Stephanie Simon reports that some of NYC’s most celebrated charter schools were outperformed by the city’s much maligned traditional public schools. KIPP and Democracy Prep had lower scores than the public schools with less funding. Only Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charters aced the tests.
“Just 23 percent of charter students scored proficient in language arts, compared with 31 percent in public schools overall. That’s a greater gap than had shown up in last year’s exams.
In math, charter schools beat the public school average in each of the past two years — but not this year. On the new tests, just 31 percent of charter students scored proficient, the same as in public schools overall.”
Earlier this year, Secretary Duncan gave $9.1 million to Democracy Prep to expand its chain because it was so much better than public schools.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/new-york-fails-common-core-tests-95304.html#ixzz2bOOFxCK4
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane
So Common Core tests are ok if public schools outperform charter schools?
Abe
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
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NO. And that is not what Diane is hinting at. Think it through a little more.
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Close reading please.
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Norm did a great job excerpting the 2010 New York Magazine article on Eva and Harlem Success:
http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2010/04/ny-mag-story-on-moskowitz-and-hsa-by.html
A two-year veteran teacher at Success Academy contacted Norm and said:
“I worked at Harlem Success for 2 years as a teacher. The last page (of the NY Mag article) is completely true—they counsel children out with learning disabilities and behavioral difficulties because they do not want their test scores affected. It is beyond shocking and morally disgusting. I could not work there any longer because of it. Also, the part about 10 minutes of test prep a day—totally untrue. Try two hours. At least.”
Here are some excerpts:
———————-
NEW YORK MAGAZINE:
“At Harlem Success, disability is a dirty word. ‘I’m not a big believer in special ed,’ Fucaloro says. For many children who arrive with individualized education programs, or IEPs, he goes on, the real issues are ‘maturity and undoing what the parents allow the kids to do in the house—usually mama—and I reverse that right away.’ When remediation falls short, according to sources in and around the network, families are counseled out. ‘Eva told us that the school is not a social-service agency,’ says the Harlem Success teacher. ‘That was an actual quote.’
“In one case, says a teacher at P.S. 241, a set of twins started kindergarten at the co-located HSA 4 last fall. One of them proved difficult and was placed on a part-time schedule, ‘so the mom took both of them out and put them in our school. She has since put the calm sister twin back in Harlem Success, but they wouldn’t take the boy back. We have the harder, troubled one; they have the easier one.’
“Such triage is business as usual, says the former network staffer, when the schools are vexed by behavioral problems:
” ‘They don’t provide the counseling these kids need.’ If students are deemed bad ‘fits’ and their parents refuse to move them, the staffer says, the administration ‘makes it a nightmare’ with repeated suspensions and midday summonses. After a 5-year-old was suspended for two days for allegedly running out of the building, the child’s mother says the school began calling her every day ‘saying he’s doing this, he’s doing that. Maybe they’re just trying to get rid of me and my child, but I’m not going to give them that satisfaction.’
“At her school alone, the Harlem Success teacher says, at least half a dozen lower-grade children who were eligible for IEPs have been withdrawn this school year. If this account were to reflect a pattern, Moskowitz’s network would be effectively winnowing students before third grade, the year state testing begins.
“ ‘The easiest and fastest way to improve your test scores,’ observes a DoE principal in Brooklyn, ‘is to get higher-performing students into your school.’ And to get the lower-performing students out.”
—————————————————————————-
The piece above triggered this response from one of our contacts at PS 241:
“The part about PS 241 enrolling the ‘more difficult’ of a set of twin kindergartners, who were both enrolled at Harlem Success Academy, says it all for me.
“Harlem Success Academy counseled out the ‘more difficult’ twin, but kept his ‘easier’ twin sister. This took place around the second month of the school year. PS 241 is clearly the better school. PS 241 can educate students that Harlem Success Academy cannot, because we are a school of experienced, professional educators. Inexperienced HSA teachers and administrators stand around dumbfounded, unable to understand, intervene or help students with special needs.
“HSA teachers repeatedly call the same parents to the school and give them laundry lists of their child’s misbehavior. HSA teachers apologize to these same parents and tell them they have to call or they could lose their job. This is not a reflection on the HSA teachers, who lack the skills that experience provides. It is what happens when you give too much power and influence to an over privileged and educationally ignorant, self-proclaimed savior of Harlem children.
“PS 241 is filled with students who HSA teachers would be unable and unfit to teach. And for the record, the mother of the twins has already enrolled the ‘easier twin’ at PS 241 for next year.”
