The PTA of the Hastings-on-Hudson, Néw York, school district sent the following open letter to Eva Moskowitz, CEO of Success Academy charter schools. They shared it with me and asked me to post it.
Eva Moskowitz
Success Academy Charter Schools,
Chief Executive Officer
Dear Ms. Moskowitz:
We write in response to your recent comment to WNYC, explaining why Success Academy schools don’t accept new students after fourth grade: “It’s not really fair for the student in seventh grade or a high school student to have to be educated with a child who’s reading at a second or third grade level.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/04/10/new-york-city-charters-leave-thousands-of-seats-unfilled-despite-exploding-demand-study-finds/.
As advocates for children, we are deeply troubled by your and Success Academy’s view. Many seventh graders who read at a second or third grade level are children with learning differences. These children already face huge obstacles and prejudices, even as research clearly supports that including these children in general education settings benefits all.
Inclusive classrooms, which comprise special education students and their general education peers, are academically, socially and emotionally beneficial to both groups. In fact, the advantages of such classrooms are so powerful and the outcomes often so successful that federal law requires that these children be placed with their non-disabled peers whenever possible (i.e., in the “least restrictive environment”). At a recent PTA meeting here in Hastings-on-Hudson, parents of general education students specifically asked for their children to be placed in inclusion classes, with their special education peers, once they learned more about the benefits to all that those classrooms produce, including more attention to differentiated learning, as well as additional teaching staff.
In addition, dismissing a child who is reading below-grade level puts too much emphasis on reading and ignores the myriad of other measures of achievement. A child who reads below grade level may excel in math or biology or be an exceptional artist, athlete, or musician.
We live in a diverse world, and it is our job and our duty to create environments that engender respect, support, and, possibly most important, empathy. The direction you advocate
— separating and rewarding just the highest achievers in selected subjects — does a disservice to all.
So while you state that including struggling readers is “not really fair” to your current Success Academy scholars, what saddens us – and feels truly unfair – is this layer of unnecessary and painful exclusion and hardship, in the name of protecting your high-achieving scholars, that you find appropriate and necessary.
We are happy to meet with you and explain these issues more deeply, if that would be helpful. And in any event, we ask that you issue an apology, and also that your schools make a concerted effort to include children with special needs or learning differences. It’s not only best practice, ethical, and fair, but it is the law.
Very truly yours,
Hastings-on-Hudson PTSA Executive Board, Lisa Eggert Litvin and Jacqueline Weitzman, Co Presidents
Hastings-on-Hudson SEPTA (Special Education PTA) Executive Board, Nina Segal and Jennifer Cunningham, Co Presidents
(Note that we are sending this to the general information email for Success Academies, because after extensive online searches, as well as numerous phone calls to individual Success Academy Schools and to the State’s offices governing charters, we have been unable to obtain an accurate email address for you. We left a message at Success Academy’s business office (as it was called by a receptionist at one of the academies) explaining the gist of the letter and asking for your email. If we receive a response, we will forward to that address.)
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Beautiful piece and spot on.
Not that you’ll get an answer from Eva, but not that that really matters.
What Moskowitz is basically saying is they have no clue why children are not reading at grade level, that, even with their millions in donations, they are not about to spend money trying to figure out why children are atypical readers, that they know only one method of teaching kids to read at SA and that they have no intention of learning other approaches to literacy development or employing veteran special ed teachers who are skilled in reaching children with learning differences, i.e., Her schools are one size fits all and everyone who doesn’t fit the mold should just buzz off. Not surprising since, from the top down, they are not really skilled educators there; they are automatons with scripts.
But it’s CHEAPER to run a school that way! You teach the kids who can be taught without spending more than the minimal amount of money. You get rid of the rest and declare yourself a “success”! And of course, the neighboring public school is a failure because they aren’t doing what your school isn’t doing and ridding themselves of the 5 or 8 year old children that the charter school has already given up on.
You’d think that a school that suspended 15% or even 20% of its students was full of teenage hellions and instead it turns out to have 5, 6 and 7 year old children! But giving a very young child an out of school suspension is the cheapest way to “teach” and should be a model for all public schools — either those 5 year olds get with the program or leave. It’s a win-win for everyone except the people who actually care about the most vulnerable 5 year olds, which obviously are NOT the administrators at the Success Academy schools that cheerfully suspend so many of them.
On the other hand, Eva Moskowitz has implied that the very young students she suspends are violent and if you believe it is just bad luck that so many violent 5 year olds win the lottery at certain Success Academy schools that serve mostly low-income students, then you should certainly encourage Ms. Moskowitz to continuing suspending those young violent children she keeps insisting are found in large number in some of her schools (but never at the affluent ones).
You would think that she would spend some of those millions screening for dyslexia.
If she could develop an innovative program for successfully dealing with the most neglected learning disability, she would finally have something worth exporting to the public schools. Public schools which have turned a blind eye to a disorder that affects nearly one out of every five children.
Yuh. I’m with you, NY teacher. If Success Academy were a true charter (a la Shanker), she’d be innovating even better compensatory learning methods than are available in public-school SpEd courses now. Dyslexia is not on Eva’s radar screen because it costs more money and dyslexic students pull the test-scores down.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
“. . . ignores the myriad of other measures of achievement.”
AY AY AY AY AY!!!
Malpractice measurement memes monopolistically moving means many mangled minds.
There is NO “MEASUREMENT” OF ACHIEVEMENT. Those supposed measures may assess something, usually not well defined, that may or may not be related to the teaching and learning process.
We need to quit using false language to describe the teaching and learning process.
