Investigative reporter David Sirota wonders about the legality of Eva Moskowitz closing her charter schools and busing the students to Albany for a political rally. Even stranger is that Governor Cuomo attended and supported her rally.
If her schools were public schools, she would have been fired. At once.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
And did you see the full page add in the NYTimes today with photos of “her” students and asking for people to sign a petition to save “their” school? If only we could afford such an add for public school in NYC—only it would take weeks of issues to get the children in one page ads.
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It was a “field trip”, something not heard of anymore in Phila. public schools.
No money.
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Not even investigative reporter David Sirota can figure out whether charter schools are public schools or not:
If charter schools are “privately run,” in what sense are they “technically” public schools? Search me.
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Public money in private hands.
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I don’t think that is a really useful way to make the distinction. In my school district, the district buys transportation services from a private company. That is public money to private hands as well. The district also purchases access to virtual classes taught by K-12 for some of their students. Does this public money going to private hands make my district a semi-public school district?
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I don’t know why it would. Just as having NY State funding going to 501(c)(3) corporations that operate charter schools doesn’t make NY State a semi-public entity. And receiving state funding doesn’t make a 501(c)(3) corporation “public,” unless you define “public” as an adjective that applies to any entity that receives public funding.
Unless you use define “public” corporation to
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Oh no, my drafting process is revealed!
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If, in fact, The Moskowitz ‘field trip’ was a sham, can she be held accountable for an ‘illegal’ school closing? Does a citizen have a venue, a mechanism by which to file a complaint? It is clear that Moskowitz is at ‘war’ with the NYC public schools. At long last is it not time for DeBlasio and the Board of Education to stop playing politics with Moskowitz and take actions to deny her the extensive power and control that she now seems to have?
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Though they didn’t bus them upstate, Achievement First did the same thing here in New Haven when Governor Malloy held one of his townhall meetings at Wilbur Cross High School. I happened to be seated among a crowd of kids and adults from Amistad Academy and people from ConnCAN, the lobbying arm of AF. They all had there team t-shirts on to show their allegance. The adults were coaching the kids on how to respond to speakers: their own and folks from the other side. I was totally disgusted that they instructed these innocent kids, some of them quite young, to cheer and applaud whenever the adults did for the speakers supporting the charter group. Apparently, these people lack a conscience.
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They are going on morning joe tomorrow the kids that is. To show the math whizzes and music geniuses to prove how good these charters are. All should watch and comment on this freak show.
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More exploitation of children. Have they no shame?????
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Dee Dee: you wrote—
“Have they no shame?????”
I assume that was a rhetorical question.
😎
P.S. Always remembering, as we are reminded frequently on this blog, that charters are “just like” public schools. Like, you know, when it comes to student rights and parent rights and employee rights and closing schools to engage in political action and the salaries of their “CEOs” and so on.
Exactly the same. No different.
Rheeally!
😏
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The proof of the pudding is… are the graduates of these “no excuses” McSchools actually making it through college?
NOTE, it did not say, “accepted” to college… the big statistic they trot out…
Are they finishing a Bachelor’s Degree in 4 or 5 years, or finishing at all?
In a word… No.
Take KIPP for example—the “corporate reform” gold standard. After kicking out 50-to-70 percent of their kids from 5th-thru-8th grade, it’s true that almost all of small subset that survives and gets accepted to college.
KIPP’s own tracking shows that, with that subset, something is wrong… very, VERY wrong.
KIPP has freely admitted that only 30% of that heavily-creamed cohort—that’s KIPP graduates, not the original enrollees, remember—ever complete college, with 70% of them bombing out for some reason.
That means that there is something wrong with their pedagogy, as the kids from upscale neighborhoods—from public and private schools—are getting something that KIPP kids are not, and as a result, kicking the KIPP kids’ asses within the university classroom setting.
Critical thinking, creative thinking, the ability to consider and challenge orthodoxy for one’s self, and not to please an authority figure… these concepts and abilities—along with others—are essential components to any full, well-rounded education that produces fully-formed minds capable of surviving and thriving in a university setting. KIPP and the KIPP knock-off chains simply are failing to produce graduates who posses these.
The extreme authoritarian management style of these places—one that is so engrained in their DNA—actually and ironically is antithetical to the goal they claim to desire… success in university and in life.
When high school kids protest about some political issue, or about whatever… sitting in… violating rules to do so… attacking the real “status quo”… the teachers there look upon that as a successful outcome of what they’ve been teaching.
On the other hand, these “freak shows” that Eva compels her kids and parents to participate in are the exact opposite of that… as their true beneficiaries are not the kids, but the oligarchs who wish to privatize and destroy true education.. Eva’s grotesque demonstrations are like something out of North Korea… with kids regurgitating stock statements their masters give them to say.