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Here’s more excerpts from New York Magazine’s Jeff Coplon, in his April 2010 critique of Harlem Success Academy :
http://nymag.com/news/features/65614/
— – – – – – – –
“English Language Learners (ELLs) are another group that scores poorly on the state tests—and is grossly underrepresented at Success. The network’s flagship has only ten ELLs, or less than 2 percent of its population, compared to 13 percent at its co-located zoned school. The network enrolls 51 ELLs in all, yet, as of last fall, provided no certified ESL teacher to support them. After a site visit to Harlem Success Academy 1 in November, the state education department found that the school had failed to show evidence of compliance with its charter and with No Child Left Behind, which mandates ESL services by ‘highly qualified’ teachers.”
———
“As the face of the social-Darwinist wing of the local charter movement, she’s been cast as the grim reaper of moribund neighborhood schools, a witting tool of privatizing billionaires, and a Machiavellian schemer with her sights set on the mayoralty. ‘She’s the spokesperson in demonizing the public schools,’ says Noah Gotbaum, president of District 3’s Community Education Council. ‘Eva’s philosophy is that you’ve got to burn the village to save it.’ ”
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“A pristine stairwell is one more step toward her objective: a data-driven, no-excuses haven for learning, where all children excel and shoestrings never come undone.”
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“… traditional schools in Harlem face plummeting enrollments—a sign, Chancellor Joel Klein likes to say, of parents’ voting with their feet. But State Senator Bill Perkins draws a different conclusion: ‘What you’re seeing is people fleeing out of a four-alarm fire.’ Charter schools, Perkins says, ‘are at best an act of desperate faith.’ ”
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“Most charter operators, observes Sy Fliegel, president of the Center for Educational Innovation, ‘ask for space very quietly and hope they can get it. Eva asks for schools.’ Co-location, as she once put it, is a ‘Middle East war.’ As her beachheads roll out and roll up, one grade per year, her need for real estate sparks resistance. Police were called last summer when she brought movers to take another floor at P.S. 123, piling the zoned school’s belongings in the gym after it neglected to vacate on time. Stringer flayed her ‘thug tactics’; Moskowitz dismissed him as a ‘UFT hack.’ ”
——-
“Moskowitz identified five zoned schools that had declining enrollments ‘and suck academically.’ In October 2008, she informed Klein that she was ‘most interested in’ P.S. 194 and P.S. 241 in Harlem. Two months after that, the DoE moved to shutter those two schools and pass their buildings in toto—a first—to Success Charter Network. But there was a problem: Success could not accept all the children to be displaced.
“For one thing, the network has no self-contained classrooms for the profoundly disabled; for another, it takes in no new students after the second grade. At an incendiary public hearing at P.S. 194, zoned- and charter-school parents roared each other down, neighbor against neighbor. In a colonial metaphor that made Moskowitz shake her head, one resident compared her to Tarzan’s Jane—’back again, swinging through Harlem not with vines, but with charter schools.’
“When Klein stayed the closings in the face of a UFT lawsuit, he also advised the zoned schools’ parents to ‘seriously consider’ moving their children to Harlem Success.”
——
“Moskowitz has already burned through three principals at Harlem Success Academy 1, taking the reins each time as the school’s de facto leader. The latest was Jacqueline Getz, a highly regarded veteran from P.S. 87 on the Upper West Side, who took the job last summer and resigned within weeks. (While Getz declined to comment, she told a confidante that there were ‘things going on that she could not in good conscience let happen.’) Her presumptive successor is Jacqueline Albers, a 26-year-old alumna of Teach for America. Critics point out that Albers fits the profile for much of Moskowitz’s top leadership circle: young white women with thin résumés.
“ ‘The people they have making decisions are inexperienced and undereducated,’ a former network staff member says.”
——
“For Moskowitz, success is a family affair and a shared obligation. Parents must sign the network’s “contract,’ a promise to get children to class on time and in blue-and-orange uniform, guarantee homework, and attend all family events.
