Tomorrow Eva Moskowitz will close her chain of Success Academy charter schools in New York City and convene her students, parents, and teachers in a rally that is intended to support her demand for more charter schools. If a public school principal did this, he or she would be in deep trouble. Public schools don’t close for political rallies. Private schools can.
The charter chain has dubbed the rally #don’tstealpossible. They are tweeting to remind the world that if Eva doesn’t get more charters, 143,000 students will be “trapped in failing schools.”
Professor Daniel S. Katz of Seton Hall University here describes Eva’s “incredible hypocrisy,” inasmuch as she has no intention of enrolling 143,000 students, nor enrolling the neediest students. If your child has special needs or doesn’t speak or read English, look elsewhere.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Doesn’t this “activity” violate some type of child labor laws?
Is Success closing schools for this rally like they did for the fight against De Blasio? Also, have they issued a formal statement about letting teachers and students attend? I can’t think of a legitimate justification for this practice, but I would be interested to know whether Moskowitz has ignored critiques or responded to them.
Their Twitter feed promised that 10,000 people will be there tomorrow, so I am assuming they have a plan to ensure a reasonable facsimile of that.
Got it – thanks! I’ll leave this thread and direct people back to your post for our follow-up exchange :).
It’s funny (not ha ha), but people like Moskowitz and her supporters would be the first to accuse the students in Colorado who have been walking out in protest of the new “history” (cough, cough) curriculum of having been organized/coerced/forced by the dreaded teachers union.
Hypocrisy and/or abysmal ignorance seems to be the norm for the politically inspired authors of the “saviors” from the public schools – which arguably have built our nation to one of history’s greatest. [If it ain’t broke – don’t fix it”]. When money becomes the primary object logic, morality find’s it difficult to compete.
Gordon Wilder: pardon the impertinence, but I would take out the word “seems to be” in your first sentence and replace it with “is.”
Let’s not forget the constant drone in spin cycles and pr sessions and staged public events that “charters are public schools too”—and just where in the USofA does an entire public school system shut down in order to “rally” its employees, students and parents?
For all its difficulties, large and small, genuinely public schools are different from those that claim to be public but act—and can act, with impunity—as private schools. [For starters, think mid-year dump, graduation rates, public monies with little or no accountability.]
And that Grand Canyon gap between word [“We’re public!”] and deed [“We act private!”] that is a hallmark of the “education reform” movement?
“Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.” [François de la Rochefoucauld]
Sometimes an old dead French guy will do quite nicely…
😎
KrazyTA
The unionized teachers in the pubic school district where I taught protested and walked a picket line on school days a number of times over the thirty years I taught there—-but not until after the last bell rank and our students were gone.
And then we went outside the fence to the sidewalk where the union rep was waiting with the signs volunteer teachers had given up afternoons and weekends to create.
Hundreds of teachers, who had just taught a full day, gathered and walked the picked line for a few hours during the rush hour when people were going home from work, then turned in our signs and drove home exhausted knowing we had to be up early to teach the next day.
So you’re enjoying the hope and change that the public school educated voters put in place, not just once, but twice? “arguably” ought to invite a little debate on what is the cause of America’s greatness.
“First, the article in the Daily News misrepresents the results of those state examinations, probably willfully. These were the first examinations to align with the new Common Core standards, and they caused an extreme collapse of scores across the entire state. ”
So much for not using the Common Core test results to beat up on public schools. How long did that promise last before they broke it? 6 months?
Wait until this spring when state after state has results like this. It’s be an absolute open season on public schools. I am dreading it.
Actually they didn’t even wait this long. Campbell Brown has been referring to those scores for months. She mentioned them in her Steven Colbert interview, basically (paraphrase) “how can most NY teachers be considered effective when the scores are so low?”
It’s obvious that Eva Moskowitz is shooting for more Charter schools and students so she can pay herself a seven figure income.
Too bad 100,000 protesters can’t show up in tandem.
Sadly, many will be misled by this shameless and galling ad campaign. Too many will blindly accept the claim that “143,000 children can’t red or do math.” Professor Katz’s article sheds much needed light on this. How can his message reach a broader audience?
Dr Katz’s post re CC ELA is another good read.
Would it not be funny if Moskowitz’s schools had a zero percent attendance rate for that day for an “unexcused” absence for the entire number of charters and each and every student she has walking in this “protest”? But we know that is not going to happen.
The other idea… maybe all real public school students in public schools in NYC should do the very same thing on the same day as a “counter-action”…. What would happen then? Would the courts be able to make one school system’s actions illegal while the other was perfectly “legal” and claim that both were under public school regulations?
I guess I can answer my own question… If Moskowitz’s supporters pay enough, anything is possible to twist and pervert.
Don’t be impressed by the turnout of charter school consumers and investors at their pro-privatization Mardi-Gras today. It is guaranteed to be big. The crowd is spoken for and the extras are on call.
Like a movie set.
Except it is a captive cast.
Attendance is mandatory. Dire consequences await any student, parent or teacher who doesn’t participate.
Belief in education “choice” doesn’t allow the option of being excused from staged demonstrations. After all, charter schools revel in their freedom from regulation. In at least one documented case of gentle persuasion, parents were warned to pick up their kids on time or be reported to the Administration For Children Services for child abuse and neglect.
Now you know why charter school separatists are so proud of not being part of the public school system.
Accountability.
Expect plenty of orchestrated passion. There will be copious soundbites, photo-ops, slogans and logos. There will be hamming for cameras and hogging of microphones.
The high-priestess of the charter school insurgents, Eva Moskowitz, will practice ventriloquism by projecting her talking points into the throats of the zealots she has drafted and rented. As she whips up her audience she will for the moment cast from her mind the nearly seven-figure salary that is at the root of her conviction.
There will be no school for her scholars that day. Her network of properties will be padlocked. Instead of learning in classrooms, her exploited kids will impersonate sales associates, pitching the charter school manifesto while learning the lesson of taking to the streets and performing on cue.
If public schools were closed and everyone who served in them or was served by them were commanded, as though by electrified prods, to storm the barricades with unified chorus in support of their agenda for education justice, there would be an outcry.
Moskowitz would blame the Department of Education for its “business as usual” knuckling under to the teachers union whose members, she’d fume, will stop at nothing to get its members a day off at the expense of children. Charter schools have set a new standard and that’s why they’re successful, she’d explain.
Public schools will be open today!
Thank goodness for the double standard!
I was crossing Broadway and got washed away by a sea of Red Shirts. I’ll be your mole for the next 5 minutes.
Nice sound system.
Eva spotted behind the stage. Uncharacteristically without coffee in hand.
Ok, I have to get into 40 Foley before I’m disbarred.
Are there 10,000 people?
I’m not great at estimating crowds. I’d guess that “thousands” would have been accurate at 9 am, but the event hadn’t started yet. I wouldn’t be shocked if there were 10,000 there by the time it got started. But I really can’t say.
Even if there were 10,000, the question is whether this number represents a quantity of thinking individuals who were there freely or a lot of lobotomized foot soldiers.
There is a thing called “social coercion”.
It is why there is no such thing as “voluntary school prayer”.