Come on educators! The claims of this letter to Eva are largely unproven. Just because the Federal government was politically forced to join the inclusion bandwagon doesn’t mean its been proven to be effective FOR ALL students. Little research supports this crucial claim (even if we wanted, as a human equity or social justice issue, for this to be true!). At best the research suggests some negative effects for high performing students, little effects on midrange students, and positive effects on low performing students. We can certainly argue that our social priority is to bring the bottom up, and that its not so bad to keep the top from flying away from the mean, and that we should clearly prioritize poor children, etc. But lets not cover the sun with our hands. Their are costs to inclusion policies. Anyone who has actually tried to teach in a classroom with 4-6 special education students – with significant behavavioral problems understands that time is spent managing them that detracts form the core students. Anyone who has dealt with a range of 6-7 grade level differences in literacy knows that this is a totally different kind of challenge – than a 3 grade level difference classroom. There are powerful reason why the middle and upper middle class, and of course the rich, drive all the way to their elite private schools – and well documented strong peer effects is one of them.
There remains a continuum of placements for children with disabilities, with full inclusion being only one of several options, such as partial inclusion at different times of the day for various subjects, pull outs to Resource Room for individualization and supports, etc.
The claim that was made was about reading, not behavior. However, when what you want is for all students to be compliant drones that will SLANT all day long while you are drilling them, then you are creating an environment that effectively excludes children who are unable to behave like silent, empty vessels at a filling station.
If her schools accept public money, then she must teach ALL PUBLIC students. Otherwise she must become a private school…
. . . and not accept any public monies.
Thank you Gabriel. These are discussions we educators need to have HONESTLY.
So what you’re saying is Eva shouldn’t be loading buses, skipping school, rallying in the street, having her supporters donating millions, and skimming the cream off the top, flicking back some when real teaching becomes too tough, all while bragging up her approach as if it proves real schools are failing? Failing to what? Segregate?
Inclusion can also have a negative effect on special education students placed in those classes without supports truly matched to their needs. A lot of the negative behavior of those students reflects this — the behavior is often spurred by the environment. Find the right setting, or the right supports, and much of the behavior recedes.
I have to agree with you, Colleen. 2 out of my 3 boys had IEP’s. ‘Inclusion’ classes (i.e., mainstream class of say 25 students, 5 of whom had IEP’s– which in my wealthy district meant there was a SpEd co-teacher on board) bore very mediocre results. My kids learned little, despite extra help in resource room. We eventually pushed for ‘self-contained classes’ (after shunning them for a couple of years, thinking they were for ‘retards’). These expensive, small classes– typicaly 6 students of wildly varying ability to 1 teacher– were the key to these boys’ success. They were kids with above-average intelligence with processing disabilities. With one-on-one teacher attention, both surged ahead & were able to pass standardized tests & succeed in college.
It’s pretty amazing no one in the general public can contact the CEO of a “public” school entity.
If they’re redefining “public” to mean “publicly-funded” then every government contractor is also “public”.
“Note that we are sending this to the general information email for Success Academies, because after extensive online searches, as well as numerous phone calls to individual Success Academy Schools and to the State’s offices governing charters, we have been unable to obtain an accurate email address for you. We left a message at Success Academy’s business office (as it was called by a receptionist at one of the academies) explaining the gist of the letter and asking for your email. If we receive a response, we will forward to that address.)”
Their use of the word “scholars” instead of students suggests that these are parents who have intimate familiarity with SA and the terms used there. Makes me wonder if SA parents are given a way to contact Moskowitz. (I doubt it.)
They’re parents of kids who go to public school in Hastings-on-Hudson.
Eva.Moskowitz@successacademies.org
This took two seconds’ worth of Googling. Contact away:
Network Office
Success Academy Charter Schools
95 Pine Street, Floor 6
New York, NY 10005
I know that the people who live in a well-to-do suburb like Hastings-on-Hudson (median home value $660,000, median annual property tax bill $10,000, a school superintendent who is paid WAY more per student than Eva Moskowitz, a budget of $28,122/student in 2014-2015, 2% ELLs, 6% FRPL-eligible) are probably used to getting their way, but there’s nothing that says public figures have to respond to each and every harangue, or even acknowledge receipt of one.
Maybe some of the families of the 10,000 students attending Success schools should reach out to the Hastings superintendent, mayor, and PTA members and ask what’s taking so long for the village to build the 100 affordable housing units demanded by the settlement of a lawsuit brought against Hastings by the federal government, and why the units built so far are on the outskirts of town, some so far out they are in other school districts. That doesn’t seem very inclusive to me.
Can one contact her at the Network Office? I expect they sought to contact her, specifically, because she said it.
Well, they said they tried that and got no response.
http://rivertowns.dailyvoice.com/news/county-legislator-calls-hastings-affordable-housing-segregated
“the units built so far are on the outskirts of town, some so far out they are in other school districts. That doesn’t seem very inclusive to me.”
I don’t follow this. HoH public schools are public schools. Therefore, they educate ALL students, including students who live on the outskirts of town outside the HoH catchments.
You’ve convinced me, Tim: longstanding racial and economic segregation is to be solved by creating private, publicly-funded schools that intensify segregation!
Whew, problem solved, and thanks for clearing that up for us.
Tim,
You didn’t defend SA. You attacked HoH for hypocrisy. I suppose you could make that argument but it doesn’t mean that the letter sent to SA was wrong then?
