results and turns all the students who attend into high performing “scholars.” Those parents assumed there was strictness, but what they did not realize is that Success Academy was not interested in teaching any child who did not thrive in their system. The ones that did thrive were treated much more kindly, especially if their parents happened to be college educated professionals. (Who made up a disproportionately high percentage of families in some of the schools where all the kids weren’t subject to quite that level of control.)
There have been a number of times where Success Academy seemed to change policies in response to affluent college educated parents complaining. When it is parents of economically disadvantaged students complaining, they seem to be summarily dismissed.
Dienne I too find it hard to sympathize with a parent who knowingly chooses a rigid “no excuses” school for their child. I imagine it is done out of fear for the child’s future, and a perhaps a sense of helplessness. Add a huge dollop of naïveté in not imagining how such a regime gets implemented in the hands of young, inexperienced teachers, many of whom have never raised a child.
But, thank covid for a teeny silver lining: remote instruction gives these parents a cold-water reality check. Now SA parents get to walk through exactly what a 7-hr day of that feels like – and see just how their particular children respond to such methods. They even get to try on the role of enforcing it themselves!
bethree5,
Do you not see the double standard here that feeds right into the privatization narrative?
“You have no right to complain if a charter is mistreating your kid (because it is far more financially rewarding to get rid of kids who they don’t want to teach) because you ‘chose’ the charter”.
Charter school parents have the same right to expect charters to follow the rules as public school parents do. Public school parents also have the right to expect fair treatment even if they “chose” a public school.
In your scenario, charters could just serve the kids they want to teach – whose parents wouldn’t complain because the charter would treat their kids nicely! — and do whatever they wanted to the kids they didn’t want to teach because those kids would not be allowed to complain, according to progressives. They must shut up and leave instead and let the charters teach the students who they want to teach and will treat with kindness.
There seems to be a cult atmosphere at Success Academy. I have been contacted many times by former or current teachers at SA, even by a central office administrator, who wanted to “tell the truth” about cruel discipline, inhumane methods, even systematic cheating, and they always say “Don’t use my name. I must be anonymous.” Even those who have left SA are afraid.
IF kids don’t fit in, they will be counseled out via Zoom. If they start crying or screaming, they can be muted, or one can click on “End Meeting”. Simple, short, and effective.
City Council’s fault as well as SUNY Charter. All in bed with each other. Eva may be a monster, but both outfits are monster incubators.
“City Council’s fault as well as SUNY Charter.”
This is half right. It is entirely the fault of the SUNY Charter Institute since the NY City Council has absolutely no authority whatsoever over
Success Academy and if the city council made even one move toward having any authority, Success Academy would take them to court as they did when the NY State Auditor tried to even get a glimpse as to how they were spending the money that the SUNY Charter Institute requires NYC taxpayers to give to Success Academy with absolutely no say in how they treat children to get that money.
The only thing the SUNY Charter Institute has ever cared about are “results” and SUNY has absolutely no concern about how those “results” (i.e. having high percentages of students pass exams) are achieved and how many kids are dumped to achieve that high percentage. Better that 20 students be mistreated and leave, to achieve higher passing rates, than to have lower passing rates because the charter didn’t drum those students out.
It is not surprising that the white businessmen and lawyers who are the trustees charged with oversight of Success Academy have no concern as to why attrition rates are so high or why so many young kindergarten children are supposedly acting out so violently that those 5 year olds must be suspended multiple times. We must assume that the white trustees at the SUNY Charter Institute believe Eva Moskowitz when she explains how violent and dangerous a disproportionately high number of the kindergarten children who win her lotteries are. Is that because Moskowitz is white like them and the very young students who Moskowitz smears as violent and dangerous at age 5 and 6 are far more likely to be African American and Latinx?
I strongly doubt that the NYC City Council would do what the SUNY Charter Institute trustees do and always believe a white charter CEO over all the parents whose kids were treated harshly to get them to leave. The NYC Council would not be pleased if half the students were MIA but those missing students allowed the charter to brag that it has 99% passing rates. The SUNY Charter Institute trustees aren’t just pleased, but they lavishly reward that!!!
Eva Moskowitz can start out with 70 kids and have huge percentages of them leave before the testing grades (and others being failed repeatedly) and the SUNY Charter Institute won’t bat an eye if the students who remain — no matter how few that is — do well.
The Council should not have allowed a former City Council member to become. charter chain owner. Conflict of interest. How long did Eva wait before she started her first school? There should be a minimum y year waiting period. How much did she contribute to changing legislation to foster charters and connect the political culture of the City Council to that of SUNY?