“T.C.F.W.” …. as a friend of mine likes to say…
“Too Creepy For Words”…
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Spot on, Jack!
I think that KIPP’s solution to their high college drop out rate is absolutely ridiculous as well. Instead of adjusting their poor pedagogy, they are teaching character traits like grit a la Paul Tough. See: “Character Plays Large Role in Post Secondary Success” http://kipphouston.org/character-plays-large-role-post-secondary-success
Silly me, it was the intellectual stimulation which piqued my curiosity and expanded my interests that propelled me to success in college –not being rewarded or penalized for my ability to grin and bear it. I doubt KIPP kids have experienced that much when just a lot of facts are shoved down their throats daily.
The propaganda promoted in these schools is unbelievable. Don’t even get me started on the policy of calling a student a “scholar” starting with their very first day of school…
One of the things that Moskowitz and other no-excuses schools have adopted from KIPP is naming each classroom after the college the teacher attended and decorating the room and school with college pennants. It’s hard to believe these people would think that rubbing poor kids’ noses in that is a good thing and likely to result in high college graduation rates –as if any of those teachers got through college because they complied with rigid rules and policies, every moment of every single day in their K-12 classrooms, as expected of kids in these military style charters. (I read that 100% 100% of the time is an SA mantra.) And to keep doing that even when they know that 70% of their kids won’t make it out of college? Talk about intolerable hopes and unattainable goals.
They might as well just name each classroom after the rich suburb each TFAer comes from because poor kids are not likely to make it there either this way.
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grit = sh*t
I hope that survives the no-cursing rule here 😉
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Absolutely. Grit can never replace the joy of learning that is destroyed by these drill and kill test prep factories which seek only to create “little test taking machines.” http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/6707
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Soooo much dogma. And when these no-excuses charter schools begin to recognize the shortcomings of their programs, they just pile on more and more rigid dogma.
Here’s some suggestions for these charter operators:
Gain some insight into your own Big 5 personality characteristics, which include openness, agreeableness, conscientious, extraversion and neuroticism, and then learn how to EDIT!
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I suspect your suggestions will fall on deaf ears. Most corporations are not run this way. Corporate think is top down with lots of ass kissers hoping to climb up.
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Sorry, that should have been conscientiousness
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“Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive.” ~ George Eliot
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Maybe a grand jury should be convened to look into what she did. But would it do any good if the majority of elected officials in New York are supporting the robber barons and wolves of Sesame Street?
The more I learn about what’s going on, it becomes painfully obvious that the billionaire oligarchs are stacking the deck in their favor and dealing off the bottom by spending huge sums of money to get their pocket politicians in office.
A subversion of how a democracy works, yes! It’s obvious that the primary goal of these few is to do away democracy and replace it with an oligarchy where a few control the country 100%.
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“Wolves of Sesame Street”
nice.
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I can’t take credit for that meme. Someone else here used it first.
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I believe this originated from Sirota himself, as he used a variant of this recently in his article about the backdoor deal to promote John Arnold’s anti-pension propaganda on PBS entitled, “The Wolf of Sesame Street: Revealing the secret corruption inside PBS’s news division”
http://pando.com/2014/02/12/the-wolf-of-sesame-street-revealing-the-secret-corruption-inside-pbss-news-division/
Presumably, it’s a play on Scorsese’s 2013 movie,”The Wolf of Wall Street.”
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LOL
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Governor Cuomo, a Democrat, joins this rally because he, like all the other corporatized politicians, are on the hedge fund- charter operator payroll. Real public schools have nothing to offer these politicians in the way of campaign loot, and until Citizens United is overturned and a progressive administration is installed, I don’t see how this changes.
Bernie Sanders offers some hope.
http://www.thenation.com/blog/178717/bernie-sanders-i-am-prepared-run-president-united-states#
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“Six in 10 Americans Say a Third Party Is Needed,” so if we can rally those disenfranchised voters, who are amongst the 99%, to vote for someone who actually does represent working people and holds no allegiances to the oligarchy, maybe we will have a fighting chance:
http://www.gallup.com/video/165407/six-in-ten-americans-say-third-party-needed.aspx
My vote will definitely be going to Bernie Sanders!
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Charters get tax dollars. Basically, she used public money to use students to benefit her bank account.
These deformers have no morals.
