After the appearance of the New York Times’ article about the successes and harsh methods of Success Academy, there was quite a lot of discussion about whether the article was accurate and balanced. Eva Moskowitz said it was “slanted” with anecdotes.
I received an email from a former SA teacher who wanted to tell her story. She worked at SA for two years, but quit for reasons she explains below. She now works in another charter school. Her story is self-explanatory. She was not one of the teachers interviewed for the story in the New York Times.
In the recent New York Times article about Success Academy, CEO Eva Moskowitz defended a school leader’s use of the phrase “misery has to be felt” in an email about students who were not meeting expectations. After spending 2 years as a Success Academy teacher, it’s clear to me that misery was indeed a favorite tactic.
I’ve never worked anywhere where there was such a high chance of walking into the bathroom and seeing a colleague crying. Over the course of my two years there, I walked in on someone in tears at least a half a dozen times, and another half a dozen times the person crying in the bathroom was me. Teachers felt a lot of misery.
The first – and only – time I called out sick, I received a phone call around 9am from my assistant principal informing me that having “just a cold” was not a valid reason to call out sick, and that “unless you are vomiting, you are expected to medicate and push through.” At the end of the year, that sick day was given as a reason why my “level of professionalism” was a concern and why my rehire for the following year was in question.
My principal, who had no formal training as an educator, nevertheless frequently took control of my classroom in the middle of lessons and offered nothing but criticism of my teaching. After several weeks of feeling completely demoralized, a colleague delicately told our principal that it was getting hard to hear nothing but negative feedback, and that we were beginning to feel like the leadership thought nothing we were doing was right. He responded by rolling his eyes and saying “Oh, you want one of those compliment sandwich things? Ugh, I hate those!”
Another teacher who dared to raise the same concern on behalf of many of us at a staff meeting was fired. She was quietly brought back a few days later, but the damage to morale had been done.
One morning our beloved receptionist, an older woman that everyone regarded their work mom, came around classroom to classroom hugging each one of us. “There is a dark cloud over this building,” she said. “I want you to know I’m praying for you and for our kids.”
Misery, indeed.
But of course, the real tragedy of Success Academy is the misery of children. The misery of the low-income children of color who Ms. Moskowitz claims to want the best for. The misery of children who have learning disabilities and routinely don’t score well on the quarterly in-house assessments because their legally-deserved testing accommodations were denied them by the administration. The misery of children who have diagnosed emotional and behavioral disabilities and are still expected to adhere to the developmentally inappropriate behavioral expectations. The misery of any child who might be slightly different than the average, who is forced to comply with cookie-cutter behavioral and academic expectations that don’t respond to the needs of the individual child, in the name of systemic uniformity and “no excuses.”
To this day I feel sick to my stomach over the way I was made to speak to my students, and the things I was forced to demand from them. Backs straight, hands still, eyes tracking the speaker every second. Walking in the hallways silently and with their hands crossed over their chests so they wouldn’t touch things they weren’t supposed to. Working in complete silence almost all day long and hardly ever given an opportunity for collaborative work. For most of one of my years there the first and second graders ate lunch in silence too, because our principal had decided they couldn’t handle talking at an appropriate volume.
But of all of the awful stories from my time at Success, none will top the story of one of my little boys in first grade. He was new to Success, having left some other charter school for unclear reasons, and at first presented as a bright, sweet boy. But sometime in the winter, after months of seeming more and more defeated by a school environment that squashed his fiery spirit, he grew anxious and fidgety. These symptoms quickly escalated into weekly full-blown crisis situations in which he would suddenly start screaming and try to knock down every piece of furniture in our classroom. It was deeply troubling for the other students as well myself because it was clear that something very serious was going on in his little mind, and yet all our administrators seemed concerned about was getting his behavior under control. Their solution was to have our school security officer, a large man dressed in uniform, come upstairs and drag him out of our room. Knowing what I do now about childhood trauma, I understand the extent of the damage that must have done to him, as well as to all the other children in our class. At the end of the year it was not-so-subtly suggested to his family that this might not be the right place for him, and he moved on to to his third charter school in as many years.
Eva Moskowitz says Success Academy is the answer. She says she wants all kids to succeed. But she also says they need to feel misery if they do not rise to her nearly impossible expectations. What kind of success is that?
