Some charter operators claim they are public schools, but refuse to be audited or subject to any public accountability for the public funds they receive. As you might expect, Eva Moskowitz is leading the battle to prevent public oversight as she earlier led the charter battle to prevent public audits. The legislature passed legislation allowing New York City’s Comptroller to audit NYC charters, and the State Comptroller to audit charters outside of New York City. The legislation blocked State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli from auditing Success Academy, as he had intended. The City Comptroller is now conducting an audit that includes Success Academy charters.
But now Eva is fighting oversight of publicly sponsored pre-K in her charters.
New York City Mayor de Blasio made universal pre-K a major goal of his administration. The city set up nearly 300 new pre-K sites. All but one signed a contract with the city. Guess who that one is.
Eliza Shapiro reports at Politico New York:
“The Success Academy charter school network has refused to sign mandatory contracts granting the city Department of Education oversight over its pre-kindergarten program, deputy mayor Richard Buery said Thursday, signaling the latest showdown between the charter network and Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration….
“If Success does not sign the contracts, the city will withhold payment. Success will technically be able to provide its own pre-K programs — just without city funds.
“The charter network, New York City’s largest and most controversial, was approved to offer five pre-K classes in three locations under de Blasio’s universal pre-K program earlier this year. But Success’ legal team has told the city they will not sign the contract, according to city officials, because it would authorize DOE oversight over the privately operated network.
“All the other 277 pre-K providers that have been sent contracts have signed them, according to the administration, including nine charter schools. …The DOE first sent Success its contracts on August 4, according to the letter, and followed up with the network’s legal team on August 27.
“The letter says that the city would be in violation of its city-mandated contracting rules if it did not provide a signed contract for Success, and would violate its state pre-K grant by not inspecting pre-K programs. ”
Oversight, transparency, and accountability are for “the little people,” as billionaire Leina Helmsley once memorably said about paying taxes.
One can’t help but wonder whether the four-year-olds will be suspended as often as the five-year-olds. According to Eva’s philosophy, the sooner litte kids are suspended, the less likely they are to require suspension later. Of course, if they are suspended frequently, they won’t be around later. They will be back in public school. You know, those places that accept all children and that get inspected and audited.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Oversight? Was that not the big push to hold schools accountable?
Inanity exemplified!!!!
Political suicide for the country.
Eva and her ilk don’t even believe in the concept of “disability” or that there is a category known as “special ed,” or in IEP’s.
Or perhaps Eva does, but doesn’t deign to take those unfortunates on. According to one staffer, she responds to kids in hardship, including those based on disability with the following comment:
“SUCCESS ACADEMY is are not a Social Services agency.”
Eva Moskowitz is on the same page with Duncan. To both of them, there’s no such thing as “special ed.” In her opinion, that which the traditional school approach categorizes as “special ed,” is nothing more than a lack of “maturity” as a result of “mama” failing to her her job. Those whose fail to “mature” — or have the effects of poor parenting reversed — under Eva’s system are kicked out… err… “counseled out.”
This is from PAGE 5 of the 2010 NEW YORK MAGAZINE story on Eva and her schools:
http://nymag.com/news/features/65614/index4.html
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“At Harlem Success, disability is a dirty word.
” ‘I’m not a big believer in special ed,’ (SUCCESS ACADEMY’s instructional leader) Fucaloro says. For many children who arrive with individualized education programs, or IEPs, he goes on, the real issues are ‘maturity and undoing what the parents allow the kids to do in the house—usually mama—and I reverse that right away.’
“When remediation falls short, according to sources in and around the network, families are counseled out. ‘Eva told us that “the school is not a social-service agency,” ‘ says the Harlem Success teacher. ‘That was an actual quote.’
“In one case, says a teacher at P.S. 241, a set of twins started kindergarten at the co-located HSA 4 last fall. One of them proved difficult and was placed on a part-time schedule, ‘so the mom took both of them out and put them in our school. She has since put the calm sister twin back in Harlem Success, but they wouldn’t take the boy back. We have the harder, troubled one; they have the easier one.’
