I have sometimes wished it were possible to have a completely candid conversation with a teacher at a Success Academy charter school. Last week, with no advance planning, it happened.*
A young man who is related to me asked if he could introduce me to his friend, Ms. Smith (a pseudonym). He told me she teaches at Success and wanted to meet me. I said, “Of course.”
I had no idea what the evening had in store. I have talked to SA teachers before, always in public, not in the privacy of home, and they were always pleasant, neither boastful nor defensive.
When they arrived, I opened a bottle of white wine and broke open a box of macaroons. “Betty” (that’s not her name either) told me that she had worked at SA for five years. She teaches fifth grade.
What is it like, I asked.
She said she loves the children, but the atmosphere is stifling for both teachers and children. She is looking for another job. Everything is about test scores, and the competitive pressure never lets up. Right now, they are getting ready for the state exams, and signs posted everywhere say “Slam the Exams!”
I asked how long the test prep went on, and she said they have been doing test prep for months. She said the kids would not take spring vacation until the exams were finished.
What’s so bad about test prep, I asked her. She said some of the kids explode or break down. They are very young, and the pressure gets to be too much for them. They might start screaming or crying, and they have to be removed from the classroom until they calm down. The children are assigned a color depending on their test scores, and every classroom posts the names of the children and their color–red, green, blue, or yellow. I forget which is best and which is worst, but the goal is to shame the lowest performing students so they try harder to move up into the next level.
The test prep plus the ” no-excuses” climate of tough and strictly enforced rules unnerves some children, she said. And she felt badly for the children who were humiliated. The harshly competitive environment, she said, was dispiriting and joyless.
What happens with the children who can’t adjust to the highly disciplined demands of the school, I asked. She replied that these children might be suspended repeatedly or their parents or guardian might be called to the school every day. Day after day. Eventually, the child’s parent or guardian will withdraw the child because they can’t afford to miss work every day.
She realized she had had enough. The money was good, she said, but the stress was exhausting. She was also troubled by the non-stop political propaganda campaign. This year, she didn’t get on the bus with thousands of others to go to Albany and demand more money so the chain could expand. She didn’t like the way the children, parents, and teachers were being used as political pawns.
When I told her that none of the eighth grade students who had attended Success Academy had passed the competitive exams to enter the elite high schools of NYC, either last year or this year, she was momentarily surprised. Then, she said, that explains why Success Academy is opening its own high school.
Our conversation continued for more than a hour. It was clear that the scales had fallen from her eyes. She felt certain that the hedge fund managers bankrolling SA charters know nothing about the children, nor do they care about them. They want to win. They want high scores, period. Just like Wall Street. They want to be able to say at cocktail parties and dinner parties that “my school” got higher test scores than “your school.”
Why have you stayed this long, I asked her. I love the kids, she replied. She said someday she hopes to work for a nonprofit that won’t require her to sacrifice her ethics and principles.
*I thought this story was a real scoop, but then Kate Taylor of the New York Times beat me to it with this story.
Hey, if SA and other charters are so wonderful, how come our hedge fund managers and other wealthy people aren’t banging the doors down to get their own children enrolled???
Hedge funders send their kids to expensive private schools. They can’t be bothered with mingling their children with peasants or that pesky Common Core stuff..
Because it is only about MONEY, MONEY, MONEY. They actually want their children to learn something more than test.
My son doesn’t attend my charter school because:
– He goes to an excellent traditional public school in the suburb we live in.
– He is ahead of grade level, so he doesn’t need the extra time.
– He has lots of after school activities and my wife gets out of work in time to meet the bus, help with homework, etc. (guess where she works?)
If we lived in the neighborhood that my school is in, he had never passed a NYS exam (94% of incoming kids at my school have not), and he was going home to an empty house or the neighborhood streets, he would certainly be there.
You got it!!!!
The leaders and enforcers and main beneficiaries of the charterite/voucherite/privatizer movement—
Double talk? Double speak? Double standards?
Say it isn’t so!
😱
“This is an unintentionally hilarious story about Common Core in Tennessee. Dr. Candace McQueen has been dean of Lipscomb College’s school of education and also the state’s’s chief cheerleader for Common Core. However, she was named headmistress of private Lipscomb Academy, and guess what? She will not have the school adopt the Common Core! Go figure.”
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/03/23/common-core-for-commoners-not-my-school/
I also suggest googling “Bill Gates” and “Lakeside School” and “seattle education 2010”—“Bill Gates tells us why *his* high school was a great learning environment.” Great links, including Bill’s 2005 speech to his alma mater.
But their contempt is an unintended compliment to those for a “better education for all”:
“Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue.” [François de la Rochefoucauld]
😎
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
It’s funny that there’s still test prep because we were told repeatedly that the CC tests were test-prep proof. Well, that, and the alternate and opposite slogan, which is “tests worth prepping for”.
If Success Academy are such innovators one would think they’d be up on these things.
Why is there still test prep, and why wouldn’t every school do tons of it? Seems to have worked out quite well for this charter chain. Public schools can’t test prep and still provide a solid and balanced education but charter schools can? I’m confused about the double standard here. Are we prepping for tests or not? Are there two sets of rules on this too?
Long term stress=brain damage=mental health issues for life….if that isn’t child abuse, I don’t know what is.