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
It sounds like institutionalization. A school where students are quiet is indeed a scary place. Of course the accommodations of these children aren’t being met. The parents probably don’t know or have the tools needed to sue. Imagine a rich parent allowing their child to be treated this way? Never! A sure sign of someone’s character is how they treat someone who is weaker than them; someone who isn’t in a position to fight back. I would like to see Ms Moskowitz bring her misery to an upper class neighborhood. She would be the one feeling the misery in no time.
flolindy: any wonder why I call them “edubullies”?
Yes, there are people that only feel big when they make someone else feel small.
But some of the rheephormistas have taken it to a new level. They feel pride in institutionalizing the beat down of children by adults. And in beating down their classroom advocates, teachers and aides.
I stop here because I don’t want to use language that violates the very sensible “Rules of the Road” of this blog.
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The KIPP school in Los Angeles where I observed a few years ago used similar stringent methods to tame their students who all wore uniforms and all answered in unison (on metre, as to a metranome) when replying to a teacher, or guest. It was downright scary.
Some kids had frozen smiles…but most just looked like robots.
It’s the parents who are putting them there. For too many people, including, unfortunately, too many parents, a “good” child is one who is quiet and obedient.
I used to do parent workshops at my daughters’ daycare and I’d have people talk about what is meant when you say that someone is a “good person”. I’d ask people to give examples of someone in their lives who is a “good person” and what makes him/her “good”. People would inevitably talk about things like courage and altruism – “she’d give you the shirt off her back” or “he always stands up for what’s right” kind of things. Then I would ask people what do we mean when we say that a child is a “good girl” or a “good boy”. You could tell by the looks on their faces that they got it. Usually someone would give some variation of “one who can sit down and shut up”.
My heart hurts for them all.
Well, luckily there’s still a public school system to back-stop the “schools of choice” system. For now, anyway.
If the New York Times does a critical piece on a public school is the public school afforded a forum to rebut? Any instance where that happened?
Wow! What an eye-opener.
Notice how not one major media outlet is jumping all over this story. Wall Street is highly invested in Success. And so are higher ups in government. Sooner or later someone at that school is going to have a major breakdown if the abuse continues.
This is why we do not want a culture of followers. I admire this teachers honest account of her experience. However schools like these and situations where authority is abused will thrive in our culture if we continue to stress obedience over individual thinking. The Common Core though advertised to many as an agenda that encourages individual thinking actually trains children to conform. This is really sick and those in charge of this institution should be investigated. I have found in my lifetime that sometimes those who aim to do a lot of good on the behalf of the poor are they themselves in need of serious psychological counseling.
I used to think that the problem with charters were not the ends—high academic achievement—but rather the problem was the means—severe, militarized, sometimes abusive treatment of students.
However, I now see no good in the ends either. It’s sinister. They seem to be trying to create docile, fearful students who will not or rather, can not think or act independently. When I read that 70% of KIPP students accepted to college end up quitting without getting a degree, I realized that there’s something amiss with their pedagogy… as the former KIPP-sters are no longer sitting in rooms of charter Stepford children, but now have to compete with non-charter college students who have been taught critical thinking, whose high school teachers not only encouraged it, but demanded it.
As this farce plays out, I predict that kids from Eva’s charters will not fare well down the road when and if they attend college.
My prior comment refers only to the administrators of the charter not the teacher who saw the light and left. I am grateful for her honesty and for her willingness to reveal the truth.
I worked as a consultant for Success Academy over a period of six years, from the planning stages on. Discipline such as that described was not present at the start, and only gradually took hold. I watched in disbelief as some of the most caring, devoted teachers and principals were asked to leave. The reason given was often that they ” did not get the school culture,” one way of saying that they were not willing to make students miserable for the dubious goal of higher test scores. I would add to the description of teacher misery given here that every time I walked into one of the Success schools, there was at least one child in the hall, crying bitterly. Since my job was science curriculum design, I did not feel the weight of the testing mania immediately. ( NYS science tests are given in 4 and 8) But when it arrived and middle school students were to be subjected to High School Regents exams, I quit. The students are being used as pawns to prove something- and the proof is in the form of performance on tests. It is possible that without high stakes testing as a measure of so called “education” ( which we know it is not) some charter schools, and even Success Academy, might do better by its students.
nnette: thank you for your comments.