The irony is that Tim defends Success Academy, despite Success demanding that SUNY Charter Institute allow them to break their promise to give lottery preference to students zoned for failing public schools. Why? Because Success wanted to make sure that when they opened a school in a wealthy district with few low-income students, those schools didn’t become primarily low-income and scare away all the affluent college educated parents they were spending millions of dollars to advertise to. Talk about hypocrisy. There are plenty of charter schools out there that give priority to low-income students but Success Academy is most certainly NOT one of those charter schools. I wish Success Academy (and Tim as their spokesperson here) would just cut the misleading rhetoric and admit that Success can’t cope with too many at-risk kids. But that kind of honesty might lead to more funding for schools that do teach (and keep!) at risk students and even result in smaller class size for them. We certainly can’t have that, right Tim?
Michael,
Feel free to provide some actual evidence that charter schools are intensifying school segregation in New York City. Don’t bother providing a link to the UCLA Civil Rights Project’s report on segregation in New York; it proves nothing of the kind. In the words of Iris Rotberg, “The primary exceptions to increased student stratification [caused by choice] are in communities that are already so highly segregated by race, ethnicity, and income that further increases are virtually impossible… .” New York City is certainly that type of community, and most kids who attend charters are zoned for hypersegregated district schools.
There are several excellent strategies for de-segregating schools. What’s your plan? Where’s the UFT’s plan?
Tim,
Why don’t you offer a list of integrated charter schools in New York City? The UCLA Civil Rights Project has indeed posted several reports on the segregating effects of charters, as has the University of Minnesota Law School, as has Helen Ladd at Duke (I will be posting her latest study on NC charters in the next few days).
It is not up to anyone to prove that charters are segregated. That is common knowledge, supported by research like UCLA’s. It is up to you to prove that UCLA is wrong.
UCLA Civil Rights Project makes the point that charter schools are EVEN MORE segregated than the segregated districts in which they are located. New York City, for example, has about 15% white students; most students are African-American or Hispanic. Yet most charters are 100% African-American.
Steve, I’ve long held the belief that the Success network should not receive a single new charter or a single renewal until it begins backfilling all seats lost to attrition through the terminal grade at all of its schools. I don’t think I can be any clearer about it. That is the context of Eva’s remark.
As for special ed inclusion, it has been proven time and time again that the Success schools serve a comparable percentage of special education students as their district peers. The Hastings’ parents comments actually don’t make a lot of sense–Success seems to me to be particularly aggressive about mainstreaming special ed kids. The knock on them, actually, is that they don’t serve the most seriously challenged kids who can’t be mainstreamed. This is not uncommon in New York City; almost all of the most popular and highest performing zoned district schools like PS 321 serve negligible numbers of children (often zero) who require a most restrictive environment.
It’s a free country, and as residents and taxpayers of New York State, the Hastings parents are actually stakeholders in any of the state’s charter schools. But yeah, they’re hypocrites. Not only because of what I’ve already written, but because of what would happen if a Success or any other city family hopped on a Metro North train at 125th and headed up to Hastings to attempt to enroll their child in a public school there.
The UCLA report proves absolutely nothing of the kind, Diane, and Michael is responsible for providing evidence to support his claims, not me.
The UCLA report says that 92% of New York City charter schools are either intensely segregated (<10% non-black/Hispanic) or apartheid schools (<1%). What it doesn't say is how segregated the charter students' home district schools are, and that the data's that needed to prove whether charter schools are worsening segregation in New York City. You and I both know that these charters are taking kids from equally segregated zoned district schools.
The Orfield report also highlights some of the 8% of NYC charters as being some of the most diverse schools in the city, period–vastly more socioeconomically and racially diverse than a school like PS 321, PS 29, etc.
Smearing NYC charters as being segregationist is just another element of the kitchen sink defense being thrown at them in an attempt to preserve teaching jobs. To hell with the kids and families.
Tim,
Chile has had an all-choice system since the Milton Friedmanites took over under the Pinochet dictatorship. Chile now has intensely segregated schools–racial segregation, religious segregation, economic segregation, class segregation. Chilean students rioted to protest the conditions in their schools. A reform government won the last election and is now trying to revive true public education. That is hard once privatization has destroyed the public sector.
Tim’s stating that charters do not intensify segregation is preposterous on its face, and I’ll let Diane’s response suffice.
Michael, if I am so widely off-the-mark, you should have been able to find proof of it in the time it took you write that last irrelevant comment.
Please provide the proof that charter schools are increasing and intensifying segregation in New York City. Orfield’s report does not support the assertion.
Tim, I don’t understand why you have to compare Success Academy to 2 neighborhood public schools that are located in some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in NYC. Is that the only way you can justify the charter school — because it is more diverse than the very few wealthiest schools in NYC?
Success Academy by choice ONLY gives preference to students who LIVE in the geographical District where the school is located. So the proper comparison would be to compare their school to the district averages. Remember, Success Academy is supposed to be educating MORE than the average number of at-risk students in the district. Let’s take a look:
In District 15, 54% of the K-5 students are economically disadvantaged and 24% are ELL students. At the Success Academy in Cobble Hill, 41% of the K-5 students are economically disadvantaged and only 4% are ELL.
In District 3, 45% of the K-5 students are economically disadvantaged and 7% are ELL students. At Success Academy Upper West, 29% of the students are economically disadvantaged and 4% are ELL students.
I don’t really understand how Success Academy serves FEWER at-risk students than the district average. And I don’t understand why they would not choose to open their schools where they could serve more at-risk students, do you?
Easy peasy, NYC public school parent. For Moskowitz and her billionaire backers, it’s all about privatization / charter school expansion, and they think high test scores will ensure that, so they’re going after the population that is most likely to give them high test scores, kids from affluent families. Corporate “reformers” want charters to catch on in the suburbs, too, and by not accepting too many low income children of color, kids with special needs and ELLs, they seek to quell the concerns of higher income families.