“Good” Children – at What Price? The Secret Cost of Shame – The Natural Child Project
-The test prep wall of shame?-
“Recent research tells us that shame motivates people to withdraw from relationships, and to become isolated. Moreover, the shamed tend to feel humiliated and disapproved of by others, which can lead to hostility, even fury. Numerous studies link shame with a desire to punish others. When angry, shamed individuals are more likely to be malevolent, indirectly aggressive or self-destructive. Psychiatrist Peter Loader states that people cover up or compensate for deep feelings of shame with attitudes of contempt, superiority, domineering or bullying, self-deprecation, or obsessive perfectionism.
Severe Shame and Mental Illness
When shaming has been severe or extreme, it can contribute to the development of mental illness. This link has been underestimated until now. Researchers are increasingly finding connections between early childhood shaming and conditions such as depression, anxiety, personality disorders, and obsessive-compulsive disorders. In his book, The Psychology of Shame, Gershen Kaufman goes further to assert a link between shaming and addictive disorders, eating disorders, phobias and sexual dysfunction.”
http://www.naturalchild.org/robin_grille/good_children.html
“Psychiatrist Peter Loader states that people cover up or compensate for deep feelings of shame with attitudes of contempt, superiority, domineering or bullying, self-deprecation, or obsessive perfectionism.”
This. Narcissism comes from lack of self esteem from having been beaten down, not from “too much” self esteem (as if there is such a thing) from having been praised and loved.
This is comical because the Lt. Governor of Texas thinks that “shaming schools” by putting letter grades on the marquee in front of the school will make them improve.
https://davidrtayloreducation.wordpress.com/2015/01/22/the-scarlet-letter-again/
SA should be embarrassed by how little they know about children, learning and teaching, but the indicators are that they suffer from Dunning-Kruger effect:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect
They use outdated Behavioral training strategies as if poor children of color are wild animals in need of taming. They mistakenly believe that the way to increase desirable behaviors is for children to learn how to avoid the shame, ridicule and humiliation they inflict on them for not complying. Their incentives are candy and Nerf guns. ‘Go snack on sweets and pretend to get revenge’ just may come back to bite them someday.
Since they are a Zero Tolerance school but clearly don’t know how to model appropriate behaviors, I wonder how many kids have gotten punitive consequences there for eating candy in school or making guns out of their Pop Tarts.
And then, heaven forbid, they snap and hurt others. So much rage and frustration held in for so long can only burst out, either with damage to oneself or others.
See also Alfie Kohn’s timely piece on rewards and punishment, “Evidence? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Evidence!”
http://www.alfiekohn.org/blogs/unfalsifiable/
I’m also confused about why harsh, exclusionary discipline policies are lauded in this charter school but derided in public schools.
The US Secretary of Education has issued directives to public schools to change their discipline practices. In fact, he recently complimented public schools for doing just that.
Just to clarify: charter schools that use harsh and exclusionary discipline and tons of test prep are “good” and promoted by media and politicians but public schools that do the same are “bad” and must change? That doesn’t sound very “agnostic” to me.
Perhaps on Wall Street, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” is fine, but with little children in classrooms and their parents? I’m not so sure . . .
The public needs to hear more testimonials.
More testimonials on what? How not to educate children. There is enough evidence to determine that the current path that we are on is going to doom a generation of children that did not deserve.
The public needs to know what is going on in the charters.
The attitude, atmosphere, approach, expected / required behaviors, discipline and public shaming seem the antithesis of childhood.
The burn out is a real problem for an employer. It’s okay in a heavily populated urban area where they can churn 25 year olds in and out, but it would do real damage in huge swathes of the country.
Experience has value to an employer, partly because there’s institutional and organizational history with longer-term employees so they don’t repeat mistakes or promote dumb ideas over and over. One of the issues in the Atlanta testing debacle was they fired all the experienced employees. The teams didn’t know one another- they had no personal bonds or history, so it was easier to get sucked into a very bad idea. People really aren’t widgets. They’re social.
This is not burn out….it is a beat down. Every day more criticism, more paperwork, more, more and more….and of course we won’t pay you anymore.
OMG…those sad babies being threatened, punished, and labeled, because of CCSS and high-stakes tests, which are just REPRESSION to the MAX. How gross snd disgusting. I read about Obama singing Rahm’s wonderful-ness. Another OMG. Does Obama really think we educators believe in the wonderful-ness of Rahm and Duncan? Right…sound bytes.
Thank you to the owner of this blog for the posting and the link to the article.
I have noticed that occasionally a charter zealot will lament that test scores have assumed too much importance and that schools should be judged holistically on all the other, shall we say, “intangible” things they do that are so so important.
Shameless hypocrisy that serves the interests of adults garnering $tudent $ucce$$ at the expense of children, parents, and communities.
But let me make it clear. I am not criticizing the staffs, the parents and the children. The tsunami of high-stakes standardized testing that has done so much to ruin education for so many is the responsibility of those in charge, the rheephormsters that have the power to mandate and enforce and to authorize the monies to pay for that hazing ritual.
I know that some shills or trolls may start flaming me, so to make clear what they will stubbornly refuse to admit—and to clear up what they will attempt to obfuscate and hide behind a wall of sneer, jeer and smear—let me provide a link to this blog, remembering that this is just one example of many—
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2013/02/13/michael-johnston-colorado-boy-wonder-of-corporate-reform/
First two paragraphs of the above three-paragraph posting:
“Who is the miracle reformer of Colorado? Who wrote its law to evaluate teachers by their test scores? Who claimed that his high school graduated 100% of its seniors and sent them to college? Who so lauded by President Obama and DFER? Whose legislation became a model for ALEC? Why, Michael Johnston, of course.