“Such triage is business as usual, says the former network staffer, when the schools are vexed by behavioral problems: ‘They don’t provide the counseling these kids need.’ If students are deemed bad ‘fits’ and their parents refuse to move them, the staffer says, the administration ‘makes it a nightmare’ with repeated suspensions and midday summonses. After a 5-year-old was suspended for two days for allegedly running out of the building, the child’s mother says the school began calling her every day ‘saying he’s doing this, he’s doing that. Maybe they’re just trying to get rid of me and my child, but I’m not going to give them that satisfaction.’ ”
“At her school alone, the Harlem Success teacher says, at least half a dozen lower-grade children who were eligible for IEPs have been withdrawn this school year. If this account were to reflect a pattern, Moskowitz’s network would be effectively winnowing students before third grade, the year state testing begins.
” ‘The easiest and fastest way to improve your test scores,’ observes a DoE principal in Brooklyn, ‘is to get higher-performing students into your school.’ And to get the lower-performing students out.”
Eva Moskowitz seems to believe that the DOE has silly rules that prevent suspending 5 year olds for “failure to learn”. Most likely she feels that if she cannot suspend the pre-k children who just keep breaking one of her 5 page list of rules, how will they learn? The SUNY Charter Institute approves of suspending 5 year olds whenever SA’s charter school principal (who seems so very experienced in how children learn in that John Merrow news story) tells SUNY it is necessary, so most certainly they would agree that 4 year old is never too early to suspend because as Eva Moskowitz and SUNY Charter Institute keep telling us — suspension is the way to turn 5 year olds into high achieving scholars! If following the DOE rules might mean that Success Academy isn’t allowed to use its “best practices” of suspending young children, then that is truly a reason for Eva Moskowitz to be angry. The nerve of the DOE to expect Success Academy to keep teaching children instead of suspending them over and over again! No wonder Eva is angry. Can you blame her?
Eva’s Publicly Funded Private Schools (Often Referred to as “Charters”) Refuse. . .
Some publicly funded private school (often referred to as “charter”) operators
Etc etc
I doubt four year olds would even understand suspensions.
Same with 5 year olds. But if you insist they work for 5 year olds, why not 4 year olds? Actually, 1/3 of the students who start K in NYC are still 4, so it is certainly possible that 4 year olds in Kindergarten are suspended too. Along with the far more “mature” 5 year olds.
It is my understanding the New York State charter schools are not allowed to have pre-K. Are the rules for NYC different?
Sharon, I don’t know about pre-K in charter schools outside the city, but some charters in NYC have pre-K, if they wish.
I might be looking at old information, a NYSED parent’s guide published in 2011, but I’m not seeing much else on the SED or the SUNY website about pre-K. I see on the NYCDOE website that charters in The City may get UPK money now after rule changes in 2014. I am just not able to determine if the same applies to non-NYC charters.
I’m also reading that the NYCDOE isn’t getting many charter schools applying for the UPK money. Too many strings attached, no doubt.
Yet another indictment of Saint Eva’s self-absorbed self-interest at work.
“You know, those places that accept all children and that get inspected and audited.”
I have been a fairly vigilant New York City public school parent for a lot of years now, and I can say with certainty that not one of my children’s schools has ever been inspected or audited by a disinterested third party. Every now and again a district officer whose own salary and job status depend on reporting good news back to yet another district bureaucrat will swing by and take a look around, but that doesn’t count.
The city comptroller’s audit of charter schools started nearly a year ago. What is the holdup with reporting the results??
Of course, we don’t need an audit to debate the merits of suspending 5 year olds. Make that not quite 5 year olds in NYC, since 1/3 of the students aren’t 5 yet. But then again, suspending Kindergarten children is something that charter overseers like SUNY Charter Institute are proud to endorse. So I can’t see why they’d object to Eva Moskowitz helping the 4 year olds in her pre-k to become stellar scholars by suspending them if they don’t shape up. Obviously, it would be wrong of the de Blasio administration to object when SUNY Charter Institute says suspending 5 year olds is fine and we can expect them to feel the same about 4 year olds. So audit or not, how can someone object to letting pre-ks use whatever methods they feel is necessary to insure that scholars achieve what they must achieve? I’m sure you agree, Tim. As long as the test results 4 years later are good, how can anyone object to any means that are used? That’s what SUNY Charter Institute believes, and certainly it should be SUNY Charter Institute who oversee pre-k as well.
What public school do your children attend, Tim?
I can’t believe you are not a charter parent.
You are certainly a charter cheerleader. Why?
Diane, Diane, Diane, charter schools ARE public schools!!!
[/sarcasm]
For what I hope are fairly obvious reasons, I’m going to take a pass on telling you which traditional NYC DOE district schools my children attend.