At the same time, they are massaging egos, leading wealthy white parents to believe they are doing a mitzvah, a good deed, by placing their kids in a diverse school. As long as it’s not too diverse, parents can get the false impression that they’re kids are getting a private school education for free.
It will be interesting to see if the same draconian discipline, teaching strategies and test prep are used there with kids from wealthy families, especially when they are serving the higher grades where kids are tested annually, as well as what their attrition rate is for them then. I just can’t see entitled kids, whose individualism and voice tend to be nurtured at home, lasting very long in military style boot camps.
Sorry, they’re should have been their.
Elder Wise, what you don’t realize is that the students at the affluent Success Academy schools don’t get treated like the ones at the Harlem Success Academy school that was profiled in the NY Times. I know this because their parents post here and everywhere about how kind and welcoming the school is and how they have never once witnessed any over the top discipline! Of course not! Those same affluent parents also rave about how their very, very gifted children are pampered and beloved at Success Academy and given just the best education that millions of dollars in government money and donations can buy. Why, they feel it is just like a free private school for their kids! And I believe it probably is. Because just like a private school, they can send their kids to be educated without too many of those difficult at-risk kids –but like private schools, it is “diverse” because it does include a smaller % of low-income students who exhibit model behavior and are easy to teach. It’s a win win for everyone who gets to attend and do well enough to thrive at the school, but it comes at the expense of all the at-risk students left behind in failing public schools that are underfunded because politicians believe Eva Moskowitz when she says class size doesn’t matter and money doesn’t matter — all any school needs is to copy her system and voila! Since Success does it with less money, public schools should get less money too! Did I mention it is ALSO a win for the billionaires who hate to pay taxes?
Tim, you know nothing about Hastings-on-Hudson. The latest affordable housing project built here is not on the “outskirts of town,” as you claim. It’s on Warburton Avenue, which runs right through the center of the village, as I’m sure you don’t know, since you’ve obviously never been here. Even if it was on the outskirts, it would not be far away, as the area of the village is only two square miles.The federal government settled a housing lawsuit with Westchester County, not Hastings. Because the village government and the school board are separate entities, the school has no control over housing issues anyway. Finally, students from NYC do indeed board Metro-North trains to go to school in Hastings. Nice try slamming us with made-up factoids, though! You could use a remedial research course at Success Academy.
NYC public school parent: If SA has different policies for students at lower income schools because they are comprised primarily of minorities, that’s racism and I think parents of those kids should file a discrimination suit.
No, no made-up factoids, Andy Z. Hastings-on-Hudson has shamefully dragged its heels in complying with a settlement requiring it to build 100 units of affordable housing. The federal suit didn’t name any individual Westchester communities, just all of the ones that have fewer than 3% black and 7% Hispanic residents. Communities such as Hastings-on-Hudson.
The single-family units on Warburton are essentially in Yonkers; the multi-family building may be closer to downtown, but as you well know it was sited in the least appealing and least revitalized section of town. The newest proposed site is isolated between two highways and is a brisk 45-minute walk, an arrangement that a Westchester legislator has called “segregated housing at its worst.”
Here is what the head of the Hastings-on-Hudson Affordable Housing Committee has said regarding their efforts to comply with the settlement: “Hastings residents especially have this fear that Yonkers is going to start marching upwards and engulf Hastings. There are definitely undertones of racial fear and prejudice that will only get stronger the longer we wait to diversify the community.”
Ouch.
Andy Z is right about one thing — there are a handful of children who are residents of New York City and who attend Hastings-on-Hudson schools. Andy Z left out an incredibly important detail, though (inadvertently, I’m sure) — this requires paying tuition ($20,000+) to the Hastings-on-Hudson school district, and the district does not have to accept every applicant. So yes, Hastings schools are a great option for central Harlem families who have $20,000 to spend on tuition and who can get past the gatekeepers.
Tim, you pretend to know quite a bit about Hastings, sitting in Spokane or Irkutsk or wherever you are. The problem is that your knowledge is laughably inaccurate.
I live a block away from the new affordable housing complex. We are definitely in Hastings, not Yonkers, despite not conforming to your ignorant stereotype of what Hastings is. I love my neighborhood, which is indeed being revitalized. Across the street from the affordable apartments is a new two-family house with all the latest green building features. A couple of doors down is Antoinette’s Patisserie, a café which has become the nerve center of the village.
Hastings has always been socioeconomically diverse and is rapidly becoming more racially diverse. When I bring my kid to the school bus stop, most of the other parents there are nonwhite and non-English speaking. Rich or poor, our kids go to the same schools, which are still pretty good despite the efforts of people like you to ruin them.
Finally, of course we charge tuition to students from other districts who want to attend our schools. Name a school district that gives a free ride to people who don’t live in the district. I know that if I wanted to send my kid to Bronx Science, I wouldn’t be allowed to for love or money.
I’m looking forward to you telling us all about your kids’ experience in the Spokane or Irkutsk schools so we can have the opportunity to gratuitously insult your home as you have ours.
Andy,
You’ve already gratuitously insulted my district. I live in New York City and my children attend Title I NYC DOE traditional district schools.
I have a lot of experience with people who move out to the burbs and instantly embrace Gopher Prairie-style boosterism. And I completely understand it: as Elizabeth Warren and others have noted, it requires a punishing amount of money to buy into a purposefully non-integrated school district located in an integrated metropolitan area. Once you’re in, so much of your wealth and even your identity is tied up in the town. You have no choice but to act like Will Kennicott.
