The following letter by Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers in New York City, appeared in the Wall Street Journal in response to a column by Eva Moskowitz about “The Myth of Charter Cherry Picking” (it is behind a paywall):
Mulgrew writes:
Eva Moskowitz must have been staring in the mirror when she wrote her latest screed about the “big lie” about charter vs. public schools (“The Myth of Charter-School ‘Cherry Picking,’” op-ed, Feb. 9). Even as others in the charter sector are beginning to acknowledge that differences in student demographics and attrition are a real problem in comparing charters to district schools, she and her organization have refused to admit that many charters don’t educate children with the same challenges as do public schools.
Let’s look at one among many examples—Success Academy 3 in Harlem. It shares a building with a local public school, but her charter has half as many English-language learners, fewer than a third as many special-education students and no “high-needs” students in the special-ed category versus 12% in the public school.
She also confuses student mobility with student attrition. Most schools in poor neighborhoods have high student turnover. But while public schools—and some charters—fill empty seats, Ms. Moskowitz’s schools don’t. According to state records, more than half the students in one Success Academy class left before graduation.
While Ms. Moskowitz cites a recent report from the city’s Independent Budget Office about student attrition in charters, she neglects to mention an earlier IBO report that found that it is the less successful students who tend to leave New York City charters. And as Princess Lyles and Dan Clark note “Keeping Precious Charter-School Seats Filled,” op-ed, Feb. 3), failure to fill these seats allows a school to maintain “the illusion of success,” as the percentage of proficient students rises.
So when Ms. Moskowitz and her allies claim that charters educate the same kinds of children as do the public schools, who is telling the truth?
Michael Mulgrew
Diane Ravitch's blog 
How many charter schools base their enrollment on a random, no application needed, selection of students and are located in the students’ home-school area? The original intent was to develop model schools. Therefore, this would have been the appropriate selection process. If public schools had maintained discipline codes from the 1950’s (my Indiana hometown high school expelled, not suspended, from the district anyone involve) and refused to educate anyone who needed a special education (this may have met anyone below average intelligence) there would be no need for a charter school. Philosophically, although privatization is the force driving the movement, what is driving privatization? Probably cannot depend on the public trough forever as people will want to pay less and less–think gasoline. I believe it is the ability to circumvent legal rulings regarding discipline. As my mentor teacher in 1965 told me, parents want tough discipline for everyone’s child but their own. If your child can sit quietly or participate cooperatively, you do not really want him with disruptive students who cannot be expelled.
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Could you explain why there would be no need for a charter school if public schools refused to educate anyone who needed a special education?
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“involved in a fight” (Do I have ADD?
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Let’s not forget why Eva “cherry picks” her students.
“Success Academy Charter Schools[edit] Moskowitz is a founder and the chief executive officer of Success Academy Charter Schools. Her salary is $475,000 a year, and she has four assistants.”
Enough said on Eva putting the “cherry” on her salary.
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Revise upwards.
NYDAILYNEWS, 12-19-2014. Title and subtitle of an article:
Success Academy charter schools’ revenue doubles in a year; CEO Eva Moskowitz’s pay jumps to $567K
EXCLUSIVE: The charter school network hauled in a whopping $34.6 million for the financial year ending June 2013, which is up from $16.7 million the previous year, according to tax documents obtained by the Daily News.
From the article itself:
[start quote]
Moskowitz, a former City Council member and longtime political adversary of Mayor de Blasio, is the biggest charter school operator in the city.
She was already one of the highest-paid educators in New York as of the financial year ending in June 2012, taking home a $475,000 salary.
The Success Academy board and a private foundation that helps fund the network gave Moskowitz a raise of $92,500 in 2013, bringing her yearly pay to $567,500.
Her compensation was more than twice the salary of city schools boss Carmen Farina, who earns $212,614 to oversee the city’s system of roughly 1,800 schools.
But Fariña, who came out of retirement to take the city’s top education job in January, also collects a pension of $199,579. Moskowitz has no pension.
Success Academy board member Campbell Brown said Moskowitz is worth every penny. “We believe in rewarding high performance — whether it’s the CEO, a principal or teacher,” said Brown.