If that or anything else about my situation–I derive no income from nor have any financial stake in education or education reform*, nor do I have any connections to any charter school–change, I promise that you will be among the first to know!
I trust parents to generally make the best choices for their children. I know that there are hundreds of zoned district schools in NYC that you or any regular commenter on this blog would never in a million years allow a child or grandchild to attend. I happy to support charters for families who don’t have other options, who are warehoused in segregation, and for whom the district system has delivered nothing but empty promises.
*It’s possible I own some Pearson, Microsoft, ERB, etc in a generic indexed mutual fund
I don’t see how creating an “escape hatch” for a few while miring the rest of the schools in utter segregation of poorly behaving students who lack great parenting and great community, and soul crushing poverty will make things any better.
Right now that is exactly what is happening and it is unclear what charters would do differently were they to assume responsibility for all students and not just the ones who will dig in with all they’ve got.
There are charter schools none of us would send our children too either.
Success IMO isn’t attractive to anyone because of its wonderful ways of inspiring learning. It is because it jettisons those who would interfere with learning period which would bend more towards parents want a safe environment to learn in, then parents choose instructional programs (if they have the presence of mind to look into it after looking at distance from home and safety).
Creating dangerous schools for our most vulnerable that are ever harder to turn around is not an answer or a justification to allow charters to do what SA does.
Tim says he has no agenda. “I happy to support charters for families who don’t have other options, who are warehoused in segregation, and for whom the district system has delivered nothing but empty promises.” But that isn’t true.
If Tim was telling the truth, he would be more critical of the charter schools like Success Academy which seems to be given free reign to get rid of the children they deem too difficult to teach. If all Tim cared about were the families who don’t have other options, Tim would be critical of the high suspension and especially, the high attrition rates at Success Academy instead of going out of his way to excuse them. If Tim really had no agenda, he would wonder why a charter school had a low suspension and attrition rate in schools that have primarily middle class students and a much higher suspension and attrition rate in schools that have primarily low-income students who have far fewer choices when charter schools make them feel misery.
If Tim really had no agenda he would be posting here criticizing SUNY Charter Institute for ENCOURAGING high suspension rates of at-risk 5 year olds and ignoring high attrition rates for at-risk kids. What he would not think is a good thing is SUNY rewarding the charter schools with the highest attrition and suspension rates by always approving every request to expand. Especially if that charter school went out of their way to drop priority for any at-risk kid and demand space in wealthy neighborhoods for some of its schools.
Tim doesn’t really care about ALL children, just the well-behaved children who learn easily. He is happy for the rest to rot.
M,
First off, it is important to break through the monomania and understand that around 85% of the children who attend a charter school in New York City attend a charter school other than one in the Success network. There are a lot of wonderful “mom-and-pop” charters, like Brooklyn Prospect, which is attempting to become a certified K-12 IB program, or Community Roots, one of the city’s most racially diverse schools, as well as smaller networks like Icahn in the Bronx, which features classes capped at 18 kids and an out-of-the-box Core Knowledge curriculum.
Second, while the primary reason I support charters is that they may offer at-risk kids a better choice than their hypersegregated neighborhood district school, there are philosophical and pedagogical reasons to support charters, too. What if for no reason other than your street address your child is assigned to a wildly corrupt and inept school like the infamous “School of No,” PS 106, on the Rockaway Peninsula, or to the school that’s featured in today’s Post, where the principal made the teachers throw away their desks and filing cabinets during the school day while children sat in their classrooms? Asking parents to “fix” their zoned school has it exactly backward.
Last, not only are defenders of the district model far too happy to accept the status quo for poor hypersegregated kids, or to dream that the ultimate solution is to have schools be separate but equal, which in addition to being ineffective is also illegal, they are also willing and eager to accept actively sorting and separating and jettisoning kids so long as it doesn’t affect the employment status of any adults.
Don’t believe me? Count how many students with disabilities requiring a self-contained or most-restrictive environment are educated at the city’s highest-performing general education elementary and middle schools, schools like PS 321, PS 290, PS 6, PS 234, and so on. Look at the shocking racial imbalance in the city’s hugely popular “gifted and talented” programs. Worst of all, look at its much-praised “progressive” unzoned schools like Castle Bridge, Manhattan School for Children, or the Brooklyn New School. All of these use the exact same admissions process as a charter school. All of them are collocated in NYC DOE buildings. All of them are much wealthier and whiter, with low-to-negligible numbers of ELLs, than their district averages. Yet we don’t hear a peep from those concerned about cream-skimming and all schools educating their fair share of at-risk learners. Guess why not?