But boosterism does not entitle you to make up your own facts. Hastings is not socioeconomically or racially diverse. Hastings is fighting back viciously against a court order to build a mere 100 units of affordable housing. “Hastings residents especially have this fear that Yonkers is going to start marching upwards and engulf Hastings. There are definitely undertones of racial fear and prejudice that will only get stronger the longer we wait to diversify the community.”
Hastings, which looks the way it does not because of personal preferences or benign market forces but because of outright racial discrimination, is not serving anywhere close to its fair share of the region’s at-risk learners. Without even a token effort being made to address this — not even a couple of tuition-free scholarships to disadvantaged kids from Yonkers? — it is difficult to take its parents leaders’ thoughts on inclusion seriously. It’s not just that Success families don’t have the money to move to Gopher Prairie/Hastings; it’s that they wouldn’t be welcome even if they did.
Here’s a report on last year’s civil rights enforcement at the USDOE. There’s a statement in there that the same rules apply to charter schools.
http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/congress.html
How would the public go about firing Eva Moskowitz, if that became necessary? She’s running a public school system. Shouldn’t they have some means or process to do that?
Who would they petition? The Success Academy Board?
They would contact Success’s authorizer, the SUNY Charter Schools Institute. They will take input from any resident of New York, even those living in privileged suburbs many miles away from the nearest charter school.
You don’t think they should take input from any resident in NY?
I thought we were all to learn “best practices” from one another. They’re a public district with some “best practices” they’d like to share.
“Best practices” only works one way? I think my district could show Ohio charters some things about financial transparency- I don’t have to sue to get financial records, like charter parents do.
I wasn’t being facetious–they should take input from Hastings PTA parents, from parents who believe they’ve been counseled out, from parents who can’t get their kid into a Success school because she’s too old, and from anyone else who feels compelled to comment.
I watched SUNY Charter School Institute’s last meeting when they laughed off the claim of all the empty seats at Success Academy schools as being true, but somehow “understandable” because of course Success Academy “didn’t have time” to find any parent who wanted the spots! (so much for the “thousands” of parents on wait lists)
Then SUNY authorized a bunch MORE Success Academy schools, including a third one in very wealthy District 2, where they already had 2 schools with empty seats and didn’t need another! LOL! It was truly the most appalling “oversight” I have ever seen. Oversight means “here is what Ms. Moskowitz says is the reason all those seats went empty — they just didn’t have time to advertise them to any of the 10,000 students on the waiting lists and we believe her!”
This is the same SUNY oversight board that laughs off the notion that anyone should care about the fact that 20% of 5 and 6 year olds in some of the Success Academy schools were given out of school suspensions! (But only in the schools serving really poor students, so it seems that’s fine for SUNY as long as the affluent kids don’t get suspended). And the same SUNY that expresses not the least bit of curiosity as to why Success Academy schools in some districts lose more students than almost any other elementary school in the district! It’s because all those parents WANT to leave Success Academy and return to underfunded failing and dangerous schools, right? But of course!
And remember when the SUNY Charter Institute happily told Eva Moskowitz she SHOULD go right ahead and change her charter so that students zoned for the failing schools she keeps pretending to care about do NOT get priority in the lottery anymore! Of COURSE that was a good idea — why give priority to the kids you keep claiming you want to help? What could be more absurd than that! Oops, but one of the SUNY board members resigned after THAT meeting — I guess enough was enough, but the other ones happily wished him luck and continued to do the bidding of Eva Moskowitz and make sure she can open yet ANOTHER school in very wealthy District 2 and Park Slope. Thank you SUNY for your stellar oversight! Public school parents truly appreciate your desire to really make sure that ALL the at-risk kids who win lottery spots are served as they are supposed to be served and not “encouraged to leave” or suspended over and over again at age 5 and 6 years old until their parents “get the message”. I’m sure other charter schools wish SUNY gave them the same free pas they give Success Academy but then again, they don’t have billionaire funders on their boards, so you really can’t blame SUNY, can you?
nyc public school parent, you keeping going on and on and on about this.
Yes, Districts 2 and 3 and 15 have some incredibly wealthy neighborhoods and high-performing zoned schools to serve them.
Those neighborhoods and those schools are as off-limits to at-risk kids as Hastings-on-Hudson’s schools are. And surely no child whose parents paid such a painful premium to live in the zone of PS 321 or PS 199 or PS 41 is going to abandon that privilege for a charter school!
The state charter school law demands that charters be placed in districts with kids who are risk of academic failure. Here are how many free- or reduced-price lunch children are currently on the books in these districts:
District 2: 34,323
District 3: 11,654
District 15: 17,222
Hastings-on-Hudson, NY: 88
I threw Hastings in there as an example of a district where it would NOT be appropriate to open a charter school. Districts 2, 3, and 15 absolutely qualify.
Tim, is that why two of Eva’s new charters will be located in the richest district in New York City, District 2?
I guess you didn’t actually read my reply.
The wealth in District 2 isn’t equally distributed. There are many carefully protected zoned schools that have virtually no at-risk children living in the catchment area. There are many other schools that have high concentrations of at-risk kids. No one that I’m aware of — not the DOE, not any politicians, not any advocacy groups or the UFT — has proposed a plan to deal with the inequality in District 2.
There are 34,323 kids in District 2 who are eligible for a free- or reduced-price lunch, and for whom it would be far easier to get into a school like Exeter or Dalton than it would a school like PS 41 or PS 6. The notion that District 2 is not an appropriate location for a charter because there aren’t sufficient numbers of at-risk kids isn’t just wrong, it is wildly wrong. There are more economically at-risk kids in District 2 than there are children, period, in the entire Buffalo City School District.