Mercedes Schneider continues her portrait of the board of NCTQ by looking into Johnston’s history. NCTQ is the organization that tells the nation how to get high-quality teachers.”
The second paragraph has a link to the blog of Dr. Mercedes Schneider aka deutsch29 with much valuable info and contextual material.
And why am I not surprised that such a prominent “thought leader” of rheephorm as Mr. Johnston passed through TFA on the way to his “real” career? The very same organization that can generate a term like ‘right corps member mindset’*—oooooooo, I can see Maoists of so many years ago in the US with their fingers stuck in a Little Red Book, pondering and repeating such bits of wisdom as “It takes ten fingers to play a piano.” [*see Gary Rubinstein, blog guest posting of 2-22-2014, “How Interning for TFA Convinced me of its Injustice”]
But never ever forget that when it comes to the business plan that masquerades as an education model, “it’s all about the kids.”
😱
Hit the “repeat” button. Read the above posting again. Read the NYT article accessed via the link provided in the posting.
Time to get back to the hard task of ensuring genuine learning and teaching. Time to ensure a “better education for all” by giving public schools the support and resources they need to do their job.
And at this moment, with the knowledge gained by reading the above:
“Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.” [Frederick Douglass]
Meaning, it’s time to get unfit for the abusive practice known as high-stakes standardized testing.
Time to opt out and starve the rheephorm testing beast.
😎
“You have been so careful of me that I never had a child’s heart.
You have trained me so well that I never dreamed a child’s dream. You have dealt so wisely with me, Father ,from my cradle to this hour, that I never had a child’s belief or a child’s fear.
Mr. Gradgrind was quite moved by his success, and by this testimony to it. ” My dear Louisa,” said he, you abundantly repay my care. Kiss me, my dear girl.”
― Charles Dickens, Hard Times
Dickens is timeless. Is the theft of childhood any different under 21st century reformers than it was under those of the 19th?
Dickens? Kids nowadays don’t get to read Dickens. Aren’t they reading plumbing manuals, closely, and dissecting a sentences and writing and essay on syntax? Isn’t that common core?
Sorry; just a bit of sad levity on my part today. I’m reeling from the death of my sister in law. Everything to me today is bleaker and snarkier than usual. Wake is tomorrow. Family is in the dumps.
So sorry for your loss. Take care.
Donna: what Dienne said.
So hard. I hope her immediate family has lots of family like you to offer their support. Death leaves a lonely place that takes awhile for life to fill.
Sorry to hear. It doesn’t seem fair that the world keeps on doing what it does every day unaware of the loss of a loved one.
Edit principles.
THANKS!
Still a great story/scoop. Plus you had wine and macaroons. A nice combination along with a nice talk and potential source or story to follow- up on later.
Sounds remarkably similar to child abuse. As a principal, I was not tolerant of teachers who conducted themselves in the manner of the teachers who support this nonsense. It would be very interesting to see a side by side of the expectations/ consequences in these schools and the expectations/consequences in the early nineteen hundred sweat shops where children worked long hours. Laws had to be passed to prevent that kind of abuse.
So sad to hear that the parents who want their kids in these charter schools care nothing about how their kids are being abused. It’s ok to let the kids pee on themselves rather than being excused to the bathroom, it’s ok to embarrass and demean kids for low scores on test, it’s ok to limit kids to a particular way of sitting and walking. This just seems like abuse to me, especially if this was done in public schools. Maybe no one cares since these are students of color who have been stereotyped as behavior problems and slow learners. No matter that this narrative is not true, they are being educated as if it is.
Having read the NYTimes piece and this one, I wonder if the message the Times is pushing is that ALL schools should follow Eva’s methods. Why laud SA and their methods, holding them up as an exemplar unless you are advocating that all schools do the same, as that seems to be a guarenteed way to raising the holy test scores?
It’s not education, but it is effective test prep, and since test scores are the only things that matter…is that the message the NYTimes is pushing?
The difference between charters and the publics. Let something like this happen in a public school and I can guarantee hearings, possible arrests, investigates and possible terminations. The school would be lit up on social media. In charters, par for the course? And for what? A lousy test score that in the grand scheme means absolutely nothing. Sad where our priorities are and what parents are willing to put there children through. A fool’s errand.
Mark Collins: good points.
😎
According to the NYT article cited by Dr. Ravitch, SA had more than 22,000 applications for 2,688 seats. The article also states that SA would not accept any 5th grader because “new students entering at that point would be too far behind their classmates.” Compared to the total enrollment in NYC’s PK-12 of more than 1 million, this is the proverbial drop in the bucket.
So what if they go up to 100 schools? They’ll never make a significant dent on the total enrollment. Plus they continuously counsel out students, and this can only increase as they establish their own high schools, which, surely, will only admit their own 8th graders.
You all are worried that if SA is scaled up, public schools will disappear.
That will never happen. Why? Because public schools are needed by SA as the “dumping ground” of its rejects.
Plus there are not enough graduates at the tony schools they recruit their staff from.
Yes, it is extremely annoying to deal with the propaganda streaming from this network of stalag camps (is that too extreme a characterization? would gulag be more appropriate? maybe they should be known as Re-education Camps through Test Prep?), but all this should be put into a better context.
Let’s face it: a segment of the population can do well in these camps, er, schools. Fine, but you all need to figure out how to provide a true education to the non-conformists. The hedge fund managers don’t want to deal with them so it has got to be you.