The entire district model is based on the escape hatch. Suburban schools screen kids through real estate, with its ugly history and ongoing pattern of outright racial discrimination. Carefully drawn catchment lines in the city accomplish the same thing. It’s 2015 in New York City and the district model is as dug in and unwilling to change as it’s ever been. So you tell me where this leaves the family who doesn’t have the money or the right skin color to find their escape hatch.
Notice how desperately Tim tries to change the subject. This is about oversight of Eva Moskowitz’ very questionable practices that result in extremely high suspension rates for 5 year old at-risk children (not so high among middle class kids) and very high attrition rates for low-income students overall in her charter schools. And Tim, who claims to actually care about exactly those students who Eva Moskowitz suspends and who mysteriously disappears from her school won’t say a word against it! Just like the SUNY Charter Institute who provides all the oversight that Tim thinks Eva Moskowitz needs to continue the practices that Tim seems to admire so much. Onward to the 4 year olds! Maybe Tim works for SUNY because he certainly believes in their type of “oversight”! The charter school chain that suspends the most 5 year olds and loses the most at-risk kids gets to expand as much as they want!
All Tim’s misleading talk about OTHER charter schools who have pretty mediocre to terrible test scores and other “good” public schools which actually keep a larger % of the low-income kids who enroll than Eva Moskowitz’ charter schools do is an example of Tim trying to turn attention away from Success Academy, as if Success Academy was just some tiny charter school and not the largest network in NYC with plans to double (or is it quadruple?) in size.
If Tim was who he claims to be, he would have no need to defend Eva Moskowitz — he would be her biggest critic. Her practices make the charter schools that DO the work that Tim pretends he supports look as bad as the failing public schools. Nothing in Tim’s reply makes me believe one word of what he is saying. If he really cared about giving children choice, he would not be so desperate to defend the charter school where so many at-risk children leave.
Tim reminds me of Eva Moskowitz — I don’t understand their need to be so dishonest about what they are and what they do.
BDB should have someone from the Mayor’s office sandbag Stringer about that holdup, given Stringer’s past sandbaggings of BDB.
That reminds me, when’s the city going to announce the billion dollars of “healthcare savings” required under the 2014 contract? I guess we’ve all stopped pretending that’s something that’s going to happen.
I didn’t realize that. I really hope politics isn’t playing a role in Stringer’s audit. I haven’t yet seen politics in how de Blasio manages schools – despite what the charter advocates claim – that he is acting because of some personal agenda with Eva Moskowitz – de Blasio allowed most of her schools to go through and only held up 3 that were obviously an issue. If anyone was playing politics, it was Mayor Bloomberg rushing the process before he left office to make sure she got whatever space she desired no matter who was harmed.
The healthcare in the teachers’ contract is not exactly fancy health insurance. There is a very basic low-cost package that I suspect is far worse than your family or mine has, with very limited doctors’ choices. And nicer packages are fairly pricey. It’s hard to know what kind of savings they can have, although Obamacare is supposedly making insurance cheaper overall, so perhaps that is some of it.
Tim, every public agency is subject to audit at any time by the city or state comptroller. None has ever gone to court to block an audit.
Next thing you know, she’ll be banning oversight (and overflights) of the red spots on her neck during interviews.
I’ve called Stringer’s office a few times about the status of his S.A. audit but his office would not give me any information since the audit is ongoing. However, last winter, a representative of Stringer’s office told me that the audit would be published last June. I wonder if S.A. is fighting his organizational audit-not the financial audit-which is clearly allowed under the recently enacted NYS educational law.
CTRL-F tells me that the word “Tim” has been typed 23 times on this comment thread.
Probably because “he who must not be named” is the voice of Eva Moskowitz on here. I use his name often because my replies are directed specifically to the comments “he who must not be named” makes. FLERP!, when you get all excited about defending the high suspension rates of 5 year old children (I’m sure “he who must not be named” thinks they all deserved it) and start defending the high attrition rates (double of KIPP) of at-risk kids and pretend that it’s all okay, I will address you by name as well : )
Tim, I would never want a child or grandchild of mine to go to a no-excuses charter school. They are free spirits and would hate the rigid conformity.