Based on my life experience and having followed the ed debates for over five years, I am convinced that many people at the lower levels in charters (at least when they start out) want to do good. But, as is usual for most of us, when one is focused on the tasks at hand, the “big picture” can take a long while to come into view.
That’s when a moral decision—to stay or to go—starts to present itself.
Take the following statement from a 4-25-2010 article uttered by Paul Fucaloro, the “director of instruction and right-hand man” for Eva Moskowitz at the time:
[start]
The day before the scheduled math test, the city got socked with eight inches of snow. Of 1,499 schools in the city, 1,498 were closed. But at Harlem Success Academy 1, 50-odd third-graders trudged through 35-mile-per-hour gusts for a four-hour session over Subway sandwiches. As Moskowitz told the Times, “I was ready to come in this morning and crank the heating boilers myself if I had to.”
“We have a gap to close, so I want the kids on edge, constantly,” Fucaloro adds. “By the time test day came, they were like little test-taking machines.”
[end]
Link: http://nymag.com/nymag/features/65614/index3.html
Just speaking for myself, employees can hear a lot of blowhards in upper management utter high-falutin’ nonsense like “little test-taking machines.”
It can take a while to realize, on the ground and firsthand, that Mr. Fucaloro was speaking literally, not figuratively.
And as others on this thread have pointed out, those high test scores serve the interests of a few adults by making them look good, all at the expense of students and parents.
Charter math and its numbers & stats derive from an old—and not the best—American tradition:
“He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp posts – for support rather than for illumination.” [Andrew Lang]
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Christ, it’s straight out of Dickens.
What’s also troubling is that institutions run on these lines, however much they may start out devoted to “tough love,” often end up dropping the “love” part, and start attracting people who basically get a kick out of terrorizing children. Dotheboys Hall indeed.
Thank you, Madeleine! (I had similar thoughts.)
It was the Success of times, it was the StudentsFirst of times, it was the age of Gates, it was the age of Common Core, it was the epoch of Rheeform, it was the epoch of Testing, it was the season of Charters, it was the season of Dollar$, it was the spring of Pearson, it was the winter of Tisch, we had every con-artist scheme before us, we had nothing before us, we were all entering the Gates of Hell, we were all going direct without passing Go – in short, the period was so far like the Gilded age, that some of its noisiest authorities (Gates, Duncan, Rhee, Coleman, Moskowitz) insisted on its being received, for bad or for evil, in the superlative only.
TAGO!
Nice one!!
now – btw – what does TAGO mean? Is this what the kids are calling something these days?
TAGO=That’s a good one.
Reader Duane Swacker added this to our vocabulary.
Madeleine:
As Diane mentioned I first used the phrase here mainly as a self-deprecating response to Joanna Best’s observation that I wasn’t too good at figuring out acronyms. I’m self diagnosed AI*. I’ve had to ask many a poster to explain the acronym, and there are a ton of them in education, that he or she used. I’ve added some variations as in TAGrO-that’s a great one and EEMB-eso es muy bien.
By the way your posts are quite insightful and poignant. I’m glad you’ve started to post more.
*Acronym Impaired
Wow nice one!
I don’t believe any of this. It has to be from a script of some futuristic horror film being passed off as something actually happening.
It’s amazing how often anonymous people write to Diane Ravitch with the exact same story. I’m sure they’re all telling the truth, and that the kids at charter schools are really all as miserable as portrayed. That’s why their parents are all monsters, truly monsters.
How many of your children attend SA?
And here comes Dienne, always ready with the non sequitur.
Not at all. I just thought since you obviously know better than everyone else that you could share the one and only truth. Obviously your experience trumps the alleged experience of some anonymous “teacher”.
Oh, wait, you’re anonymous too.
Identity yourself please. What The ____?
Good reason to stay anonymous with Evil Eva on the prowl.
WT, I find that the parents who defend Success Academy are more likely than not parents at the Success Academy schools where the non-poor parents send their kids. When they say their kids aren’t treated like that, I believe them!!! But that is most reprehensible thing of all.
At Success Academy Upper West, if you are college educated and affluent and your kid fidgets a little but is obviously smart enough, I suspect that child isn’t terrorized into “behaving”. But that same behavior from a low-income student who struggles to learn? That’s when the “misery” begins. It’s a win-win situation for Success Academy — either the kid is cowed into behavior, or if not, they have every excuse to suspend a low-achieving kid over and over again until he leaves.