You are being given what they consider lemons. Make the best damned lemonade. After all, those who advance society have always been on the edge of the norm.
I won’t dispute what you write, but I’m more concerned about the disproportionate amount of money that flows to these schools, at the expense of the public schools.
Yeah, OK, SA will never “educate” more than a fraction of the total number of students in NYC, but they will gain far more than a fraction of the public tax dollars that fund education.
Let these private schools be exactly that – private. Let their hedge-fund patrons who donate to these schools fund tuition scholarships for those who attend, instead of just paying for the amenities like sports, and libraries, and books, and chalk, etc.
Let them find their own spaces to teach, their own buildings and not push out real public schools. Let the market truly decide between public and private education and which one is better.
That won’t happen, because there is no money to be made in that.
@rockhound2, I won’t dispute what you write either. But then the criticism needs to be focused on that: if they want to run a re-education camp, let them do it on their own dime.
If the public or, more accurately, those 22,000 applicants want to have a subset of public schools run the way SA runs their school, I am sure that it is possible for this to be accomplished in some specific schools. True, these schools won’t have closets brimming with emergency clothing, but they will at least be able to compete under the same conditions.
Would the rest of the taxpayers be happy with such an arrangement? Who knows, but if these parents want their children to be treated that way, I don’t see why public schools cannot compete in such market. Might as well stop trying to speak sense to these people and give them what they want. IANAL, but as long as they sign a waiver agreeing to those conditions, they have nothing to complain later.
We are not getting too far using a reasoned approach so why not employ such modest solution?
(And, no, I would never put my children through those camps. But these people want that and we might as well beat them at their own game.)
Former LASUD parent, I am very suspicious of that 22,000 figure. Success Academy spends hundreds of dollars to market its school and because many parents fear their K student might be shut out of their zoned public school, they just put their child’s name in — it only takes a few minutes to do so. But the question is, how many students REMAIN on their wait lists after the first day of school (and how many of those on the wait list were also using Success Academy as a back-up)?
The other thing that Success Academy doesn’t address is the fact that some of the longest wait lists — especially AFTER all the parents have turned them down — are not in the Districts where they are opening the most schools. In fact, some of the poorest districts have one or no Success Academy schools, and some of the wealthiest have two or more. Success Academy’s last application to the SUNY Charter Institute asked for a 3rd school in District 2 Manhattan, which is one of the wealthiest (if not the wealthiest) districts with the fewest numbers of low-income students and their current SA schools have the smallest numbers (as low as 25%) of low-income students. It is only because some intrepid parents documented how many empty seats were in those schools that SUNY and SA were embarrassed into changing the location, and even that change wasn’t done properly. So while there may be 10,000 students who live in the Bronx who are on Success Academy wait lists, those are not the places where Success Academy is opening most of its schools. If you are an affluent family living in District 2 or District 15, your child will very likely get into a SA school since there are far more seats per student AFTER all the parents before you turn down the spot. If you are a poor family living in the Bronx, your chances are slim. So why would Success want more schools where they have fewer students who need their school?
Finally, the reason that it is impossible to ignore Success Academy is because their stellar test scores are being used to justify huge budget cuts in education for the schools that really do educate at-risk students. Because SA pretends it can get those results with LESS money, and with exactly the same students found in failing public schools, politicians get to cut taxes for billionaires because schools don’t need that money – they just waste it. It is impossible for a failing school to match Success Academy’s results — it is impossible for other CHARTER schools to do so, except for ones like BASIS High School (in AZ), which accepts “everyone” who is willing to take and pass 2 or 3 AP classes each year, beginning in 9th grade. They may lose most of their students, but they can brag that the ones who remain have great SAT scores. If you start enough Basis-type charter schools that are well-funded, you will eventually appeal to almost every parent with a bright student. There is a tipping point that will eventually be reached if charter schools get rid of all problem kids and public schools have them all. Then even parents of well-behaved and bright students who don’t believe in charters will want their kids in one rather than being stuck in the public school with the most difficult students, especially if the public school is being starved of resources while the charter school is being showered with money.
@NYC public school parent: your points are valid to a certain extent but you seem to have missed mine, perhaps because I was not as clear as I should have been. My point is that they cannot be scaled up and if the state pushes in that direction it will end up with a very very large number of failures in its hands. This is 3D chess, not checkers.
Anyway, let’s take your arguments one by one: their number of applicants. Does it matter? It does only if you take it at face value. But then you point out all the holes in their argument and it becomes obvious that this number has no bearing on the number of students they actually serve. My suggestion is to concentrate on the size of their actual enrollment to show that SA is equivalent to Aesop’s Tale of the Mountain in Labour: all that huffing and puffing to end up with a mouse. Isn’t this worth highlighting rather than go on and on about the validity or lack thereof of their scores?
The real problem here is the belief that high scores are indicative of academic success. There is abundant evidence that this is not so. Why is so much energy spent on talking about bright kids stuck in schools with low scores as if the schools were “failing” solely because there are difficult students there? The fact is that the scores are low not because of the bad apples but because of poverty and what we euphemistically like to label as “cultural differences.” Back in the good ol’ days (that never were), schools had plenty of difficult kids. Yet, we, as a nation, managed to get colleges filled with public school graduates who went on to excel. What’s the difference now? It’s this stupid worship at the altar of accountability, that’s what.
In my mind, the real question is what do scores indicate. And they certainly are not valid to define academic achievement because if they did the elite private schools would be giving them to their students.