Again, the city council has no say. No one who resides in NYC has any say over what charters come into NYC that our taxdollars must pay for. The only people who have any say are the white lawyers and businessmen who are on the SUNY Charter Institute board who are the sole people with any authority over Eva Moskowitz and they bend over backward to give her the benefit of the doubt over any parents of color who complain and they absolutely do not care how many of those students of color are suspended multiple times at age 5 or how many disappear or are flunked over and over again until their parents “get the message” to remove them from the school, as long as the students who are allowed to remain without being publicly humiliated and harshly punished have high passing rates on state tests.
I have no idea why you would blame the City Council for something that is the fault of Andrew Cuomo and his handpicked white lawyers and businessmen who oversee Success Academy at the SUNY Charter Institute.
Do you have a personal grudge against the NY City Council that you want to blame them for something that is entirely controlled by Albany?
I WISH they had control, but they don’t.
You mean the City Council that allowed Bloomberg get a third term? Was that not the Bloomberg who loved charter schools? But where are the City Council members who have no legal power but have the CULTURAL and POLITICAL influence and weight to hold press conferences or put out newsletters condemning what SUNY is doing? Where are those tho have the media’s attention and some influence? Is city resident taxpayer money used to fund, in part, charters? Because if so, City Council represents the taxpayer.
“You mean the City Council that allowed Bloomberg get a third term? Was that not the Bloomberg who loved charter schools? …”
Do you mean ONLY the 29 people on the NY City Council 12 years ago who supported Bloomberg and not the 22 people on the NY City Council who opposed giving Bloomberg a 3rd term? You do realize that pro-Bloomberg Christine Quinn was roundly defeated in the Mayoral primary by one of the city council members who loudly and strongly opposed Bloomberg getting a 3rd term, Bill de Blasio? I do blame Christine Quinn who hasn’t been in the City Council for years and years which is why I opposed her running for Mayor 7 years ago!!!! Are you suggesting that Leticia James should be blamed because she, like de Blasio, was one of the 22 members who opposed Bloomberg being allowed to run for a 3rd term?
But it wasn’t Christine Quinn or even Mayor Bloomberg who have given Eva Moskowitz power for the last 7 years and it certainly wasn’t some entity that includes progressive politicians you just bashed as the “City Council” — it was Andrew Cuomo and his handpicked SUNY Charter Institute board. Why would you try to drive the focus from the people who are actually responsible to get people to blame the current NY City Council for doing exactly the same thing that Bernie Sanders and AOC are doing and remaining silent and complicit with Success Academy when they all have a loud bully pulpit they could use to criticize Eva Moskowitz?
I certainly was shocked that Bernie Sanders absolutely refused to endorse Cynthia Nixon – a pro-public school progressive – over pro-charter, pro-Success Academy Andrew Cuomo, who actually is to blame. But you should certainly question my motives if I said that Bernie Sanders and AOC are just as responsible for Success Academy’s lack of oversight as Andrew Cuomo’s handpicked board at the SUNY Charter Institute are responsible. Just because Bernie Sanders did not speak out against Andrew Cuomo does not make Bernie Sanders just as responsible for Cuomo as Cuomo himself. Cuomo is to blame, not Bernie Sanders.
These kinds of sweeping attacks are beneath you.
There are people TODAY who are enabling this. So throwing out attacks in order to blame good progressive politicians because they didn’t “hold press conferences or put out newsletters condemning what SUNY is doing” is very strange. You ask “Where are those who have the media’s attention and some influence?”, which describes Bernie Sanders and AOC to a T, and I don’t understand why you would not focus the blame where it belongs. It is possible for someone who is anti-AOC to blame her for everything she DOESN’T criticize that other people do, but it would certainly be odd if someone did that instead of blaming the people responsible — Andrew Cuomo and his handpicked SUNY Charter Institute board members who have the complete power to stop this.
Do you like Andrew Cuomo? Do you not understand how he is directly responsible and could appoint SUNY Charter Institute members who actually did oversight and not cheerleading?
Blaming people with only a bully pulpit for not using that bully pulpit to oppose something is fine, but remember that includes AOC and Bernie Sanders. And I do not understand your position that all of the people with no power except a bully pulpit who don’t use their bully pulpit to loudly condemn Success Academy at every opportunity are just as guilty as the people — Andrew Cuomo and the SUNY Charter Institute board — who are actually responsible.