Tim, I posted above before I saw this. If Success Academy WANTS to serve the low-income students in District 2, all it had to do was KEEP priority for them in their lottery! Remember when they gave lottery priority for students zoned for failing public schools? Wouldn’t it have made the most sense to KEEP that since that’s why you are locating in that very wealthy district instead of locating in District 10 in the Bronx where of course, almost every child would need a Success Academy school?
There are charter schools in District 15 that give priority in their lottery to low-income kids!! SHOCKING! I mean, Eva Moskowitz told us she absolutely can’t do it and yet other charter schools in the very same district do that.
Excuse me if I base my judgement on people’s ACTIONS. If you want to serve at-risk kids, just give them priority. Don’t use your connections to the SUNY Charter Institute which will do your bidding to DROP priority for at-risk kids! Do you realize that Eva Moskowitz ALSO just dropped priority for ELL students?
But why would any charter school want to ENCOURAGE at-risk students to attend their schools when they are going to so much trouble to advertise to affluent parents? If they have too many of them, those affluent parents they covet so much might not come. And isn’t that really what all this is about, Tim?
Diane, Tim likes to fudge the numbers a lot — I guess he feels honesty won’t get him anywhere.
In District 2 (according to data.nysed.gov) there are 5,782 economically disadvantaged K – 5 graders. Tim’s inflated number includes students enrolled in all of the many high-needs District 2 high schools that most people here have never heard of that serve out of district low-income teenagers who are obviously ineligible for the Success lottery. Oops — but then using misleading numbers is a specialty of the Success Academy defenders.
33% of the elementary school students in District 2 are economically disadvantaged, but only 25% of the students at Success Academy Union Square are. It would be very easy for Success Academy to change that — just give priority to disadvantaged students! But since that would involve having to educate MORE low-income students, I can understand why Success Academy would avoid doing that very simple thing. Tim obviously thinks its great that Union Square doesn’t even have the same % of low-income students as the district overall, although I don’t really understand why. Is there a failing school in all of NYC that ONLY has 25% low-income students? I thought they were supposed to be a model of how failing schools can get better? Is it by making sure 75% of their students are no longer at-risk? I guess that’s the model that they are supposed to follow?
By the way, Tim, would it surprise you to learn that there are OVER 25,000 Kindergarten to 5th grade students in District 10 in the Bronx? And 86% of those students (more than 22,000) are disadvantaged! Only 8 out of 40 elementary schools have more than 30% of 3rd grade students meeting standards in ELA — the remaining 32 have very few students meeting standards. Now wouldn’t THAT be a district that a charter school that keeps talking about helping all those students trapped in failing public schools would be looking to serve?
Nope, apparently the students in wealthy District 2 need two or three schools before any student in District 10 gets one. Why locate where the need is greatest when you can locate where the number of low-income students is the SMALLEST? I get it — I just find it the height of hypocrisy to pretend you care about kids trapped in failing public schools while opening more and more schools where the vast majority of them don’t live! And not even giving priority to the few low-income students who DO live in that district!
But maybe she can open one in Hastings on Hudson, too. There are always poor kids to be found, and as long as you do NOT give them priority in your lottery and locate in districts that have very few of them, you are sure to have a school with few low-income students. And isn’t that the model for solving the problems of public education?
I struck by and amazed by the similarities of the reform movement with the sociology of Herbert Spencer.
Charter-Success-Voucher-Academies certainly will separate the wheat from the chaff.
BTW, Spencer was a misguided polymath whose theories on Social-Darwinism are unsound.
We have a small but vocal group of public school parents who would be thrilled if their 7th grade reader didn’t have to sit beside the 2nd grade reader. They think their child gets less attention when they’re placed with children who might need more.
If we had a selective charter the public system would really be harmed. We just don’t have sufficient numbers to mitigate, smooth out or hide the downside effects.
Some parents don’t want children of a different race in their classes. But we have the law that says public schools accept everyone. There are a few selective schools, with entrance exams, but they don’t claim to be better than the neighborhood school.
What about this CEO? Can anyone in Houston (or Texas, really) call her up and get a meeting?
“Sehba Ali is the CEO and superintendent of KIPP Houston Public Schools, 22 schools serving 11,300 students in grades pre-K through 12. With an annual operating budget of over $121 million, Ms. Ali manages over 1,250 staff members who are committed to ensuring KIPP students and alumni are successful to and through college. Currently, KIPP Houston’s college graduation rate is five times the average for low-income students nationally.”
She’s in charge of a 121 million public budget. I recognize she’s not a public employee but unless it’s like Lockheed Martin she must have to accept some public input.
Oh, well. I guess we’ll build this privatization plane in the air! Maybe the contractors can come up with a “governance” system the politicians can copy and paste.
Clearly, Moskovitz’s comments indicate just why a charter is NOT A PUBLIC SCHOOL and should pay rent and should not be taking public funds. Since when does a public school refuse entrance to a student based on her reasoning… based on low level reading skills????? If you are Milton Academy and charge a very tuition and are private, well then… you have a different set of admissions standards. But a true public school? Really? Not accepting students reading below their grade level yet accepting public funds, crowding out public schools and using real estate for free? How reprehensible!
I so agree, Art Seagal. By her very words, Eva has made it clear she shouldn’t be receiving public funds to operate. The word of art seems to be ‘charter’, invoking Shanker’s concept that such schools are free from the bureaucratic standards of public schools to hatch innovative ideas which will be fed back into the public schools. He is no doubt rolling in his grave to see that his concept has been warped to include charters which exclude challenged readers so as to plump up their reading scores!
