We earlier mentioned a publication party for a new book about a charter success, called “Mission Possible.” This reader reviews it here:

So that you don’t have to read it, I’ve reviewed “Mission Possible” for you. I’d appreciate any feedback before I post it on Amazon:

The Introduction of this book launches the most gushing, glowing praise of any two individuals since Michael Jordon and Scottie Pippen led the Chicago Bulls to six championship wins in less than a decade. Eva Moskowitz and Arin Lavinia have single-handedly reformed education and rescued New York’s poorest children from the lifelong sentence they would otherwise endure in the city’s abysmal public penal, er, school system. Such praise is written in the third person, so naturally I was interested in who exactly was lauding them so. Turns out that Introduction was written by, well, Eva Moskowitz and Arin Lavinia. Oh how embarrassing when you can’t find anyone else to toot your horn for you. My mother might say maybe that’s because your horn isn’t worth tooting, but let’s not be unkind.

There’s so much wrong with this book that it’s hard to know where to start, but I suppose the obvious place is with the absurd claim that the Success Academies serve the same children as public schools. In fact, there is a qualitative difference between the two populations. Even though the Success Academies lotteries are open to the public and random does not mean that the schools serve the same population as public schools. The application process alone is a selective tool. Only motivated, involved and savvy parents fill out applications for their children’s schooling. Children of unmotivated, uninvolved, and not-savvy parents have no choice but to attend their local public schools. How many children of homeless parents does Success Academy serve? Children of severely drug addicted or alcoholic parents?

Also, Success Academy’s demand for active parent involvement in the school itself is a barrier to entry. Not every parent can take time off from their full time job to volunteer at their child’s school. How many children does Success Academy serve whose parent(s) is/are working multiple jobs each just to put food on the table? Therefore, Success Academy does not serve the poorest of the poor. Where do you think those children end up? That’s right, public school.

Furthermore, Success Academies demand high performance and strict discipline. How exactly is that enforced, and what happens to those who can’t or won’t keep up and/or conform? The authors mention nothing about attrition rates, so we have no way of knowing, but the very fact that charter schools have that option means that they are not serving the same population of students. Again, where do students end up who are “counseled out” of Success Academies? That’s right, public school.

A second suspicious aspect of the book is where the money comes from and where it goes. The authors constantly brag that they get less per student than local public schools. At the same time, they pay teachers more, they have assistant teachers in most classes, they have a bureaucracy that boggles the mind – an army people to observe teaching in progress and offer “real time” feedback, they have all the latest high-tech equipment in abundance for each class, they have more books than the Library of Congress, they always keep their building in tip-top shape (in fact, they have a building manager separate from the principal to manage those issues), etc., etc.

I dunno, math wasn’t my greatest subject, but I’m really having trouble adding all of that up and coming up with less than public schools get. Are we really to assume that public schools are wasting so much money that could be spent on all of those things? Do public school teachers and principals spend their days flushing money down the toilet? Is that why public education is failing?

Or could it be that charter schools also get money from their corporate backers? Or maybe even that they actually get *more* money from the government than they claim? Upon investigation, some evidence of this latter possibility has been found with the KIPP schools in Texas, although the claim has not been investigated in New York. In any case, wouldn’t it be wonderful if public schools even had the resources to clean up peeling paint and fix roof leaks, let alone buy books and technology equipment? Why are such luxuries reserved for privately run “public” education?

Another thing that should be concerning for anyone who is a parent or concerned educator rather than a politician, is the nearly religious obsession with the word “rigorous”. I’d suggest a drinking game involving that word in this book, but I’m afraid you’ll die of alcohol poisoning before the third chapter. Has anyone ever stopped to consider what the word actually means? I think most people conflate it with “challenging”. In fact, however, it means “severe or harsh”. Is that really what parents and concerned educators want for children as young as five years old? Personally, as a parent, I am still trying to shield my almost-six-year-old from many of the severe and harsh realities of the world she’ll face soon enough. What’s wrong with letting her be a child during the only period of her life when she’s allowed to be one?

Over and over again the book talks about developing a love of learning in children, an “edge of your seat” excitement. But if you watch the videos on the included CD, you’ll have a hard time finding any such excitement. The children are all very clearly alert and paying attention in the classes, but I was hard-pressed to find anything approaching joy or passion for learning. I saw the children conducting their “rigorous” book discussions, but I didn’t see any eyes light up with sudden understanding or interest.