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I’m sure the ad expenses could be a good percent of the rent she’d have to pay to use public school space, so the whining about this is ludicrous. Beyond that folks there are bigger issues in the education reform world today than worrying too much about Eva’s freedom to use school days however her schools deem proper. Charter schools are allowed to establish their own calendars and school days, as long as it is more than the minimum 180 days and ridiculously low 5 to 5.5 hours of instruction per day. Given both their calendar year and their school day are way beyond this really minimal NYSED requirement, any criticism of the use of schooling time is pretty lame, given the many. many more hours of instruction her schools provide. And I might also note that it is not unreasonable to suggest that this is an excellent civics fieldtrip showing kids the essence of American democracy today – that those with the resources get to control the message and bend the rules in their favor. LIke it or not, this is the reality of our messed up democracy. There are bigger fish to fry in education today!
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If someone from the Success community can conclusively answer that there was absolutely no penalty or threat of a penality for a parent or child who didn’t want to spend 12 hours, including 6 hours on a bus, to attend a political rally, then I agree that this isn’t a big deal.
Where’s MS when you need him?
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I think he got outed the other day and may be lying low.
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Outed as what or who?
(I misses it)
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Ang, Take a look here: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/02/28/parents-eva-angry-about-de-blasio-co-location-decisions-but-for-different-reasons/
Scroll about three quarters of the way down the page, or do a page search to find the name “borgle,” and look at the link provided by that person.
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CT,
Ah an investment banker.
Got it.
Thank you.
So what are the chances his kid actually goes to SA?
😉
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I think the chances are pretty good, since Eva expanded her charters into gentrified areas, so now she has some higher income parents fighting for her.
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Just heard this commercial on local TV:
“Hello, I’m governor Andrew Cuomo. For all of us there is nothing more important than our children, and their education is everything. While the state’s new Common Core curriculum is headed in the right direction, testing on it is premature, it creates anxiety, and it’s just unfair. I won’t let our children’s scores count against them. Please tell your legislator to join me in protecting our children because education is about helping kids, not hurting them.”
YOU BASTARD!
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Now that he has publicly declared CC/Pearson testing unfair will he withdraw APPR evaluations?
Now that he has publicly told the children of NYS that April tests essentially DO NOT COUNT, how can the scores be used in APPR evaluations.
NYSUT – you silence is deafening!
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Hang in there, NY Teacher. Your struggles are not in vain. What happens in NY eventually affects what happens in Texas.
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As Governor Chris Christie would say:
“They are treating their students like drug mules”!!!!
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It’s to be assumed that Moskowitz broke numerous regulations and laws by sending her students parents and staff on that forced march.
At a minimum, as I wrote here the day after the event, Moskowitz’s conscripted mobilization of students, staff and parents was in explicit violation of DOE Chancellor’s Regulation D-130, Section 1.C.2., which states that during, “Personnel may not be involved in any activities, including fundraising, on behalf of any candidate, candidates, slate of candidates OR POLITICAL ORGANIZATION/COMMITTEE during workday hours.”
A complaint should be filed against her with SCI, the Special Commissioner of Investigations.
She and her conduits have tried to weasel out by saying that it was a civics-related field trip, but shutting down schools and compelling student and staff attendance at a event that you yourself have organized, that has explicitly political purposes that are materially related to the administration of the school, can in no way be construed as a legitimate educational activity.
Unless, that is you’re trying to give children a premature lesson in adult cynicism and avarice.
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I think that’s when you get the “I’m not DOE personnel” argument.
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Yes, I’m pretty sure that the Chancellor’s regs don’t apply to charter schools, although ironically there IS a Chancellor’s reg that details the process the DOE has to go through when deciding to co-locate a charter in a DOE facility.
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Of course, foolish me: after all, they’re not public schools, they’re her schools.
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We’re not the only ones questioning the legality of all this. NY City Councilman Daniel Dromm, who is chair of the NYC education council, has called for an oversight hearing in April regarding the matter: http://danieldromm.com/news/
Moskowitz will probably do some creative bookkeeping to make sure it looks like the “field trip” was paid for by funds from her corporate and foundation sponsors rather than the state. However, there is the matter of having already received state funds for a school day in which lessons are conducted on school buses has been questioned by Dromm, who is a former NYC teacher. Also, I’m guessing that the consequences (either threatened or actually imposed) on those SA teachers, students and parents who did not attend could be another matter.
I think they really need to look at the bridge march in September, too, because that was clearly political as well and since Moskowitz got away with it, that set a dangerous precedent for shutting down schools and using students as lobbyists for charters during the school day.
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I’m confused. Were the actual schools open at all or not? Were any teachers at the school building conducting class for those who did not want to go?
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Nope. All 22 SA charter schools were closed all day to attend the rally in Albany this week. For the bridge march in September, all schools were closed a half day.
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Thanks for the info, CT.
So, there was not one single family that wanted their kid to attend class on that day? Really?