It is almost impossible to find a 6 or 7 year old who is perfectly behaved. But the little missteps of a high-achieving child are easy to overlook. If you target the low-achievers for every possible offense (hands not in pockets, too squirmy, not walking straight) you can make a child miserable and act out. Eventually, you can get rid of him.
But what kind of school would do this to low-income students whose parents are desperate to get out of a failing school? I suppose the answer is a charter school whose goal is not educating as many at-risk kids as possible, but whose goal is high scores on standardized tests, period. When achieving high scores is more important than helping a struggling child to learn, you get what you see at certain Success Academy schools — but NEVER at the ones where most of the students are affluent.
On the contrary, your statement that charter opponents think parents who send their children to those schools are monsters is the non sequitur.
I have the name of the teacher who wrote this post . She gave me permission to use her name. I advised her not to because the Internet is forever, and her career could be jeopardized. I made the choice to protect her.
dianeravitch: thank you.
Sometimes the implicit needs to be made explicit.
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Hi WT,
“It’s amazing how often anonymous people write to Diane Ravitch with the exact same story.”
Incidentally, I know the woman who wrote this (she posted a link to her facebook). I won’t claim to speak for her, but I was surprised her name wasn’t included in the article as she certainly didn’t hide that it was her post.
“I’m sure they’re all telling the truth, and that the kids at charter schools are really all as miserable as portrayed.”
I think she very much is telling the truth – the truth as she experienced it. Does that mean that every teacher had the same experiences? No; but at least several did at the same school. Does it mean every child is miserable (which you claimed though she did not)? No, but obviously at least some were.
“That’s why their parents are all monsters, truly monsters.”
My guess would be that the parents either don’t know about these kinds of situations, or think they’re exaggerations told by upset children and worn-out teachers. I doubt many parents are sending their children to Success Academy in hopes of making their children miserable, but no doubt some are sending them there hoping to instill some discipline… and it sounds like to the CEO Eva Moskowitz and the principal mentioned above, the two concepts are treated as the same thing.
Aureliano,
“My guess would be that the parents either don’t know about these kinds of situations, or think they’re exaggerations told by upset children and worn-out teachers.”
Exactly! When I was about 30 I was sitting around with my mom and some of the neighbors whose children went to the same Catholic grade school as I. I told them some of the many horror stories about what the nuns did to us (for one of many, I had to kneel on one of those triangular rulers for 15 minutes holding out my loaded book bag. But we got back, like gathering up a few crawdads from the creek on the way to school and putting them live in the nun’s desk so that when she opened the drawer, well you can imagine). The parents to whom I told the stories asked why we didn’t tell them about these incidents of absurdity and abuse by the nuns. I told them we took our “punishments” at school because it would have been worse at home if our folks found out. They understood.
Oh look, here comes the halo. Watch out it’s falling from the sky. Oh wait, it’s not falling. It’s stuck in the Wire Tube.
And maybe these stories of anonymous people are true, despite your insinuation that they are fictional?
“It’s amazing how often anonymous people write to Diane Ravitch with the exact same story.”
There goes WT talking in the third person again.
This story needs to go viral and for all to see and read. Notice how slime ball publications such as “chalkbeat” have no idea that any of this happens at moskowitch’s schools…..this whole charter thing is a scam backed by wall street to ultimately privatize the classroom and profit off of kids…Most of us know this but the main stream pubic needs to read and hear about this type of schooling for our modern children. SLimeballs like moskowitch and her cronies will sell their own mother down the road for a buck. Moskowtichs salary of $500,000 is a crime and she has sold her bull crap to wall street in disguise of making more money. Its time for politicians to see through this mirage that success has created and to end the madness.
Why did the teacher work for another charter school after leaving Success? Was it because there is actually a range of approaches and atmospheres among NYC charter schools, and she found one that suited her? Was it because the job market at DOE schools is actually quite tight, and there is neither a rush of people leaving the profession nor a scarcity of people willing to enter it?
The child at the center of the teacher’s worst experience came to Success from a charter school and left to go to another. What school was this child zoned for? Would the former Success teacher send her own child (real or hypothetical) to the schools her Success students were zoned for?
I am the teacher behind the original post. As Diane says in a comment above, I offered to put my name to this, but she cautioned me against it.