That’s where the effort should be placed, not in giving SA validity because they figured out how to get great scores by cheating on a test that is useless to demonstrate academic achievement. Or because they are very good liars in regards to their enrollment, wait list, etc.
@Former LAUSD parent – thanks for clarifying your point. I agree with you if we lived in a reality-based community where the media pointed out when one party was dishonest. But the problem is that Success Academy will scale up, if their billionaire funders have their way. Now I have no doubt they can’t scale up too much (nor do they want to) but they can scale up just enough to destroy the public schools that ARE working — the ones who are serving primarily middle class parents.
It’s hard to completely dismiss scores because then it feels like WE are the ones who are no longer part of the reality-based community. But if the reason the scores are good is not a school taking a random group of students and turning them into “scholars”, perhaps with test prep, but instead weeding out the low-scoring kids, then that debunks that myth with facts. If the Success Academy chain is lowering suspension and attrition rates simply by making sure a higher % of their students are affluent and keeping more affluent students, that is important to point out, too. I just don’t see how it can ever be a good thing to allow dishonesty to be part of this debate.
One thing that I wonder about is what would happen if public school parents demanded that their students took the same CTP-4 exams that private school kids took and not state exams specially designed to “prove” that kids were poorly educated in public schools? I suspect those tests are far more straightforward, and suddenly the idea of using them to measure teacher performance would be part of private school’s results, also. If we are testing public school students, let’s give them the same exam that private schools give. I think that would immediately change the focus. And if Success Academy students were somehow outscoring the students at Horace Mann or Collegiate, I suspect there would be far more effort to look more closely at how those scores were achieved instead of simply accepting them as proof that their teachers were better.
@NYC public school parent: I don’t share the view that SA will scale up enough to destroy public schools, even those that are working. Their business model is unsustainable at scale and over the long run, despite those parents who think their child is better off in a boot camp. (And I guess that is why one’s children are chattel still.)
And unless their model can be continued into college, those kids are due for a rude awakening if they can’t think for themselves without the scaffolding given by the spoon-feeding they got while they were test prepping.
Test scores are a product of test design and raw score manipulation into the desired distribution. SA is simply creating test-taking machines because, as one practicing psychometrician once told me “anyone can be trained to pass any given test as there are always techniques to do it for any test.” As a hard-science graduate, I was astonished because in science you either get it or you don’t, you just can’t train your way to get the right answer. And I suppose that’s the reason for these scores: these are, by and large, multiple choice tests and specific techniques can be developed to beat the test.
What is going to happen when the tests go in a different direction? They will have to come up with other strategies, go through different weeding out processes, etc.. What will that mean to the kids in their programs? It will be horrible, but those parents who put them there and want them there will reap what they have sown. Can we do anything about it? No. So we might as well put our efforts into demonstrating that their way is not the way to achieve greater academic success, which is definitely not defined by the test scores. These parents want choice, fine, then, but why can’t we have our choice that our kids not be treated this way?
Will this be easy? No, but much easier than continuously focusing on their scores and their tactics. Let them serve a tiny amount of the population. And keep it that way.
Incidentally, the CTP tests you are referring to seem to me just another set of tests that compares the test taker “with similar groups of achievers via national, independent, suburban public, international, association, and district norms using scaled scores, stanines, and percentiles.” This is nothing else than another use of the Bell Curve to stack-and-rank but now catering to a particular market (“independent, public, faith-based, and boarding schools”). Now, unless you know how honest the test designers and analysts are, you won’t know what is the secret sauce. Chances are they’ll never tell you and the best you can do is try to figure it out by analyzing their results. But guess what? You’ll never get them unless you are their client, in which case you’ll probably have to sign a non-disclosure agreement and you can’t tell anyone that the emperor has no clothes.
Anyway, the Bell Curve has been abused enormously in the last 20 years or so all because of “accountability.” It is time for interested parents to jump into the rabbit hole that is the use of educational statistics and part the curtain. (I know, it’s too much to ask. However, it is worth pointing out that the Bell Curve was used by many in the eugenics movement. How well did that work out?)
And here’s a great article about how the Obamas were able to opt-out their children from high-stakes standardized testing.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/04/07/how-the-obamas-opted-their-children-out-of-high-stakes-standardized-tests/
Thanks for posting more proof that President Obama does not care about public school students.
No, nobody beat you to it. This is not a story to be told once; it is a story to be told long, and far, and wide, and repeatedly. People need to hear it, and not enough will hear it unless it is told only again and again, and in many different places. And not just this story, but many equivalent to it.
From the New York Times article mentioned:
Success Academy schools are also rich in the kind of extracurricular activities that have increasingly been cut from public schools, such as art, music, chess, theater, dance, basketball and swimming.
I’ve read several articles on the Success Academy, but never have I read much more than a certain lip service to extra-curricular activities such as those suggested above. And I’m getting the sense it is only lip service. I wouldn’t mind being proven wrong, because I think those kids would would probably gain far more useful experience from those activities than from the cram school mentality of preparing for standardized tests.
They were also referred to as “electives,” like in secondary ed and college, where students are given a choice of classes beyond the required core and which they attend on their own schedule, rather than “specials,” which is typically used to designate these kinds of scheduled courses for entire classes in elementary ed. And it sounded like students cannot participate in them at SA when they don’t comply or they have to do test prep.
In New York City, the DOE does not provide funding for arts education, librarians, or gym teachers. Schools that have these “specials” seek out other funding for these programs, often through their PTAs. While schools whose parents raise a lot of money are criticized as elitist, at least the money is being raised by parents whose children actually attend the school. Most middle and upper-middle income public school parents are happy to donate, and I believe that families of means should contribute financially to have these specials at their children’s schools.