” ‘When parents aren’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing,’ Fucaloro says, ‘we get on their behinds. Eva and Paul Fucaloro are their worst nightmares.’ Infractions can range to the trivial: slacks that look worn at a child’s knees, long johns edging beyond collars. Recidivists are hauled into ‘Saturday Academy,’ detention family style, where parents are monitored while doing “busy work” with their child, the ex-staffer says. Those who skip get a bristling form letter:
“ ‘You simply stood up your child’s teacher and many others who came in on a Saturday, after a long, hard week.’ At the last staff orientation, according to one Success teacher, Moskowitz reported telling parents, ‘Our school is like a marriage, and if you don’t come through with your promises, we will have to divorce.’ ”
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“New students are initiated at ‘kindergarten boot camp,’ where they get drilled for two weeks on how to behave in the ‘zero noise’ corridors (straight lines, mouths shut, arms at one’s sides) and the art of active listening (legs crossed, hands folded, eyes tracking the speaker). Life at Harlem Success, the teacher says, is ‘very, very structured,’ even the twenty-minute recess. Lunches are rushed and hushed, leaving little downtime to build social skills. Many children appear fried by two o’clock, particularly in weeks with heavy testing.
“ ‘We test constantly, all grades,’ the teacher says. During the TerraNova, a mini-SAT bubble test over four consecutive mornings, three students threw up. ‘I just don’t feel that kids have a chance to be kids,’ she laments.”
——-
” … even the lottery losers made distinct progress compared to their zoned-school peers. Though they didn’t close the achievement gap, these children held their own—unlike their traditional-school classmates, who lagged further behind the suburbs each passing year. While charter-school lotteries may be blind, they are hardly random; by definition, their entrants are self-selected. The least stable families—the homeless, say, or those with a parent on dialysis—might not find their way to apply.
“And there is the rub: If charters’ populations skew toward more motivated students, they cannot fairly be compared to come-one-come-all zoned schools.”
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“One problem with ‘school choice,’ as writer-activist Jonathan Kozol noted, is that the ‘ultimate choices’ tend to get made ‘by those who own or operate a school.’ At stake is not just who gets in, but who stays in. Studies show ‘selective attrition’ in the KIPP chain, among others, with academic stragglers—including those seen as disruptive or in need of pricey services—leaving in greater numbers.”
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So, it seems that the ultimate sweatshop of all charter schools, KIPP did no better than the district schools in NYC. I guess that KIPP, aka “Kids In Prison Program” with all of their chants, mantras, and cult like rituals, is not all that an a bag of chips after all.
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“had lower s ores ”
How low can ‘smores go?
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Have these charter schools been teaching to the CC state standards already since they have been out for a while?
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Did Success follow the time limits and all procedures? Who would know? I am skeptical.
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As am I. I do know she counsels out special ed students, and wouldn’t be surprised if she did the same with kids who probably wouldn’t pass. The names Michelle Rhee and Tony Bennett keep circling my mind for some reason.
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It is really bizarre to me that these schools’ scores are what they are and my school’s passage rate has been 95%-100% passage rate for several years. We continue to be slapped around and treated as if we are not “good enough” … demanding that no matter the situation our students have in their leaning capacity … we WILL get better scores than the year before. It is stress beyond words. And, it is very unhealthy.
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So Arne said: “Too many school systems lied to children, families and communities,” Duncan said. “Finally, we are holding ourselves accountable.” So I wonder what he’ll do next? Lie, manipulate, engage in splitting hairs, or twist the truth some more? You know what they say about liars. It takes one to know one. He truly personifies ignorance. Gosh, I would hate to be an imbecile like him.
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Mark:
Question: how is Arne Duncan holding himself accountable? Will he resign?
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“Only Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charters aced the tests.”
Read here what Eva puts those kids through for the sake of high test scores:
http://nymag.com/nymag/features/65614/index3.html
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Great article. Too bad these people don’t know what teaching and learning is all about. I’m glad I’m not a child anymore. I would be making plans to drop out.
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Evil Moskowitz’s school in the Bronx posted suspiciously high scores, even compared to her other “miracle” schools.
Hopefully, Stephanie Simon and other real journalists will take a peek and see what’s up there, since so-called reformer stenography offices such as Gotham Schools, The New York Times, News, Post, etc. will consciously neglect to do so.
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A traditional public school would be flagged for possible cheating…it would never be celebrated.
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Uh-oh, you used the word “B*mb” —
Better bake some cookies for H*m*l*nd Ins*c*r*ty …
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The Politico story was actually referencing NYS numbers. Across the NYC charter sector, students scored at least Proficient at a higher rate than students in citywide district schools in Math (34.8% vs. 29.6%), but a lower rate in English Language Arts (25.0% vs. 26.4%).
http://www.nyccharterschools.org/blog/nyc-charter-schools-among-bright-spots-state-sets-new-baseline
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Whoa! No miracles there.
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Your headline is deceptive, but expected.