This is clearly another case of the collective (opponents of SA) against the individual (higher achievement). “You can’t be rich. You can’t be smart. You can excel. You have to be like the rest of us.”
madhammer, I think they are parents worried about what happens to kids with disabilities. I guess you don’t have a child with special needs so you don’t care.
Diane, Why do some educators have to grasp on to the current Orthodoxy with such vehemency that they refuse to even consider common sense? I’m not supposed to say this out loud, but OF COURSE when you place students with enormous differences in readiness, skill, and (dare I say it) even abilities in one classroom, with one teacher, especially in the older grades, no one is going to be serviced appropriately. Inclusion is a social experiment, not an academic one, and I believe it is a failed one that needs to be reworked. There’s nothing radical about my assertion, and many educators who have attempted to do their very best under this policy agree with me. Let’s pick our battles, and honestly admit when something we tried, for maybe the right reasons, just doesn’t work.
@Janet: I so agree! “Inclusion”– and “Mainstreaming”– and “differentiated teaching”– are all just code-words for, “Special Ed is too expensive! We don’t want to spend $ putting your classified kids in small tailored-ed classes!” When push comes to shove– i.e., when we’re in a recession– long-term goals like helping learning-challenged kids become productive members of society– are shunted aside. The long-term be damned: this is the message of today’s ed policy in many states. Let the devil take the hindmost.
I must temper my rant with my conviction that SpEd is in large part a product of the top-down assembly mode of education that prevails today.
I am happy that the wheelchair-bound & the developmentally disabled have found a place in public schools. But the fact that those many students with high intellectual capacity whose intelligence does not translate well to traditional book/pencil achievement should be shunted aside– when in our century-old rural small-school tradition they would have been singled out for advancement– demonstrates the US public schools’ predilection for throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Maybe if charter schools would stop stealing resources from already strapped public schools, the public schools could offer programs to meet all students at their own level.in each subject, rather than grouping everyone into so-called “high-achievers” vs. “the rest of us”. Wouldn’t that be the most individualistic of all?
BTW, please don’t pretend there is anything individualistic about SA – it’s one of the most regimented places on earth short of boot camp or prison.
madhammer, thanks for clarifying that Success Academy is ONLY for the students who excel. The problem is that they are supposed to be for all students, ESPECIALLY at-risk students. So when they locate themselves in the wealthiest school districts of Manhattan and give priority only to the students who live in that wealthy district (which does include some poor kids — just not very many), it’s hard to understand who exactly they want to serve. I’m sure other charter schools will be THRILLED to know that SUNY Charter Institute will now be authorizing charters for higher achieving kids! When can they all sign up?
SUNY Charter Schools Institute has delayed a call for proposals this year. It was already behind last spring’s timeline for new proposals, and then a few weeks’ ago, it removed all announcements and references to the 2015 application timeline from its website.
I suspect this is because SUNY’s allotment of charters for New York City is zero, the bulk of their remaining NYC charters having been scarfed up by Moskowitz last summer. It was probably waiting to see what would happen to Cuomo’s proposal to raise the charter cap.
SUNY still has around 80 charters it could authorize for schools outside of NYC, however. Perhaps there is wrangling going on to redistribute those.
I don’t think people would object so much if it was simply described accurately. People don’t object to “magnet” schools because no one pretends a magnet school is a replicable model for all students.
Why not just defend it on the merits? “We’re setting up a public school for high achievers that isn’t zoned”? Why the insistence that it’s just like a public school?
There IS a recognition of the issue. Cami Anderson admitted that if she didn’t act in Newark and come up with some kind of algorithm to level “choice” the public schools would become the safety net system.
Yes, this is my complaint too. SA and KIPP perform triage –grabbing the easily educable kids from troubled neighborhoods. That may or may not be a good thing. But it’s dishonest to pretend this skimming isn’t happening and that it isn’t key to these schools’ success. This year ONE very troubled kid in my 3rd period class significantly diminishes my ability to teach the other 33 kids on a daily basis. If I could remove him, the net learning in that class would bump up quite measurably.
I used to wonder that too — why not just be honest?
I think the answer is that by NY State law, a charter school cannot do this. Charters are supposed to serve at-risk kids, not high achievers. Frankly NYC has been pretty successful in setting up schools for high achievers. The problem has always been how to educate the at-risk students and charter schools promised they could experiment with new ways of doing so. Sadly, the charter schools who did exactly that got criticized because their at-risk students still weren’t meeting standards. None of them thought to just get rid of the lowest performing students and teach the rest.
Basis Charter Schools have made a specialty of this, by the way. They open a charter school “for anyone” but it turns out they mean “anyone who can cope with taking multiple AP courses each year beginning in 7th grade” and, no surprise, it turns out that more affluent students “choose” their school. But Basis couldn’t open as a charter in NY State because they are far too blatant in who they are trying to educate.
Ponderosa,
You have tersely stated why charters and traditionals should not be compared. We aren’t dealing with the same student populations.
It’s like saying a major league manager is better than a minor league manager because if their teams play each other, the major league team wins 12-2. It had nothing to do with the disparity in talent. (The major league team simply skimmed off the best players.)
“. . . the net learning in that class would bump up quite measurably.”
NO!, not measurably but definitely ascertainably.
The teaching and learning process CANNOT BE MEASURED. Any attempts to do so are falsehoods and demonstrably harm students.