NYCPSP, As regards SUNY charter board’s “concerns,” “beliefs,” or other supposed motivations [you imply racism], look no further than political aspirations and $$$. Albany’s pay-to-play culture played out in the charter arena is given a blow-by-blow in this article covering the attempt to allow charters the right to certify their own teachers [modified version approved 10/2017; new rule subsequently banned by court decision 6/2018]:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/08/02/whats-the-link-between-charter-schools-political-donations-and-teacher-certification-in-new-york/
bethree,
This is a very good article. I think you should direct your reply to Robert Rendo, since he is the one who is wrongly saying that the progressive members of the NYC city council should be blamed for this and are just as responsible as Andrew Cuomo and the white lawyers and businessmen Cuomo appointed to the SUNY board who serve as SUNY Charter Institute trustees and have sole oversight of Success Academy.
Not only is the NYC city council powerless, but this article makes clear that the entire NY State Board of Regents has “no operational authority over the SUNY board as it makes policy for the charter schools it authorizes”.
I have no idea why Robert Rendo doesn’t want to blame the person most responsible — Andrew Cuomo and his handpicked board at the SUNY Charter Institute, but I guess maybe he is a Cuomo fan?
^^^bethree says: “As regards SUNY charter board’s “concerns,” “beliefs,” or other supposed motivations [you imply racism],…”
I do not “imply racism”. I point out that when a group of white businessmen and lawyers at the SUNY Charter Institute don’t question when a white charter CEO blames the violent actions of 5 and 6 year old kindergarten and first graders as the reason she has to suspend such an extraordinarily high number of those very young children, and the highest suspension rates just happen to be in charters that have almost no white students, then what else but racism could explain it?
Especially when their parents are being ignored. Especially when a teacher whose performance so demonstrates what the charter wants that she is designated a “model” teacher is caught haranguing and punishing a child for not giving her the answer she wanted.
I doubt very much that if those white SUNY trustees had a group of middle class white parents complaining about the fact that 15% or 20% of their 5 year olds were being suspended from their kindergarten classrooms, those white SUNY trustees would believe that an extraordinarily high number of white kindergarten students just happen to be extremely violent by nature, because the white charter CEO who said Betsy DeVos was a terrific choice for Sec. of Education should always be believed over a white parent.
But it does seem as if the white SUNY Charter Institute trustees always believe the white charter CEO who said Betsy DeVos was an excellent choice for Sec. of Education when it is that white Betsy DeVos’-loving charter CEO’s word against the word of African American parents whose kids were mistreated but who the white SUNY Charter Institute board members ignore.
When white SUNY Charter Institute board members approve of the harshest punishments for non-white charter school kindergarten and first grade children because they know in their hearts that all of those children were violent and deserved it (since the white woman who said Betsy DeVos was great told them it was so), then what else but racism explains it?
The school privatization movement is racist. Let’s call it for what it is – a bunch of old white guys experimenting with neoliberalism on vulnerable families. It’s shameful.
With regard to the cult atmosphere it is shocking to me how many parents I’ve heard ask “What is success academy doing?” during the pandemic with the assumption that they were doing something noteworthy. It’s scary how people have uncritically accepted their public relations as truth.
The parents can unenroll their children, from that school. 😐
That is exactly what Success Academy wants them to do. That is the entire point of treating them that way.
I disagree with you with regard to “blame the victim”. These schools have been around more than a decade. Parents know what their reputation is. Maybe they are hoping it won’t be as bad. Maybe they need the longer day for childcare desperately. No one can claim ignorance about what goes on there. Parents talk.
SA’s marketing promises that its graduates will have a successful life. That’s what most parents want for their children. The parents don’t realize that most children will not be there on graduation day.
But you just acknowledged that the media promotes Success Academy as a miracle worker.
Parents don’t know what their reputation is because the few parents who are willing to speak out have their children demonized and attacked. The others quietly leave and likely quite a few have internalized the Success Academy and media view that it is their own fault for having such an unworthy and awful kid. After all, the few parents who think it is the school’s fault are publicly demonized.
And you guys just blamed them as well. You blamed the parents whose kids are not wanted, which is exactly what Eva Moskowitz does. Both of you want those kids out of Success Academy.
These are parents seeking out a well-funded school that can lavish luxuries on the students that they choose to teach. Many parents have no problem with strict rules. You bought into the Success Academy narrative that this is just about parents not liking strict rules.
It is not. The “strict rules” in the Success Academy schools serving affluent and middle class students — a disproportionate number of them white — are not the same “strict rules” in the Success Academy schools with no white students.