Tim, to respond to your questions…
I spent the year immediately following my time at SA at a private school, desperately wanting a change of environment. It was a relief to participate in a drastically more positive system, but I was working with a very different student population and I didn’t enjoy the work as much. When I decided to move to Boston the following year, I looked for a school – public or charter – that would enable me to serve a population with the same demographics as Success Academy, but in a much more loving and joyful way. I wanted a place where academics were strong, but not the only focus. I found it, and I have been there for two years with no plans to leave.
As to whether I would send my own (hypothetical) child to the schools my former students were zoned for…I really can’t say. I don’t know much about them specifically, other than what Eva would tell us – which was always very negative. But I can imagine that I would be concerned about their quality.
This just compounds the unfairness to my mind – how are an underfunded public school and a draconian charter school these children’s only options?
This is child abuse! Teacher abuse also. How can this be allowed to continue? Please give me an answer. Pat Clark, former K. Teacher and School Psyvhologist.
Sent from my iPad
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Who cares what zone or if a teacher or student goes from charter to charter…you obviously are the types whom have intervened into our school system through some charter garbage simply because you need a job to feed you pathetic body and anyone affiliated with you. So now in order to keep your job and to keep your life at joe blow teacher, you will defend you post like a soldier in Syria and throw flame balls at anything or any story opposite from your simple teaching life….simply pathetic and a sorry ass
Hi, simply pathetic!
You must be new around here. I’m the parent of children attending traditional zoned NYC DOE public schools, not a teacher. I don’t have any financial interests in any aspects of education, nor does anyone affiliated with me.
Don’t worry, though: off-base ad hominem attacks are not only allowed around here, they are encouraged — just double-check to make sure that you are attacking someone whose views diverge from those of the blog’s host and the commentariat.
Welcome!
As someone said, these types of schools will always be with us, but taxpayer money should never be used to support them. I’m guessing that sooner or later, an abused teacher or child will take his case to court and changes will be made.
One thing is for certain: without due process rights, a teacher’s life would be as described in these Success Academy comments.
Well, as long as there’s a public system behind them they can exist.
If my public school wasn’t there to accept the constant churn from Ohio’s “cybercharter sector” you’d have some pretty angry parents who just assume the public school will be there to carry the risk.
This is so Dicksonian that it breaks my heart. I taught at risk students for 21 years and the progress we made came from respect and kind but firm boundaries. We started small with tasks which guaranteed success and built up to independent success. More than once they slipped and called me mom instead of Mrs. Malys. I trusted them and they trusted me. How sad to think these relationships will not exist with Success Academy students. These poor students are the losers. So not fair!
My big question is not why does Success Academy think this is the way to educate chidren, but why would a parent put their child in a program like that?
Assuming that 99.9% of parents are attempting to do what’s best for their kid, especially when it comes to their education, it’s probably some combination of the following:
– the overall climate at Success schools isn’t as bad for parents (or even teachers) as what is presented in personal anecdotes viewed in isolation
– parents may have different ideas about and preferences for the type of education their child receives
– the schools that the families are zoned for are not appealing for some reason, whether it is issues with discipline and maintaining a safe and orderly environment where kids can learn, or a track record of poor academic outcomes
The questions I asked in another comment weren’t rhetorical. I hope that Diane can either publish a follow-up post or that the teacher will respond directly in the comments.
Tim you forgot the following:
The schools those kids are zoned for are nearly 100% at-risk students with all the lack of funding and supplies we all know that means. That is why Eva Moskowitz is so avidly lobbying and saying her schools function on LESS money than public and educate the same kids. If those failing schools were funded properly, they’d be a much more appealing option. But keep them in terrible shape, and underwrite Success Academy to the tune of millions, then of course any parent would choose Success Academy. The problem is, that Success Academy does NOT choose most of those parents, and they are unhappily surprised when their kid is not one of the “desirable” low-income students. It’s fine if they are middle class, however, and will do well on tests.
>Assuming that 99.9% of parents are attempting to do what’s best for their kid,
If that assumption is true, then you should see no one–I mean zero parents–who decide to take their kids out of SA. What does NYT’s initial article say about parents’ opinions? It is not overwhelmingly positive. It is mixed.
Child abuse for the kids.
A sweatshop for the teachers.
A gold mine for Eva and (eventually) her Board.