The issue with SA is that their private funding comes primarily from people who are not parents of their students. Also, as mentioned in some prior comments here, SA heavily courts affluent families as a way of keeping up test scores and keeping down attrition. All SA families, including middle and upper-middle income families, do NO fundraising. Many SA students are indeed low income, but many are not. It is unfair that middle and upper-middle income NYC public school families pay out of pocket for these “specials,” while their counterparts at SA do not.
And yes, they do have chess. Any time that a SA student wins any trophy at a chess tournament the NY Post will write a full page article on it.
Beth – the central district does not provide funds for those things? That’s incredible!
Surprised, Joe? You shouldn’t be, since the work you do to re-direct public dollars to private charter schools helps bring this about.
My question is, where does your naivete end and your disingenuousness begin?
For decades, Michael, I’ve been working with public school teachers and their unions to help create new options within districts
Here’s the most recent effort, developed with presidents in Minneapolis St. Paul and the former MFT president who also was the former VP of the American Federation of Teachers. Startup funds for district teacher led schools
http://hometownsource.com/2015/04/08/joe-nathan-column-new-bill-offers-teachers-respect-families-options/
Diane,
I worked for years at another, very similar charter network and would like the opportunity to talk with you about my experiences and how difficult it was for me after leaving- professionally and psychologically because of the stress and environment.
I was a teacher at Success Academy for two years, and my experience was very similar to this. That place is AWFUL. If you ever want to talk, feel free to contact me!
Your former students, future SA students, parents, teachers and the public-at-large need to hear the story you have to tell, which can go a long way toward exposing what goes on at SA.
You’d be doing everyone a great service if you joined together and gave voice to your experiences at Eva’s Pavlovian test-prep workhouse for the poor.
I am a current parent at SA and I am personally seeing the stress these children are currently going through. Definitely not returning next school year.
Post from a Success Academy parent who will give her name:
http://tntp.org/blog/post/success-academy-works-for-my-kid
Here’s part of what she writes:
I have a shocking confession: I am a Success Academy parent. Imagine my relief, then, when I read the New York Times’ recent article about Success, which marshals a flurry of criticisms about the charter network’s apparently heartless, “no excuses” approach to teaching.
Finally, I thought to myself, I’ll have an excuse to tell my son that he will be moving to the district school that is much more conveniently located down the street. No more shuttling back and forth on the subway to get him to school. No more arguing with him literally every morning as he pleads to get to school early—“Isn’t Dad ready yet? I want extra time at school today!” And this’ll be the last time I’ll have to explain to him, amidst tears streaming down his face, why he has to miss Number Stories because Wednesday at 11 am is the only time I can get him a doctor’s appointment.
Thankfully, I will no longer have to field phone calls from his teachers during the middle of my work day: “Ms. Rozman, I just wanted to tell you that Benjamin did a really good job sharing his strategy today and was very proud.“ No more texts with updates like, “Benjamin had a headache today so he got some water and put his head down and rested for a while, and he said he felt better,” or notecards from teachers cluttering my mailbox (“Thanks for all you do to support Benjamin in getting to school and turning in his homework.”) Phew. Never mind that Success Academy schools across the city have shown tremendous gains for students, often helping them meet state learning standards at double and triple the rates of other schools. Who needs a school like that?
In all seriousness, though, no doubt there are parents who feel that Success’ approach to teaching and learning is not a good match for their child. No one should press these parents to send their children to such a school—nor should they be forced to praise teaching methods with which they disagree. There are plenty of exceptional schools around—charter, district and private—and chances are, none of them works for every kid. In my neighborhood, for example, there’s a great district school with all-inclusion classes, where every class is comprised of 50 percent special education students and 50 percent general education students. Parents vie for the coveted spots there. Just like Success, it’s a terrific option for many families and their children, but there are also parents I know who feel it’s not the right fit for them.
And that’s fine! The point is, every parent should have the right to make choices about their child’s schooling, and every parent should have good options from which to choose—not just parents who can afford to do so, and not just those who win a charter school lottery. But I can’t help but feel that there is an implicit assumption in education debates that parents whose children are primarily served by charter schools like Success—who tend to be low-income students of color—aren’t capable of making those choices, or have somehow been duped into buying into these schools’ philosophies. As though those parents, of those children, don’t understand the kind of schools they’re subjecting their children to.
That’s deeply biased and flat-out wrong. I think we can safely say that the thousands of parents who descended on Albany recently, advocating for their children’s rights to stay in Success Academies, or the parents of the 20,000+ children who enter the lottery for spots in Success Academy schools each year, haven’t been hoodwinked. They’re making real, informed choices—just like I do—about what they want for their kids.
I believe this Success Academy parent is describing the truth of what she sees. But she leaves out the elephant in the room — that far too many of the low-income parents who CHOSE Success Academy seem to have mysteriously disappeared. And instead of opening more schools in low income districts where their wait lists seem to be longest, they are opening more in districts where far more affluent parents live. And if your child is easy to teach and will score well on tests, why wouldn’t you be satisfied? Not only does your “gifted” child get to attend a school where difficult students are counseled out, but your child also gets all the extras that millions of dollars in donations can buy. When those parents claim that they are getting a “private school experience” (which they often do), they mean it, INCLUDING the ability not to educate the students who don’t “fit” with your school.