The first principal of the Success Academy Hudson Yards Middle School that those affluent students attended had been trained in a Harlem Success Academy Middle school, but the new students and their families seemed very surprised to experience that. They complained and instead of telling the parents to leave,Eva Moskowitz met with them and did not try to do what she does when it is less affluent African American parents and blame their kid and tell them to leave if they didn’t like it. Guess who left? The principal who did not realize he was NOT supposed to use the harsh tactics that he learned at a Harlem SA Middle School on more privileged kids.
It is sad to me that Eva Moskowitz has been so successful in getting even you to buy into the idea that this is simply about strict rules being applied equally. It never was. The video of the “model” teacher showed that it wasn’t about “strict rules” being applied to all students. It was all about targeting and humiliating kids that the school didn’t want to teach and claiming they just wanted the kids to follow the rules.
This is like the “strict rules” of a Little League coach who specializes in drumming out the kids who aren’t athletic because otherwise he would be obligated to give them equal playing time. He seems like a great coach because his teams always win and lots of parents want their kid to be on his team but he does not want certain kids on his team and uses harsh tactics to get rid of them.
You expect the parents to know something that NYT reporters like Eliza Shapiro do not know and have never told them. Which is that if SA decides it does not want your kid there, he or she will be treated very differently than a kid who they want to teach.
Why blame the parents? They want a good school for their kid and believed the expensive hype. They would have remained happy if only their kid had been someone that SA wanted to teach.
@NYC public school parent
Quit the sexist mansplaining. Nothing that you wrote here is new to me. I’ve been following education issues for a long time.
You call yourself a New York City public school, yet seem totally unaware that word on the street about Success Academy is bad. Everyone knows. Where have you been? Clearly not on the playground or at games or at birthday parties taking to other parents.
IME The parents who still consider Success Academy positively do not live near a Success Academy and are zoned for good public schools.
NYCPSP,
I can see if parents were at first naive and sent their kids too SA. But after having inappropriate experiences with the charter, it becomes a civic and consumer responsibility to spread the word and clang as many bells to warn others not to send their children to the school. This has happened to some extent, but more stories need to be told and anyone remaining silent is a coward. No blaming the victim here, only calling out stupidity and cowardice. Eradicating racism and classism starts with not remaining silent about it, regardless of your role in a situation. If you decide to respond, please try and do so in 18 paragraphs or fewer, to be economical.
I was not at all talking about AOC and Bernie before, as you launched into this theme about their tie-ins. I was talking about City Council and culture. It is my most cherished hope that I have not mansplained anything here . . .
NYCPSP, I will agree with you about Cuomo. In a long line of traditional officials, he is a master politician who appears civilized and beneficent and he willfully stays in the pockets of corporate donors . . . So yes, he plays a huge role in all of this. He’s pretty vile. A GOP when it comes to fiscal equity and an AOC when it comes to social policy and identity politics. He is not interested in having wealth properly redistributed in NY state. I never said Cy Council had legal power, but they have something culturally called clout and voice, and they should use it all the time. Politics is way more than just laws and legality . . .
NY has a large number of billionaires. Cuomo adamantly opposes raising their taxes. He is a fiscal conservative.
Robert Rendo says: “I never said Cy Council had legal power, but they have something culturally called clout and voice, and they should use it all the time. Politics is way more than just laws and legality . . .”
And you could say exactly the same thing about Bernie and AOC (you do recall that Bernie could have used his “clout” to endorse pro-public school progressive Cynthia Nixon against Cuomo and he specifically refused to do so, but Bernie did endorse a pro-charter person (DFER’s “politician of the month”!!) against a pro-public school candidate in the Virginia Gov. primary).
But my blaming Bernie for not using his bully pulpit to criticize Andrew Cuomo’s pro-charter policies (and using his bully pulpit to help a pro-charter DFER candidate) would be as ridiculous as you blaming the NY City Council. We should keep the focus on the people who ARE responsible — Andrew Cuomo and the SUNY Charter Institute – instead of looking for scapegoats to blame which just lets them get away with it.
Beth says “Quit the sexist mansplaining…”
I have no idea what that is supposed to mean.
“word on the street about Success Academy is bad. Everyone knows. Where have you been? Clearly not on the playground or at games or at birthday parties taking to other parents.”
I don’t make assumptions based on what parents who I see on the playground or birthday parties think. They also all think Trump is bad. Does that mean Trump is guaranteed to lose by a huge margin?