Jail Eva–child abuse of the highest degree! Can’t wait for the lawsuits to begin…And I thought that Jane Eyre had it bad! Success Acadamy makes Lowood Institution look like nirvana, minus the typhoid…
The fish rots from the head down.
Fundamental corruption in Eva’s approach, and that of many deformers.
Perceive crisis levels worthy of intrusive, abrasive, disruptive and even destructive intervention based on belief and ideology. Blame all involved who do not appear to be integral parts of the solution: students, teachers and admin alike, but of course teachers first.
Continue frenzy until fired or jailed.
The scary thing to me is the definition of “success” at this school — measurable test outcomes presumably — at the cost of arguably more important educational goals like love of learning, curiosity and creativity. Students will not leave that school as lifelong learners, but rather burned out with negative connections to learning.
Given the direction of things in public education, is this charter school not so much a cautionary tale, but just a little ahead of its time? A scary thought indeed.
I had the same thought.
This school seems to be a universe in miniature for the whole school reform movement with its focus on obedience and punishment.
I’d call it
“Excess Academy”
Excess crying
Excess work
Excess firing
Excess prep
Excess silence
Excess goals
Excess misery
For the souls
Suckcess!!!
Have you read the novel and/or seen the film for “The Devil Wears Prada”.
I wonder if Eva Moskowitz wears Prada. If she doesn’t, then Lauren Weisberger, who wrote the novel, got it wrong. Whatever Eva wears is what the devil wears, because she is the devil.
Spare the Prada, spoil the child
How bout burn the Prada with the person wearing it?
Diane, you claim that you attempt to read every comment posted to your blog. I’m replying to Lloyd’s comment to make sure that you see what he wrote below. I would hope that we can agree that this is crossing an important line.
Might want to sit a few plays out, Lloyd; stop posting for a little while.
Tom,
I don’t think so—sitting a few plays out, that is.
Eva Moskowitz is an evil, cruel, cold person. Her behavior brands her as a manipulating. lying narcissistic psychopath.
And in your opinion an appropriate punishment for that, putting aside whether it is even accurate, is to be burned alive?
Tim,
1st step: attempt to negotiate using diplomacy and reason
2nd step: take to the streets with peaceful protests following the example of King and Ghandi
3rd step: when all else fails, use the example set by our Founding Fathers and in modern warfare that might mean using napalm like the U.S. did in World War II, Vietnam, Korea, Iraq and in Afghanistan.
According to Global Research, “The report explained this substance now targeting the Iraqi civilian population was used in its earlier form against the German city of Dresden during WWII and in Vietnam. …
“Englehart said he saw the scorched bodies of women and children.”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-uses-napalm-in-iraq/1215
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/napalm.htm
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2005/nov/15/usa.iraq
Why should a narcissistic, psychopathic monster like Eva Horowitz be an exception?
There is difference between power and authority. Power is for bullies, and authority is based on a relationship based on trust.
For me the power/authority distinction lies in the fact that authority stems from legal mandates and has no connection to right/wrong, good/bad concerns. Power is that which can persuade without that authoritative legal mandate using those right/wrong, good/bad arguments. I can refuse to comply with both power and authority dictates but the one that I worry about is the legally mandated one-authority.
I was explaining what “dystopian” means to a fifth grade student today while checking out a book. This school hits mighty close to home.
Sounds like Moskowitz should be reported by a mandated reporter or two!
For year and a half, my kid was interviewing and/or demo-ing everywhere and anywhere, while working as an aide and full time sub, and pretty much was a seat filler in a dog and pony show for jobs that were advertised, but already filled so they had to go through the motions. Even where she was working, the principal’s cousin got one of the jobs, and a teacher’s kid another. Nepotism runs rampant.
Anyhow, before she got hired in a public school district, she got an interview and demo at Uncommon in Newark, NJ when she was desperately seeking her first teaching job. Mind you, if you aren’t TFA, they don’t easily open doors for you, however, they have to get a percentage of certified teachers, and they like them green/inexperienced so they can mold them to their image, and break all of the pedagogy they have learned. I reckon she would have interviewed with the devil to work in hell if that was the only open position. Not far from it, that Uncommon. I would imagine Success is similar.
Before she went, she was told to read Teach Like A Champion, watch a few Uncommon videos, and purchase a particular book for her lesson, and how to set up her lesson. It was like she was to teach the kids the cliff notes version, and pick out 4 vocabulary words. The rest of the story line pretty much didn’t matter — there would be no discussion.