This parent’s opinion reminds me of the origin of the phrase “drank the KoolAid.” The followers of that madman appear to have willingly drank the poison. Should there have been a law that prevented that? I just don’t know.
But I’d like to focus on one single point raised here: “No one should press these parents to send their children to such a school.” Well, isn’t that what the backers of charters such as SA want to happen at all other schools? How is it fair that public schools are labeled “failures” if they don’t embrace the boot-camp mentality of SA, specially when forced to accept the children who can’t survive their regimented approach to education?
I have no doubt that many parents are truly aware of what goes inside SA’s walls. But what about all the others who think that education is really going on and all that’s happening is learning “strategies” instead of actual knowledge? Aren’t they being hoodwinked?
Similarly, what goes on in many public schools is completely outrageous. How can we expect them to impart a formal education when they are asked to do it without classroom resources and with no accountability for uncivilized behavior?
Instead, people are going gaga over scores that are ultimately meaningless when it comes to going to college.
This article and comments from current SA parents on the NYT web site regarding the recent article lead me to suspect the following:
1. Punishments and shaming are more prevalent and punitive at Success Academy schools where there are more low-income students of color than the Success Academy schools with more higher-income white students.
2 Success Academy either seriously indoctrinates their parents or attracts those who are highly receptive to their anti-public school message. Many of the posts on the NYT web site from SA parents used the term “failing schools”. Previously, I have noticed that charter school advocates tend to use the same language in their posts over multiple online forums, as if they are all quoting from the same missive.
As with any organization, the tone is set at the top IMHO I think Eva Moskowitz is certifiably crazy. No one who is sane shoots off at the mouth like she does. Understandably then, parents who send their children to her schools come across as equally impudent. Upon reading the above “blog post” a second time, I am skeptical as to whether it was written by an actual parent, since it reads like a PR piece designed to answer criticism stemming from the recent NYT article.
Don’t trust anything to be non-biased from charter school lover Joe and TNTP, another TFA type program created by Michelle Rhee & Wendy Kopp. (SA has lots of TFAers,) And, of course, as evidenced by the appeal of military schools to some, there are always parents who like “subjecting their children to” boot camp.
If the denigration of poor children of color, massive test prep, profiteering etc. are not reasons enough to stop diverting public funds to minimally regulated charter schools, there’s more –and a well documented method for promoting choice WITHIN public school districts:
Choice Without Equity: Charter School Segregation and the Need for Civil Rights Standards
“The charter school movement has been a major political success, but it has been a civil rights failure. As the country continues moving steadily toward greater segregation and inequality of education for students of color in schools with lower achievement and graduation rates, the rapid growth of charter schools has been expanding a sector that is even more segregated than the public schools. The Civil Rights Project has been issuing annual reports on the spread of segregation in public schools and its impact on educational opportunity for 14 years. We know that choice programs can either offer quality educational options with racially and economically diverse schooling to children who otherwise have few opportunities, or choice programs can actually increase stratification and inequality depending on how they are designed. The charter effort, which has largely ignored the segregation issue, has been justified by claims about superior educational performance, which simply are not sustained by the research. Though there are some remarkable and diverse charter schools, most are neither. The lessons of what is needed to make choice work have usually been ignored in charter school policy. Magnet schools are the striking example of and offer a great deal of experience in how to create educationally successful and integrated choice options.”
The Civil Rights Project
http://civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integration-and-diversity/choice-without-equity-2009-report
Some magnet schools are open to all and are doing great things. Some magnet schools screen out students who do not pass standardized tests, or have high grades, or other screens.
Civil rights advocates have filed a complaint against a number of NYC magnet schools because they rely on how well students do on a single day on a single test:
Joe Nathan,
Some magnet schools screen students. It is very public. There is no secret that schools like Bronx Science and Stuyvesant are selective. They don’t boast about their high scores. Charter schools pretend to have open admissions, pretend they serve all students, but they don’t. Then they brag about their scores.
It’s good to see that Deborah Meier agrees that public schools should not use admissions tests.
And these quasi private magnet schools also brag about their accomplishments. Here’s an example from Stuyvesant’s history:
With our outstanding record of academic achievement and our commitment to excellence, we feel that Stuyvesant High School merits the national recognition it has continued to maintain.
http://stuy.enschool.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=126631&type=d&pREC_ID=251657&hideMenu=1
Joe Nathan,
It is no secret that Stuyvesant is a selective admissions school. Kids take a rigorous test to get in. You must have searched long and hard to find a Stuyvesant statement where they spoke of their very accomplished students. See if you can find a statement where they brag, like Eva, that they take the same kids and get higher scores. You have become an apologist for every misdeed of the charter industry. It must be sad to see your child-centered progressive idea co-opted by ALEC, Scott Walker, the Walton family, and every rightwing politician and corporation.
Diane, it took about 30 seconds to find the comment from Sty, and I could have posted similar comments on other NYC quasi-private “magnet” school websites. Delighted to see civil rights groups challenging these test-based admissions tests. With all the criticism about standardized tests that appears here, it’s surprising that you are ok with allowing public schools to screen out students on the basis of a test.
As to your criticism of chartering – it was great to share the comments of civil and human rights legend Marian Wright Edelman, who sees chartering as “an important part of the solution” to what students need. She also thinks district schools are important, urges collaboration among districts & charters and urges efforts to work with others to reduce problem outside schools like hunger, poverty, etc. etc.
Some far right wing groups that I’m sure you don’t agree with on many issues share your criticisms of Common Core. Lots of right wing $ are going into that campaign.