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What do those numbers sound like after you account for the numbers of special education, english language learners, and economically disadvantaged students and the uneven split between public and charters? Not even taking into account that charters tend to take those with milder disabilities or push out kids that wouldn’t perform before test time?
The difference on both sides is negligible since this test isn’t a scientific measure and even then would have a margin of error.
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It is rare for me to say i do not think a result is legit. The Success result in math of 90% cannot be legit.
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I am very suspicious. Adding to the time limit, letting kids go back the next day can easily happen. I wonder about erasures. I know of an instance in Hartford (from teachers) where kids were told to leave questions blank if they were not sure and those words are not in the prepared directions. Why leave them blank? Then when they are filled in later, there are no erasures…hmmm? Teachers reported it and nobody listened.
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Is that just based on the general idea that there’s something shady about Moskowitz? Many, maybe most, of the comments about the Success schools on this blog assert that the schools skim the best available students, counsel low-performers out, and are better funded than public schools. If that were all true, why not expect a 90% math pass rate?
And wouldn’t you expect someone like Moskowitz to be on top of this test 24/7 last year? Limited number of schools to supervise, central command-and-control, very aware that this would be a great marketing opportunity, etc.
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How can her charter demographically beat every measure ranging up into 90% if she’s truly educating children similar to those in the public school system. It doesn’t even begin to mirror a heterogeneous mix of this country’s population.
Either she changed the kids and is not teaching everyone, or there’s something amiss here.
Numbers that are THAT good do raise a question mark since no schools I know of have 90% of students that are “A” students – and the other 10% would be average with the rest of the population (based on Diane’s assertion of what the levels really mean).
We don’t have overnight huge miracles in education – you have cheaters, and you have those who change the students. A true mix of our city’s students would have had more mixed results. What is this secret sauce that she has been squirreling away when she isn’t suspending 40% of her students to beat expectations so soundly.
If these results are true, it would make her the #1 charter chain in the country. Beating KIPP, Khan and any other contender.
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Education schools have that many “A” students, so if the charter schools are as selective and do as good a job teaching as education schools, it does not seem impossible.
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Teachingeconomist – there are so many holes in what you’re saying I’ll illustrate but a couple unless your sole intent is to troll this post in which case nevermind.
A) Not all education schools have that many “A” students
B) Those in education schools have already demonstrated a commitment to education and invested their own time and money into furthering it.
C) There is a very directly correlated outcome of Education schools which is to be prepared for a very specific job – it would be quite sad if a large number of people invested in a career and a large proportion of them were ill-suited to enter it (one who goes into a formal education program is usually advised of what they are getting themselves into and what the expectations are – I had 2 sit down interviews before my acceptance).
When you are educating a diverse population of students that are compelled to be in school and who are in the middle of physically maturing as well as mentally maturing, you get a much more diverse set of outcomes than is shown here. Especially when you have numbers like the rest of NY and 90% of their 3rd graders are passing where only 30% pass elsewhere.
Given that they only have them a few years for the 3rd grade test, there is something dramatically wrong with that 90% number. Aside from the counseling out, suspension policies, parental intimidation, punitive homework, excessive test prep, lottery entry policies, and have minimal or no mid-year transfer (over the counter) students, I would submit that either they found a way to cheat to get those numbers or that they are more focused on paring down their school population to only those who are going to be high performers anyway.
You do not close an achievement gap as large as we have overnight, and when you do, you can rest assured there is a short cut, a way to make the money you have go farther by removing costlier students, removing ELL students, removing disruptive students, and removing those students you don’t expect to perform.
Those students who need education the most are the ones who are most abused by that 90% figure. 90% when the rest of the city is like this is not likely a success story – it’s a story about managing your student population and possibly even something even more underhanded.
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” it’s a story about managing your student population and possibly even something even more underhanded”…..most likely that is the case…track individual student scores in the years to come and see what happens, especially after they leave Success. Time will tell….something is fishy.
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M, thanks for taking the time to explain.
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Any thoughts on why the distribution of grades in school of education classes is so different from, say, the distribution of grades in undergraduate history departments?
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No
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That is too bad. I think. Everyone has something to contribute to the discussion.
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It’s the thread that never ends with you. Remember when YOU tired to close a post…that was really funny. You don’t want a discussion. You want to always have the last word and nitpick and go on and on and on.
You’re tiring and predicable. Goodnight.
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Goodnight.