The feedback on her demo was amazingly positive. They said she did a great job (doing what they wanted of her). However, she was also told to stick around and watch the summer session of the TFA preps “to see how it is done.” She said it was embarrassing to have 2 certifications and a teaching degree, have worked in public school for a year as an aide, have done a full year of clinical teaching, and have to watch new graduates without any teaching experience “show her” the TFA way. THIS is arrogance at its best doncha think? She was there for 5 hours. FIVE HOURS~!
She was told by the twenty-something principal “I’m not sure you buy into our discipline policy.” My daughter told me that this principal picked up a pencil and said…..I’m a student; get me to stop fidgeting. My daughter attempted in several nice/positive ways — and of course she did not yell SLANT, which is what the principal was looking for.
When she got out of the interview, she said – even if I get offered the job, I have to say no. She didn’t want to force 1st graders into silence and mental beatdowns. Fortunately, she got a job elsewhere, and no, they did not offer her the job at Uncommon, stating “YOU ARE TOO NICE.”
In her current teaching job, in a public district, not a publicly funded private charter, she is a loving, kind, nurturing teacher, and we keep our fingers crossed that she is able to keep her job, despite what the deformer edubullies are trying to do to public schools.
Success Academy sounds like a very grim place, but let’s be honest: many regular public schools are grim places that cause teachers and students to cry for different reasons. Many public school teachers could tell you equally horrifying tales of misery –where the culprit, sadly, is an unruly group of children operating like a wolf pack. Those who demonize the “Moskowitch” and KIPP are often the same people who sanctify children, and turn a blind eye to their capacity for evil: sadism, cruelty, and, through wanton disruption of classes, serious damage to the sacred project of humanistic, liberal arts education. In some respects, SA and KIPP are a response to the failure of the education establishment to honestly account for the dark side of kids. Ed schools preach a modern soft gospel of classroom management that vilifies stern discipline and glorifies “positive consequences”, counseling and barely-proven new approaches like “restorative justice” The fact that these have proven weak and inadequate medicine in many circumstances does not stop them from preaching it because the underlying premise must be preserved: children are innocents. Calvinists taught that children were filled with the devil –surely an extreme view –but we’ve gone to the opposite, cuckoo extreme: children are sanctified beings. Doesn’t the truth lie somewhere in between? When “stern” ceases to be an epithet in the education schools, the demand for special schools like SA and KIPP will start to dry up.
Ponderosa, are you really claiming that the unruly groups of children “operating like a wolf pack” in typical public schools are 5 and 6 years old? And what makes your statement so absurd is that there are plenty of elementary schools that don’t use that kind of misery to teach their youngest students and they do fine. Let’s face it — what you (and Success Academy) are implying is that low-income students — especially minorities — need that kind of discipline. No one here is saying children are sanctified beings, and in fact, public schools do use the “somewhere in between” discipline with students all the time. The primary difference is that public schools are committed to teach all their students, and Success Academy is committed to teaching only the ones who can do well under their system. Since they can’t expel them outright, the harsh discipline and “making them miserable” serves to eventually get their caring parents to pull them out. Since affluent students in general do better at every public school in the country, these harsh methods are used primarily on the poorest students, and that is the story that the NY Times article missed.
You said what I immediately thought about 5 and 6 year olds being treated badly by the charters. Ever wonder why the charters don’t come in and take over a school, including its current student body? Nope. They take over the facilities, and start fresh, with grade 1, or maybe 1 and 2. Every year or other year they add a grade. Their lottery ensures to keep out what they consider undesirable. I can’t remember what city/state it was, but I do believe the charter chain was KIPP–and when it took over a school AND the student body, it failed.
The charters like to start out small, and “manageable” and with the youngest and the chosen kids who will likely fall in line. Frankly, I worked with a gal who was thrilled her kid got into a Newark charter school for the perceived safety of it. And yet, she pulled her kid out in a few months because he was so miserable, and had been left there at 7:30 in the morning through 6 pm at night when she could pick him up after work. He was sad and miserable every single day. That is a terrifyingly LONG day for a 1st grader to endure silence, strictness, and bullying from his teachers.
“Those who demonize the “Moskowitch” and KIPP are often the same people who sanctify children, and turn a blind eye to their capacity for evil: sadism, cruelty, and, through wanton disruption of classes, serious damage to the sacred project of humanistic, liberal arts education.”