Coalitions sometimes are like that…people agree on somethings, and not on others.
Here’s a link to a newspaper column I wrote this week re a coalition of teacher unions, district teachers and some folks who helped create chartering – an effort to provide startup dollars to help district teachers start new teacher led schools. This effort also includes some business groups with which I sometimes agree, sometimes disagree.
http://hometownsource.com/tag/joe-nathan/?category=columns-opinion
Who is Joe Nathan and why is he being completely dishonest? Just like Eva Moskowitz, he can’t defend Success Academy without misleading folks. Comparing it to Stuy? No one at Stuy is going around saying that public schools are FAILURES because their students aren’t getting the same SAT scores as the students at Stuy. No one at Stuy is claiming that they should get MORE money because their high test scores “prove” they are working miracles! No one is saying that Stuy should be the model for how all schools should be, because the principal at Stuy has discovered a “secret sauce” that she won’t share with anyone but that guarantees top SAT scores. The fact that SA defenders like Joe Nathan use this speaks volumes.
Because in fact, Success Academy DOES get rid of students who can’t keep up, and according to THEIR OWN PARENTS, the children of educated and affluent parents in certain SA schools are treated far more kindly than the children of low-income parents at Harlem Success Academy. Why? Because SA WANTS to keep most of the students who do well, and they want to get rid of all the ones who don’t do well under their system. Surprise! It turns out that if your parents are college educated, you are far more likely to do well in Success Academy and not be “encouraged” to leave. The fact that some low-income students thrive there is dwarfed by the fact that so many MORE low-income students do not, and are not wanted. And, not coincidentally, those are the low-income students who will cost more money to teach.
NYC public school parent – I’m also public school parent, former PTA president in Minnesota. Over the last 45 years I’ve worked in and with a variety of public schools, district & charter.
A group of newspapers has asked me to write a weekly column on education issues, which is found here:
http://hometownsource.com/tag/joe-nathan/?category=columns-opinion
This week, for example, I wrote about a bill several of us worked on with teachers and teacher union presidents that would give $ to help district teachers create new options within school districts.
My post was intended to give readers a chance to hear another view of Success Academy. While a number of people posting think the school(s) are awful, they are attracting thousands of students. The post was not a blanket endorsement of SA, just an effort to show another view.
In my experience, there often are not just 2 sides, by many sides to a controversy.
In my mayoral controlled city, we used to have many open enrollment magnet schools that offered a wide variety of programs, with just a few selective enrollment schools for gifted students. Mayor 1% changed all that. While reducing magnet programs, closing neighborhood schools and replacing them with charters, he has also been growing the number of selective enrollment schools, Segregation is promoted by right-wingers in the Democratic party, too.
Chi-Town Res, very sorry to hear that Chicago is creating more selective enrollment schools.
Here’s a column about an effort in Minnesota to give public school teachers and parents startup funds to create new district options. http://hometownsource.com/tag/joe-nathan/?category=columns-opinion
Joe, why can’t we be honest about this? You posted an op ed from a well-educated, upper middle class family who says the Success Academy school where her child attends — which has a majority of parents like her — is not like the Success Academy school described in the NY Times. I am sure she is correct. But let’s talk about the implications of that. It means that SA treats families in poverty very different than families like hers. For families like hers, SA simply uses its millions in donations to provide a private school education that weeds out difficult students. Having charter schools take over that market (the students least expensive to educate) while pushing the more difficult students — which means the majority of low-income students — back to public schools is what this op ed confirms. If you want to argue that charters should have the franchise for the easy students and be able to push out the difficult ones, then be very up front about it and we can have a policy debate. But that means we are also truthful about the fact that Success Academy is not working miracles, just like no one thinks Stuy is working miracles. Every public school that does that has good results — even though it is harder for public schools to push out the students once they are there. It would certainly be a lie to hold up Eva Moskowitz as someone who cares about the kids in failing schools, since very few of those students will be the ones who those schools are for. Are you acknowledging that? If so, I have yet to hear you do so. When I hear people twisting themselves in knots to avoid saying that — her schools are not for the majority of at-risk students in failing public schools — then I think they have a different agenda.
Do we need charter schools to “compete” for affluent students (but only the easy to educate ones) to try to get their parents to give up on underfunded public schools for a “private school-like” experience? I am sure if we give these charters enough free resources — especially free space in very expensive neighborhoods — we can get lots of middle class parents to buy in. But to what purpose? To draw those parents out of public schools, so they are for the students the charters don’t want? (Who happen to be more expensive to educate.) How is that a good thing?
@NYC public school parent: this too, I believe. Well said.
Having said that, honesty is not something that would work in this context. If they were honest, it would be clear to all that the “reformers” just want us to go to a time when education was rationed (remember the difference between the schools on either side of the mythical tracks?). They can’t do that, can they?
Of course, there’s plenty of people out there that view most public schools as a “social experiment” to which they do not want their children be subjected to. They are not about to let their precious ones be exposed to all that riffraff. Come to think of it, it has worked for the elite, so they ask themselves, why not us too, and on the public dime?
I agree with this article I worked in a charter school for over a year in the operations team and it was one of the worst environments I have ever worked in! I loved the students but other than that it was it was only about the numbers!
A lot of current and former SA employees agree with the former teacher in the original post about the toxic environment at SA:
http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Success-Academy-Charter-Schools-Reviews-E381408.htm?sort.sortType=OR&sort.ascending=true: