Eva Moskowitz, founder of the Success Academy charter schools, the uber-“No Excuses” chain, explained in the Wall Street Journal why her schools do not tolerate daydreaming in class.
Even five-year-olds must learn to sit quietly, “track” the teacher, pay strict attention to the teacher at all times, and follow every rule. We learned from John Merrow’s recent report on PBS that children of five or six may be suspended from school repeatedly for breaking the rules of strict order and obedience.
She also makes the claim, off-handedly, that the attrition rates in her schools are lower than those of district schools, but this is doubtful.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Sounds like child abuse to me.
I write about young children. One of the areas I emphasize is the need for children to daydream. This kind of obedience and not giving children chance to daydream creates people without vision- let alone dreams or passion- and who know how to follow order strictly and without thinking. Not what a democracy needs.
Maybe they don’t want a democracy.
If sitting still, feet on the floor, hands folded, eyes tracking the teacher is not a natural pose for you (which it isn’t for 99.99% of 5-year-olds), then it’s almost impossible to learn when forced to maintain that position because what is occupying most of your brain is your mental sound track reminding yourself to sit up straight, keep your feet on the floor, keep your hands folded, etc. The only mental resources you have left get used for nodding and pretending you’re “engaged” and getting it.
It’s a nice dodge but the issue wasn’t “daydreaming”. It was repeated suspensions.
It was my understanding the US Department of Education had issued another series of demands to public schools regarding limiting suspensions/expulsions.
Are charter schools exempt from those requirements, too?
She is a monster.
At the point where you cannot allow 5 year olds to daydream, I just have to question your humanity.
They’ll find a way to check out and daydream while appearing to observe all “tracking” requirements.
The school administrators can’t actually control what goes on inside their heads, thank God.
I’m sure Moskowitz is working on a way to do that.
Isn’t it time to drop a house on Eva and watch her toes curl up? She should understand that children daydream when they are bored. Engage them in active learning, and daydreaming won’t be a big concern, and neither will suspensions! By the way when I was young and hired as a high school ESL teacher, the vice principal’s comment was, “So you’re the blonde that’s going to send me the bad Haitians.” The previous blonde teacher had had lots of student problems. I never once sent him any Haitians because they were too busy learning to be “bad.” This VP made frequent visits to my class in the beginning, and then he left us alone when he saw the kids learning.
Thoreau would daydream while sitting in his sunny doorway. Einstein would daydream while listening to music. Doesn’t Ms. Moskowitz understand the importance (and joy) of — every now and then — letting your mind wander into a delightful daydream?
From Thoreau which is still quite apropos today and what Success (sic) Academy is attempting to make of innocent children:
“The mass of men [and women] serves the state [education powers that be] thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailors, constables, posse comitatus, [administrators and teachers], etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt.”- Henry David Thoreau [1817-1862], American author and philosopher
My Halloween Hangover:
“Welcome to childhood.” she cackled and said,
“We’ll teach you to pass tests and pee in your bed.
We’ll teach you good manners and staying in line;
You do those things and all will be fine.”
“If you can’t follow rules,” she let out a shriek,
“Then you must go. We don’t steal the weak.
Learning’s not fun and life is a mess,
You must find out early how to Stress for Success.”
I can’t read the article because it’s pay-walled. Did the Wall Street Journal solicit a response from the US Department of Education, who are right now running a campaign to limit suspensions in public schools?
While I recognize Eva Moskowitz is the newest national expert on public schools, it’s kind of odd that we hear two completely different arguments from the ed reform “movement” members in the private sector and those in the public sector. Which is it? Do we suspend too much or not?
In Google, if you type in the name of an article that’s behind a paywall, such as “Why Students Need to Sit Up and Pay Attention,” you have a good chance of being able to then access it, due to agreements that Google made with the press. That’s how I was able to read this article in the WSJ.
This evil woman could not be more ignorant about what children of color, children of poverty, or any children need.
When I was growing up poor in Appalachia daydreaming and losing myself in library books was not only my salvation but also the impetus for me to go on and complete a BA, two MA’s, and an ABD PhD with National Board Certification and succeed as an effective and awarded teacher for over 20 years.
Fantasy life is not only neccesary but crucial for rising up from difficult circumstances but it is also of huge importance in allowing the dignity of ine’s humanity and creative spirit to thrive, flourish, and blossom.
Eva needs to be removed from all proximity and influence over the lives of children to stop the great harm she is doing to their souls in service of higher test scores.
Didn’t John King found and run a no-excuses charter chain with a high suspension rate?
Maybe the WSJ could interview him. Has he changed his mind or is he now promoting a new approach to discipline in public schools, and not charter schools?
Clearly Ms. Moskowitz hasn’t read the research on the role of daydreaming in learning. Nor is she very familiar with children.
She would have loved me. I was that quiet ADD type busy daydreaming, ignoring instruction, and then reading continually every night at home, learning the vocabulary that made me a good test taker.