Moreover, even if you concur with the value of “rigor” in early elementary education, it seemed to me that claims in this area were inflated as well. The authors over and over again stress the necessity of letting kids struggle for themselves and do the “deep thinking work” on their own. But again, if you watch the videos, you’ll see that children are allowed to “struggle” for maybe all of five seconds before they are guided to or just given the “right” answer. Also, the authors stress the importance of finding *the* main idea – the “deepest meaning” – in every book as a means of developing thinking skills. I for one would hate for my child to think that there is only one main idea in any given book or that that main idea is what the teacher guides you to say that it is.

For instance, the book discusses (and a video shows) a class discussion of the book “The Araboolies of Liberty Street”. The children talk in generalities about freedom and its relation to the characters in the book, but the discussion doesn’t delve at all into the false dichotomy presented in the book between oppressive government versus general anarchy. It doesn’t address the moral issues involved in violating even oppressive laws or how the Araboolies could have done things differently to change the laws rather than respond with their own version of anarchy. These are certainly issues I’d want to explore with my children if I were tackling this kind of book with them.

My daughter is in kindergarten in a progressive school which very much does not emphasize “rigor”. I was privileged to witness a book discussion in her class which was far more free-wheeling and yet in depth. The children were all engaged and animated, their faces lit up, the children practically leaping physically into the conversation. Many of their contributions were more like brainstorming or free association of whatever “silly” ideas came into their heads, accompanied by a great deal of laughter, but ultimately the discussion was rich and meaningful, and far more in depth than the manufactured discussions portrayed in this book and the video. When you focus on the joy of learning and trust children to run with it, the results are even more spectacular than “high expectations” and “setting the bar higher” with a sole focus on “rigor” and working above grade level.

The book focuses almost exclusively on reading/literacy and writing, and even that focus is narrowed to reading comprehension, understanding literature and story writing. Only very briefly in passing do we get any understanding of reading as mechanics (phonics, sight words, spelling, grammar, etc.), let alone any discussion of any other subject area. We are assured that Success Academy students (“scholars”) get a full, rich curriculum including math, science, social studies, and arts as well as extras such as chess and karate, but we have no idea what these subjects look like at Success Academy or how students have any energy for such subjects after three hours of daily literacy.

The authors are also noticeably silent on discipline issues. The implication is that students are so actively engaged and enchanted that they simply don’t act up. But I have kids – I know better. First, it’s impossible to keep them engaged for a solid ninety minute block of time (nor would you want to, developmentally speaking), and second, even when they’re engaged, they have enough left over to get into mischief. We do get a very brief glimpse in one of the videos of a youngster making a silly face by pushing his nose up with his thumb during a discussion, but the camera cuts away quickly and we don’t get to see what becomes of the young man.

[After posting this, the writer added this new paragraph. For authorship, see comments]:

Reading this book feels much like attending a corporate-sponsored motivational speech. Everything at Success Academy is very choreographed and micromanaged down to the smallest details. Principals are supposed to read the books that teachers will be teaching and sit in with the “grade level team” as they plan how to teach the book and practice on each other. Each teacher in the grade level is teaching the same lesson at the same time. Lessons are videotaped and teachers watch clips of themselves and other teachers to critique each other. There is very little sense of the teachers using their individual personalities, teaching styles or relational styles with the children. Everyone, the authors assure us, is thrilled to be receiving constant feedback, constructive criticism and professional development. All of this is done so that teaching can be “fast”. Personally, when I think of “fast”, I think of fast food and it leaves a sour taste in my mouth to think about that kind of bland, standardized ethos being applied to education.

If you’re looking to turn your child into a polished, well-spoken corporate clone who is used to a fast-paced environment and whose idea of critical thinking is being able to come up with the answer which the person in authority is looking for, Success Academy may just be the school for you. But if you celebrate your child for the creative, joyful individual he or she is, you might want to look elsewhere. In a culture that celebrates “fast”, non-conformity is not an option.

I would normally give a book such as this two stars for its sincerity and for the few usable tidbits available therein, but I’m subtracting a star for the needless, gratuitous assault on public education and public school teachers.

Public schools do their best every day with the kinds of kids that Ms. Moskawitz and Ms. Lavinia will never encounter. They deserve our respect and support, especially now that their jobs are made daily more difficult by “reformers” such as Moskawitz and Lavinia who drain off the best students and resources from public schools while still using public schools as their dumping ground for their unwanteds. Charter schools were originally supposed to be innovative laboratories working in collaboration with public schools to find methods that work with the most challenging populations. Instead, charters have turned away from those very populations while reviling the public schools which still must educate each and every student, even those whose parents are on drugs, whose school lunches are the only food they get, who live in violent, trauma-filled neighborhoods, who miss days taking care of siblings and even parents, and who don’t know where they’re going to be sleeping each night. Until and unless we address the growing problem of poverty in an unequal society, no “magical” (thinking) charter school or public school is going to fix the problem. It’s not an education problem, it’s a society problem.