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You sound crazy as a soup sandwich.
Seriously… “(children’s) capacity for evil: sadism, cruelty… wanton destruction… ”
If that’s your mindset going in, you’re going to “find” kids that fit this description… and by “find”, I mean you will interpret your reality in such a way that you “find” such children.
I’ve taught in low-income, urban settings for 15 years, and I’ve never encountered students fitting this description. Are some of these kids difficult to teach and manage? Sure, but not in the extreme way you’re describing.
Ponderosa’s language is admittedly over-the-top, but what he is describing is very real: kids with extremely serious anti-social behavior acting out at a very young age, and a disciplinary philosophy that doesn’t protect their classmates, but instead turns them into cannon fodder. All the money and the best minds in the world couldn’t have devised a better recruiting tool for charter schools than “restorative justice.”
And let’s be clear: “restorative justice” is something that its advocates are insisting upon for Other People’s Children, not their own. Kindergarten kids aren’t getting punched in the face and sworn at by their classmates at PS 321 or the Brooklyn New School. Here are some recent incidents from just a single high-needs school in Harlem:
“A first-grader was stabbed with a pencil Thursday at an out-of-control Harlem elementary school that continues to be plagued by violence, the Daily News has learned.
“Deajah Goodwin, 6, was taken to the hospital after a classmate at Public School 194 punctured her arm just a month after another boy punched her face, the girl and her mother said.
“Deajah said the girl had been tormenting her for weeks. “She just slapped me in my face for no reason. She called me a b- and an f-word,” she said. “The little girl kept poking me with a pencil.”
“The W. 144th St. school has been the subject of a litany of disturbing allegations describing a sick culture of lawlessness, and has been included in the state’s list of “persistently dangerous” schools since 2011.
“It was hit with lawsuits this year regarding a third-grade boy who was forced to perform oral sex on male classmates in 2012 and a girl who was sexually assaulted by the ringleader of that group back in 2009.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/girl-jabbed-pencil-point-troubled-harlem-elementary-school-article-1.1517943
You can Google “ps 194 assault daily news” for more stories about this school. For an excellent look at the perspective of a teacher working in a school with extreme challenges and an almost comically slavish devotion to a restorative justice model, Google “south bronx teacher happy emotion response”.
There has to be a better way of remediating and rescuing kids who have serious issues — whose behavior is mostly a reflection of a dysfunctional environment — while protecting the rights of everyone else.
Let’s be very clear about what Tim just posted. Success Academy 5 gave out of school suspensions to about 13 – 14% of the students when there were ONLY Kindergarten though 2nd graders. That means they were ages 4 – 8 (remember in NYC the OLDEST 2nd graders don’t even begin to turn 8 until January of 2nd grade, so most students getting out of school suspensions are 5, 6 and 7).
Tim has not criticism about those outrageously high suspension rates because he can point to one anecdotal story about a “bad” 5 year old. Therefore, he concludes, it’s no surprise that 14% of the 5 year olds at Success Academy would be “bad” like that.
And yet, at Success Academy 3, with students a few year older, the suspension rate hovers around 20%! So somehow suspending those little children isn’t making them less violent as they age. As Tim keeps implying, 20% of the students at Success Academy 3 must be doing those kinds of terrible things, too, right?
We all know that Success Academy’s high suspension rates aren’t because they got unlucky enough that so many very young children whose parents had the wherewithal to sign them up for the lottery AND sign a contract promising to commit to all that is asked of them turned out to be violent thugs. Only Tim believes that, and I just don’t understand why. What is it about Success Academy that attracts the parents of such violent children, Tim?
Also, Tim’s implication that the affluent 5 year old students at PS 321 never hit one another is very typical of the Success Academy supporters. Only low-income Kindergarten students are likely to be violent thugs worthy of suspension. It couldn’t be that the experienced teachers at PS 321 understand how to deal with a 5 year old who hits with some other means than to give them an out of school suspension.
Reblogged this on VAS Blog.
This is very distressing. I feel for the teachers and the students. I used to feel undervalued as a teacher, but what I was subjected to is nothing compared to what this teacher describes. The situation is deplorable.
Eva Moskowitz…is evil. “They need to feel misery.” ? She needs to be fired. Publicly. At least that way she will know what it is that she teaches.