A Success Academy spokesman said Moskowitz’s compensation for 2014 has yet to be determined.
[end quote]
Link: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/success-academy-charter-schools-revenue-doubles-year-article-1.2050561
How much you wanna bet she isn’t going to suffer a huge loss of income for 2014 and succeeding years?
That’s why her disciples, er, supporters call her $elfle$$ Eva.
Just sayin’…
😎
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In order to analyze data with regard to “cherry picking”, I think we should further disaggregate the sub group data. As a former ESL teacher, I know that all ELLs are not the same. If the charter school accepts only advanced or transitional level ELLs, they are choosing those mostly likely to benefit from English only instruction. If they select a higher number of students with Slavic or Asian surnames, it would suggest to me that they are accepting higher numbers of students that are prepared to handle grade level academics. In my experience these students are much less likely to enter school with academic deficits; in fact, they can be on a higher math level than typical American students. Likewise, there is a huge range of abilities among classified students with IQ levels ranging from 35 to 160. All members of the sub groups are not equal in their level of academic preparedness.
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This is correct. We have ELL kids in our school whose parents come here for graduate school. We have many other ELL kids who came here from refugee camps and are lucky if they even had formal schooling in their native language. You bet there is a difference in the outcomes for these students. We should be showering the second group with supports, not firing their teachers.
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A solid take down of Mulgreis posted by Mike Fiorillio, on the first rate progressive bog, “Perdido Street”.
http://perdidostreetschool.blogspot.com/2015/02/uft-president-michael-mulgrew-discovers.html?showComment=1423766362003#c3178492846405838111
Educators should trust Mulgrew as far as they can throw him.
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We’ve seen stats on charters and their attrition rates. Just because Mulgrew may be untrusted, it doesn’t mean he’s wrong.
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You missed my point. Read the Fiorillo posting on Perdido Street School.
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There is one super easy way for Eva to disprove the “lie.” She can take over a neighborhood school and hire her own faculty and use her own methods. She could do everything EXCEPT she’d have to take and keep all who registered at the school.
So far, not a single charter school has taken up this challenge and succeeded at it.
Are some charters doing better than the nearby traditional public schools? Yes, and so are magnets, parochial schools and private schools. The “secret” is selection, by whatever means. There are direct and indirect ways of doing it.
The challenge we face is how to improve education for most impoverished children. So far, no one has even come close to finding an answer.
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How about Finland, which reduced poverty by focusing on equity? In our country, politicians and their billionaire backers have made education the one and ONLY solution to poverty, but the ever expanding inequitable distribution of wealth, as well as all the college graduates who can’t find decent paying jobs, demonstrate that education is not the answer to poverty.
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Like the rest of the oligarchy, Eva will say and do anything, she will tell any lie and throw anyone under the bus who even suggests that her cash pipeline and personal influence be objectively examined. She is a corrupt crony getting fat at the public teat, nothing more. Without her network of other oligarch cronies and apologists to buffer criticism, she would be considered to have the same status as a crazy person making pronouncements while wandering the streets.
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I’ve posted this video here before and I’m going to post it again. More parents need to tell their stories of the abusive treatment that pushed them and their special needs children out of Success Academy Charter Schools. I’ve spoken with many former SA parents, but few want to tell their stories because they leave Moskowitz’s schools thinking there is something wrong with their child. There is nothing wrong with their child. There is something wrong with a school that would treat children this way.
The parent in this video tells the story of how her 5 year old son was kicked out of kindergarten at SA after only 12 days. It includes emails from Moskowitz herself to the former parent.
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I don’t have a problem with “cherry picking” as long as we aren’t making comparisons between schools with specially selected students and those with students in need of, well, lots of needs, perhaps what we might call the “leftovers”.
In Buffalo there are several “failing” schools, the schools filled with those “leftover” students. One turn around plan was to have a local “successful” charter school take over the failing high school. The problem with the plan was this charter didn’t want anything to do with the students currently attending that particular school. They’d “take over” with their own “cherry picked” students and run a side by side school model. I don’t see that as much of a turn around plan. Luckily, the superintendent also rejected the idea.
At least somebody in administration was using their brain for something other than a hat rack.
Ellen T Klock
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