PBS NewsHour Clarification | Press | PBS NewsHour
PBS NewsHour Clarification | Press | PBS NewsHour
On October 12, 2015, the PBS NewsHour aired a report from veteran education reporter John Merrow, based on nearly a year of reporting, about suspension pol
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PBS NewsHour Clarification
October 20, 2015 at 5:56 PM EDT
On October 12, 2015, the PBS NewsHour aired a report from veteran education reporter John Merrow, based on nearly a year of reporting, about suspension policies of young children and one successful charter school network in New York City. The NewsHour stands by the report.
However, the CEO of Success Academy, Eva Moskowitz, has since raised objections to two specific issues in Mr. Merrow’s report. She protests that she was not given the opportunity to respond to one family’s comments in the story and she asserts that Mr. Merrow’s reporting about attrition rates is incorrect.
Mr. Merrow’s report was not about any particular child, but about suspension policy. The reporting included conversations with nearly a dozen families about their young children’s suspensions from Success Academy, as well as other sources, including one within Success Academy. Most of these sources were unwilling to go on camera.
In their interview Mr. Merrow asked Ms. Moskowitz for her response to the information he had gathered from these sources, and she was given ample time to respond.
Only one family was willing to talk on camera, but the mother was not willing to allow Success Academy to release her son’s school records. Ms. Moskowitz should have been given a chance to respond to this family’s comments. The NewsHour regrets that decision.
Ms. Moskowitz also disputes Mr. Merrow’s reporting on Success Academy’s attrition rate. This is a complicated area because charter schools, including Success Academy Charter Schools, calculate attrition differently. Mr. Merrow addressed these disparities by comparing similar time frames and methods for calculating attrition. He used both public numbers and internal documents to calculate a comparison of attrition rates.
One of the charter schools in the report calculates attrition by the names of individual children over a 365-day calendar year, from the beginning of one school year to the beginning of the next school year. Success Academy’s data is based on the number of children over the school year, not the calendar year. Mr. Merrow reconciled those numbers fairly and thoroughly.
The fundamental point of Mr. Merrow’s report is about the policy of suspensions of young children. It accurately documents that Success Academy suspends students as young as five- and six-year olds at a greater rate than many other schools, which Ms. Moskowitz does not dispute. Mr. Merrow’s report also explains that Success Academy Charter Schools are achieving superior academic results and are popular among New York area families.
While the NewsHour regrets the decision to include that particular mother and child without providing Ms. Moskowitz with an opportunity to respond, the NewsHour stands by the report.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
So John is on an atonement tour? Too bad he was as diligent with Michelle Rhee and got steam-rolled by her bull. See, many still and always will remember that. But, keep it up John! Perhaps, I’ll forget.
The superior results at SA are test scores. No character is built, no critical thinking is encouraged. The kids are test taking machines, per St. Eva herself. Math doesn’t lie, so when you start the year with 100 kids and end the year with 50, do the math. When you open a school with 100 kids in 1st grade, and graduate 30 kids 8 years later, do the math. Of course I’m just picking round numbers out of the air because I’m too lazy to hunt down the actual numbers, but the point is made.
Her own record keeping, even if per school year and not per calendar year, and no matter how she wants to spin it, indicates that SA suspends more than public schools. She also makes at least twice as much as Carmen Farina for superintending to vastly less “scholars.”
She can spin it all she likes. She can get red about the face and neck. She can squirm but she can’t hide facts and truths when uncovered. She can demand apologies all day long. Her actions and response to facts is very telling about her personally – she is in it for the payday and the adulation. It was never about the kids.
I hope the parents of the scholar whose records she has made public sue her and win.
I posted this elsewhere:
Click to access school-indicators-for-new-york-city-charter-schools-2013-2014-school-year-july-2015.pdf
This recent IBO report lists (on page 9) the aggregate attrition rates of the entering Kindergarten class at 53 NYC charter schools (4 of which are Success Academy schools).
In aggregate, these 53 schools lost 26.5% of their Kindergarten class by 2nd grade, and another 22.5% of the class went missing from 3-5th grade. In total, 49.5% of the Kindergarten children who began at those 53 charter schools were gone by 5th grade.
Let’s call Eva Moskowitz’ bluff and demand that the IBO disaggregate the attrition data of those 53 schools. What was the attrition rate for the Kindergarteners at the 4 Success Academy schools — was it above or below the 49.5% attrition rate that those 53 charter schools averaged. Then we can see if the charter schools with high attrition rates have exceptionally high suspension rates or not.
Eva Moskowitz wants to use 4 year old data from one year that a reporter compiled herself. But there is already much better data collected by the IBO. I hope a reporter asks to see it so we can find out if Success Academy loses more children than other charter schools.
Thank you for the link.
“Only one family was willing to talk on camera, but the mother was not willing to allow Success Academy to release her son’s school records.”
But Eva was allowed to include the teacher’s records of an incident in the press release?
Maybe Cuomo is distancing himself from this noisemaker. What do the other charter school operators think of her?
Again: I would draw your attention to the Democracynow.org program yesterday, Wednesday – you can still view it – on the Newark NJ debacle with Chris Christie and others.
EXCELLENT program.
I was left after watching it that it is more of an indictment of the parents, students and teachers, naiveté on the part of Zuckerberg, and that the people didn’t want what Christie/Booker/Zuckerberg/Anderson/Cerf were giving, rather than why what they were giving was wrong. Just my take. Perhaps in those few sound bites she couldn’t give real in-depth answers, or perhaps the wrong questions were asked. It left me feeling “blah”.