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And I should add, any prediction on the math scores of students at Thomas Jefferson High? Given that Thomas Jefferson regularly teaches differential equations, typically a sophomore class for relatively strong students at my university, I would not be surprised if 100% of the students there would pass the class.
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For schools of education grades you might want to look at this working paper from an economist at the University of Missouri:http://economics.missouri.edu/working-papers/2010/WP1002_koedel.pdf
If you don’t wish to read the whole paper, figures 1 and 2 are enlightening.
As FLERP! Pointed out, charter schools are charged with all sorts of creaming and selecting of students. Those selected benefit from positive peer impacts as Dr. Ravitch has argued. If those arguments are correct, it is reasonable that these schools would score well, especially if there are a small number of students.
What percentage of the students at Thomas Jefferson High School in Nprthern Virginia would you expect to pas the math section of the exam? I would be surmised if it was less than 90%.
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Who graded her schools’ tests? Were they graded in-house, regionally, or sent out? It would be interesting to know. In-house grading is still an option, but my district chose to send them out and I’ve heard from a regional grader (anonymously, of course) that grading was “horrific” and that there were far too many people not agreeing on how writing responses were to be scored, but were told to “do what the state says.” I wonder about the pass rates as compared to how the exams were scored. It would be interesting to see if there is a correlation. I am not saying that in-house cheats, although I’m sure some have. For example, my district was very careful not to grade our own students and no one felt pressure to change grades. If anything, I think we were probably harsher on our students than the state would be in those days (I remember how ridiculous what the state considered passing). That is not the case anymore, however.
Perhaps someone should look into the correlation, but I would be suspicious of any passing rates that high. The tests (especially ELA) were educational child abuse, regardless of having any curriculum beforehand or not.
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2nd parenthesis should read: (I remember how what the state considered passing was ridiculous). My brain is still fried from scanning over a thousand pages to find my school’s results yesterday.
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Does anyone know how Uncommon Schools or Achievement First did?
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Sounds like sour grapes WRT Moskowitz.
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If the tests a flawed then I don’t see a reason to criticize charter schools for doing poorly on them. If anything, maybe charters and public schools can work together to stop all this testing.
I think a charter should be considered successful if practices/programs at charter schools can be implemented in traditional public schools. I thought that charters were supposed to be testing grounds for new ideas. Are charters being measured in this way? If not, why not?
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Concerned, it’s pretty clear at this point that charters are not interested in the sort of accountability they promised in exchange for their freedom from bureaucracy. If a charter gets shut down because no one “chooses” them then they find other ways to keep their contracts alive.
The ideas they’re promising are not so innovative either. Success forces people to come in during non-school hours as part of a pledge for success (and which you can be booted from the school for). Either perform or get out. Public schools can’t do that. Incidentally, they also have to pick up those Success rejects. More school hours, lower paid employees, children end up with vastly reduced play time and insanely long school days (think 10 hours long with a 45 minute lunch break if that). That’s an adult’s work schedule and then some, not a child’s and you end up with burned out grossly underpaid teachers.
Success also forces children to move in lockstep and has rigid structures for speaking. They have a suspension rate that would get any public school a failing grade (which is why public schools many times can’t take a “no excuses” approach – too many students would get suspended).
Students at Success are grilled and are required to have high parental involvement. Try forcing public school parents to participate by threatening to remove their child from the school. Public schools can’t do it.
Success is not a model charter because its model can’t be replicated anywhere that isn’t a charter – and eventually you will reach a point if you replicate their model, that you run out of cream to skim and you actually have to teach whoever is left.
You will at that point have a two tiered system – charters like Success that will only take students meeting rigid criteria and behavioral patterns, and those that don’t attract those students and end up with whatever students are forced into their laps (whether that system is also charter or whether it consists of not-favored charters and public schools is not a chapter that has been written).
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I’m surprised that no one has commented on Petrilli’s quote in the article:
For all the attention on the proficiency rates, Petrilli cautioned that they are “a terrible metric to use for measuring school quality” because they generally reflect school demographics, with low-income students coming in with weaker skills and having farther to go to reach proficiency. “What you want to look at is progress over time — how much closer are these schools getting students toward college and career readiness,” Petrilli said. “And we won’t know that until next year.”
So it’s a fair measure except when it doesn’t yield the results you want?
That’s pretty slick. Let’s wait til next year and see if there’s improvement? But charters are awesome, don’t you know? His comment is just silly and he’s too smart for that to be anything more than deluded denial. KIPP has had the secret sauce and they should have rocked these tests rather than gotten stoned by them. Oh those reformers!
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