The NYS School Psychologists Association has provided research indicating that tests are increasing stress levels in children, according to a report in the Journal News:
‘About three quarters of psychologists from the state’s nearly 700 school districts said state tests are causing greater anxiety than local assessments, a survey released Friday by the state School Boards Association and the state Association of School Psychologists found.’
http://www.lohud.com/story/news/education/2015/11/20/common-core-anxiety/76114566/
The same organization has a ‘toolkit’ for dealing with test anxiety.
Why are we subjecting children to more psychological stress than is necessary? They deal with enough.
What will be the long-term effects?
Here is Eva’s full article:
Success Academy Charter Schools, New York City’s largest network of free charter schools, has recently been the center of controversy over its policies on student behavior. Our critics accuse us of pushing out children who might pull down our test scores, and in doing so creating what some call “a kindergarten-to-prison pipeline.” In reality, our attrition rates are lower than those of the district schools. How then do our students, chosen by lottery and mainly children of color, routinely outperform even students from wealthy suburbs?
I wish I could claim that I’ve developed some revolutionary pedagogical approach at Success, but the humbling truth is this: Most of what I know about teaching I learned from one person, an educator named Paul Fucaloro who taught in New York City district schools for four decades.
When I founded Success Academy in 2006, I hired Paul to coach our teachers. I soon learned that while he was quite instructionally sophisticated, Paul was decidedly old school on the topic of student behavior. Every child had to sit up straight and show he was paying attention.
I wasn’t completely sold on Paul’s approach at first, but when one of our schools was having trouble, I’d dispatch him to help. He’d tell the teachers to give him a class full of all the kids who had the worst behavioral and academic problems. The teachers thought this was nuts but they’d do so, and then a few days later they’d drop by Paul’s classroom and find these students acting so differently that they were nearly unrecognizable. Within weeks, the students would make months’ worth of academic progress.
Teachers couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it. But Paul did it over and over again. And incredibly, the kids seemed to love Paul more than the teachers who were far less strict.
So what did he do? Well, imagine that a man to whom you’re speaking at a party is looking over your shoulder. You’ll suspect he isn’t really listening. The same is true of kids. Their physical behavior reflects their mental state. Therefore, Paul set behavioral expectations to reflect the mental state he insisted his students have.
Paul’s students had to sit with hands clasped and look at whomever was speaking (called “tracking”). They couldn’t stare off into space, play with objects, rest their head on their hands in boredom, or act like what Paul called “sourpusses” who brought an attitude of negativity or indifference to the classroom. Paul made students demonstrate to him that at every single moment they were focused on learning.
He also had more sophisticated techniques. He’d call on students randomly rather than ask for hands, so students had to prepare an answer for every question he asked. He made students repeat or comment on what their classmates said to make them listen carefully to one another. And he’d never repeat what a child said, as most teachers do, because—besides wasting precious time—it suggested to students that they didn’t have to listen to one another, only to the teacher.
These practices ensured that while only one student could talk at a time, every child was continually engaging in what Paul called “active listening,” meaning thinking critically and preparing to participate if called upon.
Success Academy in large measure uses Paul’s approach, and that is much of the reason why we have schools where more than 95% of the students pass the state math tests in neighborhoods where on average fewer than 20% of students do.
Some critics find our approach rigid and overbearing. I’ve got two of these critics in my own home: my kids, who attend Success. They complain when they get into trouble for not tracking the speaker. They were listening, they protest. Maybe so. But sometimes when kids look like they’re daydreaming, it’s because they are, and we can’t allow that possibility.
As Paul repeatedly preached to me, it’s morally wrong to let a child choose whether to pay attention, because many will make the wrong choice and we can’t let them slip through the cracks. So if a student had trouble paying attention, he’d move him to the front of the class, call his parents, keep him after school to practice. Whatever it took. Paul was relentless.
Some critics say that it’s hard for young children to focus. True. But it’s our job to teach them this. Recently, I was at a news conference at which I was asked why Success has strict rules regarding behavior. As I answered, the reporters didn’t stare off into space, look bored or fiddle with things. Because they were focusing. A school that fails to teach students this necessary skill isn’t doing right by them.
People have understandably expressed concern that some students may have particular trouble meeting our behavioral expectations and ask why we can’t simply relax them. The answer is that Success Academy’s 34 principals and I deeply believe that if we lessened our standards for student comportment, the education of the 11,000 children in our schools would profoundly suffer.
In my case, that belief has nothing to do with any ideological predisposition or pet pedagogical theory. I came to it only because Paul Fucaloro—the most gifted educator I’ve ever met, who spent four decades honing his craft before retiring last year—showed me that it works.
Ms. Moskowitz is the founder and chief executive officer of Success Academy Charter Schools.
While the central role of this one teacher may be true, if her explanation of her own role and her own incredulity at how successful the methods are is true I’ll eat my own shirt.