So much for parent “choice”.
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Yeah that’s the catch with “school choice,” Ang. Parents choose a charter, then the charter chooses the child. That’s pretty much where choice for the family ends, because after that, parents and kids have to agree to do what the charter demands or they are welcome to go and choose another school, since parents have no elected school board to appeal to if they are unsatisfied –and often no PTA.
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As always, good information Michael…thanks. The avarice of all these self appointed arbiters of education boggles the mind. With Eva and the Brooklyn Bridge event, and now the Albany event, her mandates to students, parents, and staff seem more like abuse.
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Despicable!
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These events are clearly an abuse of power and influence on the part of the organizer, who in my opinion overplayed her hand. The fact that there are parents desperate enough to put their kids into that sort of political melee, is just sad, and speaks to the economic wreckage that Mayor Bloomberg left in New York. Charters grow from desperation (on the part of the many), and greed (on the part of the few).
Same thing happened in Maryland, charter operators pulled as many kids as possible on a charter shill mission, this time presented as a school “reconstruction” scheme that will give charters any newly vacated school facility, free of charge, and borrow tons of money to do it. I think it is safe to say, most of the people who bused to the capital had no idea what the law said, but their schools said they wanted it. This is another way charters are destroying our educational system, they are manipulating and lying to children and families – destroying what public trust there is in education, and educators.
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Diane on the Ed Show:
http://www.msnbc.com/the-ed-show/watch/the-biggest-education-problem-effecting-kids-184771139804#discussions
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If it looks like a pep rally, and quacks like a pep rally, it’s a pep rally. What exactly was the nature of success academy’s argument? We want as much as we can get, or was there an actual principle articulated?
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Kudos to Ed for coming out recently against the XL pipeline and for having Diane on his show to counter the bunk being spewed out by Morning Joe and Eva Moskowitz. Now if only Obama was listening and cared, but I just think he and Cuomo are of the same ilk and neither will do right by the children and teachers. We no longer live in a democracy. Our government is of the 1%, by the 1%, and for the 1%.
The sense of community which made our country great I hope is restored someday soon, but I don’t see it happening without radical changes in our media and our politics. Till then, the military-industrial complex will get all the dollars it needs, the public schools will be starved, and for-profit charter operators will be empowered.
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Cuomo and Moskowitz…enemies of public education and democratic values…all New Yorkers should hold them both accountable.
The selling out of all children. Disgusting what some will do for money…these two take it to new depths!
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Who is going to help us get these people out?!? What should teachers do? How do we make these greedy people pay restitution? Where do the people who truly care about kids begin to make the changes so desperately needed before it is too late for the welfare of “our children”? If we continue to let these rotten, greedy people take over there will no doubt, be more crime and death than our society has ever seen!
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The only recourse is through public opinion and then through the courts if the courts are honest and without bias.
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Unbelievable..worst than 3rd world countries who put their kids to work in factories. Moskowitz makes children do her dirty work and puts them on public display. How desperate. Wonder what her field trip release papers indicated as the purpose of the trip?
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I had to laugh the other day when MS summarized the purpose as a “Field trip to the capital to learn about and express their 1st Amendment rights as Americans.”
That’s inconsistent with no-excuses charter schools such as SA, because students are permitted to speak very little at those schools, including at lunch, much less taught to “express their 1st Amendment rights”, since the focus is on 100% compliance with rigid rules 100% of the time. This includes SA’s “magic 5” sitting position on a rug, which “has 5 and 6 year olds sit with their legs crossed for 45 minutes without talking…” as mentioned in comments here:
http://carrollgardens.patch.com/groups/schools/p/success-academy-charter-schools-tout-record-high-enrollment
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What would happen if a public school did the same thing? I wonder what the reaction would be if a bunch of public schools gave their students the option to march in a Moral Monday gathering?
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Moskowitz and Cuomo are twin towers of corruption in NY. The fact that she began to take on Bill de Blasio shows that she is desperate for protecting her own vested rights and financial interest way above education of her students. Pity this woman.
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You know why people use kids as political pawns? Because it works.
Details are hazy, but in a TV interview today Fariña said the DOE would try to help Success find space: http://ny.chalkbeat.org/2014/03/07/farina-city-looking-for-space-for-students-of-evicted-success-school/
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Cuomo and Moskowitz are pernicious. Cuomo may get some funding from the pro-charter movement, but he certainly is going to lose some votes.
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Here’s an interesting article from Will Cain at CNN. Aside from totally ignoring the reality of the situation, I find it interesting that charter schools are supposed to help the poor yet Will Cain’s daughter goes there.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/07/opinion/cain-charter-de-blasio/
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