It appears that charters are operating as a way to bypass special education laws. If you take public money, you must follow the mandates, that is the law. By the way, I have wealthy, extremely
bright students learning alongside students with learning disabilities.
It works, it is working in classrooms throughout the country. If charters can not make it work and accept all students, then they should close.
Does anyone know if Eva ever breaks her own backfilling rule? Now that she’s catering to a more elite clientele, what if some high test scorer moves into the area and wants to sign up in fourth grade? Personally, I suspect Eva would salivate at the prospect and could be persuaded to make an exception, just this once, of course.
Look at Success Academy Upper West where fewer than 1/3 of the students are low-income. They tested more than 77 third graders last year, and in second grade they only had 57 students as of BEDS day (from data.nysed.gov). Somehow they found spots for 20 more students in that very affluent school. Compare that with the Success Academy schools that educate high numbers of low income students like Harlem 5, where there were 106 students in 2nd grade and only 76 students in 4th grade. The attrition rates are the highest at their earliest Success Academy schools which just happen to be the schools with the highest % of low-income students. I suspect that the fastest way to make your “average” attrition rates look better is to simply lower the % of low-income students you educate.
…to clarify the above: the same cohort of students grew from 57 to 77 students in one year at affluent Success Academy Upper West. At low-income Harlem Success Academy 5, the 2nd grade cohort of 106 shrank to 76 students by 4th grade (2 years later).
Getting rid of “ones” and “twos” while adding “threes” and “fours” is why SA and Moskowitz have no credibility with anyone plugged into the scam.
Awful article here against opt-outs in US News and World Report by a Charter Chief, Nina Rees.
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-bank/2015/04/30/opting-out-of-education-data-shortchanges-students
Deform is what shortchanges students and society!
Now parents must turn over all data in addition to accepting any and all testing regimes or they’re thwarting progress.
It just never ends.
Not all data, just the flawed crappy stuff that allows deformers to feign progress, crisis or necessity to fire.
I had low income and middle income students in my class for many years and students with disabilities were included. They all benefitted from learning alongside each other and were able to find success. This is not to say that every child with special needs can benefit from being fully included in every class, which is why there is a continuum of placements and placement decisions must be made on a case by case basis, according to the needs of the child. If schools don’t do that, including charters, they are in violation of state and federal laws and should not be receiving public funds.
If there was even a modicum of oversight of charter schools, they would be required to demonstrate how and where they implement the continuum of placements for children with special needs.
I think people may not be aware of or are forgetting what Special Ed was like before the courts demanded that schools demonstrate that the least restrictive environment (LRE) and placement decisions from a continuum of placement options be determined based on the needs of each individual child, as stipulated in the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA).
Parents sued my district, as well as my state for lack of oversight and noncompliance with IDEA and, as a result, schools in my district were closely monitored by the court for over a decade. The reason was because it was common for our schools to tell parents that, based on the category of disability, they didn’t take “those kids,” or, if they did take them, that the child would have no choice but to go to a separate classroom or a separate school. Sometimes it was because the child had a physical disability, such as Cerebral Palsy, and could not climb stairs, which meant that the schools had not complied with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) accessibility legislation, too.
Kids with physical disabilities might have had no cognitive impairments but, if accepted by schools, they were often placed in separate rooms (usually out of sight in the basement) or at separate schools, with children who were mentally retarded, where they did not have equal educational opportunity, because the students didn’t have access to the same curriculum as typically developing peers, nor opportunities to ever interact with them even when attending the same school. I found a lot of evidence of this because, while under court monitoring, people like me were tasked with making sure the schools were in compliance, such as by attending IEP meetings and reviewing records and IEPs on file. As a result of the lawsuit, I think my district has made great strides in meeting the needs of students with disabilities.
If parents want to see changes at charters, they should sue the school, the charter management organization, the charter authorizer and the district, as well as the state for lack of regulatory oversight.
The issue here is the SA claim to fame. Frankly, public schools who track students have the same success without the grandstanding, the coercive discipline, or more money. You do not need teachers with outstanding SAT scores but those with natural curiosity and an intellectual interest.
One can have voluntary tracking in levels of classes. One can develop curriculums for a variety of students. This is where money plays a roll and why it is so difficult to do.
SA appears to have nothing to teach public schools or private ones. It might represent economic segregation and it might represent social segregation.
Freed from strictures of Ed fads, any school can do what SA claims. I’ve seen it done in a second from the bottom scoring school in L. A. No extra money, no TFA teachers. Just programmed the most successful students at that period of time together. And later some of these students were above average in success as young adults.
These students were functioning at their age and grade level; the remaining students were about five years below them in multiple ways.
Incidentally, the advanced ESL students were some of highest performing students as well. Study skills, math skills, and self-discipline of many were more suited to academic surroundings than for many of our American-born, learned-helpless, socially-dependent, impoverished, angry, OR responsibility-lacking students.
It is this group that taxpayers eschew paying for and who it would benefit government to lead to a different understanding of education. Reading level has little to do with it. Reading is a thing they do not practice. But as a country we will be dependent on their finding a place in the culture. Otherwise continuing upheaval may prevail.
The middle-working class enthralldorm with Reagan economics (conceptually not his practice) has taken them to the place where they have cut off their nose to spite their face.
If we go down this road, the U. S may lose its edge: we won’t know whom we have discarded by rejecting kids based on test scores before the age when the brain is fully operating. Those of us who work with those identified gifted in second grade often find they have not lived up to that by sixth when everyone else has caught up or surpassed them.
Once SA students enter their adult lives we will hear from them if the SA model worked out. I expect it will make little difference if they were motivated to begin with.