I get the impression, reading Peter Greene’s latest post, that he doesn’t think Eva Moskowitz deserves an apology from John Merrow or PBS.

He says she has created an empire of her own, and she can’t brook any criticism.

Success Academy works for some kids, but not for all kids. That is, if you think that the ultimate measure of a school is test scores, she has them. Public schools are supposed to work for all kids. Granted, there are magnet schools and special schools, but there are supposed to be public schools where no one is turned away, no one is counseled out.

Eva says that the little boy–age 5 or 6–was a very bad behavior problem. Peter–and many readers of this blog–think that he couldn’t handle the pressure.

Peter finds documentation for everything John Merrow said about attrition rates.

Moskowitz also demands a retraction for the reporting of a high attrition rate, claiming, “Our attrition rate is actually lower than the average for either district or charter schools.” This is an exceptionally ballsy claim. You can look at these charts from Democracy Builders, a pro-charter group in NYC, showing that for eighty-eight students starting in third grade, Success ends up with thirty-one in eighth grade. In 2014, the Daily News reported that the first graduating class at Harlem Success was just thirty-two of the original seventy-three– and despite their awesome test scores, none of them qualified on the entrance exam for the top high schools in the city.

Maybe those kids were just a bad fit for Eva’s academy.