If it is true that Success Academy is losing popularity and can’t fill its seats, that would be a good thing. But given that reporters who cover education are still as deluded about Success Academy as they have always been — and given that those reporters give outsize attention to the parents who rave about it and still publish non-stop about their miraculous results — I remain skeptical that just because word on your street is that SA is bad, that means that every parent who enrolls should be blamed if their kid is treated abusively by the teachers and administrators who want their child to leave.
My point is that Success Academy does not want to be popular with families whose kids it doesn’t want to teach. It wants to be popular with the families of kids it does want to teach. The harsh tactics aren’t used against all students — they are used against the students who are not wanted. It isn’t the strictness that parents are rejecting, it is the fact that the “rules” are simply the cover – the “excuse” – for targeting, punishing and humiliating the kids who SA doesn’t want to teach. The rate that students are flunked and not allowed to progress into the next grade is a state secret, but it is clearly very high — at least in some of the SA schools that have almost no white students.
You think middle class white kindergarten children who enroll at Success Academy are being forced to sit with their hands folded staring at the computer for 7 hours a day and are punished and suspended if they fidget too much? You think that if their parents complain, are they told the kid should leave? Only if SA wants their kid gone. If they do not, the school is much kinder to those parents and their kids.
Success Academy is responsive to SOME parents. In Dec. 2015, Moskowitz announced that the network was shortening their school day (which was the hallmark of their “my way or the highway” approach that parents previously had to accept:
(from the NYT:
“On Wednesday at dismissal at two Success schools, parents gave mixed reviews to the shorter school day.
“It’s about time,” said Christina Harrison, 34, who has two children at Success Academy Upper West. Upper West attracts more middle-class students than many other network schools, and parents there have frequently complained that the long day makes it difficult for their children to take part in extracurricular activities, according to a former parent who did not want to be named to avoid alienating people at the network. “We want our family time,” Ms. Harrison said. “And we won’t have to walk home in the dark in the winter.”
But Carolina Martinez, who has a daughter at Success Academy Harlem 1, said the change would make life difficult for her, because she gets out of work at 4 o’clock — 15 minutes after the new dismissal time.
“It’s going to be a big mess,” she said. “I’ll have to pay someone to pick her up. It doesn’t make sense. I switched her to this school for the schedule.”
^^^And I checked to see the demographics of Success Academy Charter School in Far Rockaway Queens, where the mom of the first grader quoted in this article sends her kid. It is one of the Success Academy Charters that has almost no white students and is over 80% economically disadvantaged.
“Under the plan, kids as young as 5 have to log on by 8:50 a.m. wearing their checkered orange and blue uniforms, and sit still with their hands clasped for nearly seven hours of live video instruction.
They also have to ask permission to use the bathroom — and can get a virtual boot and be suspended if they act up, which would turn off their cameras and microphones for a day or more.”
“can get a virtual boot” – meaning it is up to the discretion of the school.
Kids are smarter than most adults think.
It won’t take long for most if not all of these kids to figure out all they have to do is to show up in front of the camera late, out of uniform, fidget, and go to the bathroom without asking permission to get a day or two off from the child abuse masquerading as education.
This is child abuse; this should be stopped by the state.
The state INCENTIVIZES this.
The more that Success Academy abuses the kids whom they want to leave, the more they can brag about 99% passing rates on state tests (with the students who remain after they target the students they don’t want to teach). The state — i.e. the SUNY Charter Institute and its handpicked board — rewards passing rates and ignores attrition.
hard truth, and so transparent
Dear Anonymous Mom: enroll your child elsewhere.
Unfortunately, I think that hundreds of years of racism against blacks has been internalized by many of the victims of racism, and believed by them as well.
Regarding harsh discipline for black children, I have heard way too many black parents, including some who are teachers, say “Our kids really need that.” I have no doubt they believe it, too, because I spent a lot of time trying to dissuade them from assuming there is research to support the notion that children of different races need different kinds of discipline, mostly to no avail. Many black parents believe it’s true anyways and said they were raised that way themselves and think they turned out alright as a result.
Years ago, Oprah did a show on this and said she thought the history of harsh discipline among black parents is basically a result of slavery and blacks internalizing stereotypes and negative opinions of their race, in combination with the need they felt to make sure their kids towed the line. (I would have to agree, and none of that ended with slavery, Jim Crow or after that.).
Since a lot of the black teachers I dealt with were under the impression that the only alternative to authoritarian parenting is permissive parenting, I would add that they probably lacked role models for authoritative parenting, too. Maybe they just could not relate when different parenting & classroom management styles were covered in their teacher education programs? So sad.