Moskowitz has an extraordinarily long record of being contemptful of others, even her own teachers at Stuyvesant. Nothing is ever good enough for her unless it is the way she would do it personally, and even her first efforts at book writing was an indictment of American interest in therapy.
This attempt to scrub her own imprint from the founding mythology of her school doesn’t pass even half of a smell test.
dianeravitch: thank you for the full article.
The bottom line: she accepts no responsibility for what happens in her schools.
Anyone else sense a “Throw John Deasy Under The Bus” moment coming up sometime in the future when she needs to make someone else fall on their sword for “good policy—bad implementation” complications?
Especially if it affects $tudent $ucce$$?
And what strikes me very hard indeed: the ease and comfort of adults is prioritized far above the needs of the children with whom they interact.
😡
No one is opposed to some measure of discipline in the classroom. Students need structure and parameters so all teachers need a framework for classroom management. Beyond this, my experience has taught me to enforce basic rules, but sometimes “one size fits all” is inappropriate. Some students will not respond to a harsh, punitive environment that would be soul crushing to them. Some students require more structure. Other students require a behavior plan with a system of rewards and punishments. I worked well with a conduct disorder case this way. This student who was placed in the class of the iron fisted, toughest teacher in the school (formerly an NYC teacher in the south Bronx) had to be removed from the class because it was a toxic pairing. This student responded to a reward system. Rules are necessary; stress and degradation are not. The smart teacher is versatile in thought and respectful in deed.
Retired teacher you put this very well. I would add that focusing/ listening-&-responding behavior can be taught from a very young age if done sensitively and with age-appropriate expectations. Most of my gigs are pull-out enrichments, but I have one client where I’ve provided weekly in-class Spanish to the 2.5’s- 6y.o.’s for yrs, so I see how a well-run school can accomplish this. It’s a gentle process, used sparingly, interspersed with other kinds of activity. ‘Focal’ (circle) time & frequency is increased incrementally, as kids mature.
A quote from Uncle Buck (1989):
I don’t think I want to know a six-year-old who isn’t a dreamer, or a sillyheart. And I sure don’t want to know one who takes their student career seriously. I don’t have a college degree. I don’t even have a job. But I know a good kid when I see one. Because they’re ALL good kids, until dried-out, brain-dead skags like you drag them down and convince them they’re no good. You so much as scowl at my niece, or any other kid in this school, and I hear about it, and I’m coming looking for you!
Some people shouldn’t be parents, teachers or administrators. Eve hits a triple here.
It is hard to imagine children “educated” this way growing up to be leaders, innovators, or risk-takers.
She is educating them to be docile know-nothings. That is the point. They will be silent and accept their fate at her hands, or thrown out. Too bad the parents don’t get it.
I feel that Steve Job’s 2005 commencement speech is appropriate here. Particularly how he closes it, “Stay hungry, stay foolish”. EM isn’t interested in raising a generation of thinkers and innovators, she just wants a generation of compliant serfs. PS: I love the Thoreau quote above. It rings so true with the ed deform movement
There children have their dreams shattered at a very early age. How enlightening??? Too they are taught to obey authority without question. How democratic!!!!1
No longer education but indoctrination. What a great future for a democracy.!!!
In other words, children must not be children.
Excellent translation from Rheephormish to standard English!
😎
About Eva’s hero, Paul Fucaloro
“After some red-flag internal assessments, Paul Fucaloro kept “the bottom 25 percent” an hour past their normal 4:30 p.m. dismissal—four days a week, six weeks before each test. “The real slow ones,” he says, stayed an additional 30 minutes, till six o’clock: a ten-hour-plus day for 8- and 9-year-olds. ”
Parents are not spared either
“Parents must sign the network’s “contract,” a promise to get children to class on time and in blue-and-orange uniform, guarantee homework, and attend all family events. “When parents aren’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing,” Fucaloro says, “we get on their behinds. Eva and Paul Fucaloro are their worst nightmares.” Infractions can range to the trivial: slacks that look worn at a child’s knees, long johns edging beyond collars. Recidivists are hauled into “Saturday Academy,” detention family style, where parents are monitored while doing “busy work” with their child, the ex-staffer says. Those who skip get a bristling form letter: “You simply stood up your child’s teacher and many others who came in on a Saturday, after a long, hard week.” At the last staff orientation, according to one Success teacher, Moskowitz reported telling parents, “Our school is like a marriage, and if you don’t come through with your promises, we will have to divorce.”
Intro to kindergarten
“New students are initiated at “kindergarten boot camp,” where they get drilled for two weeks on how to behave in the “zero noise” corridors (straight lines, mouths shut, arms at one’s sides) and the art of active listening (legs crossed, hands folded, eyes tracking the speaker). Life at Harlem Success, the teacher says, is “very, very structured,” even the twenty-minute recess. Lunches are rushed and hushed, leaving little downtime to build social skills. Many children appear fried by two o’clock, particularly in weeks with heavy testing. “We test constantly, all grades,” the teacher says. During the TerraNova, a mini-SAT bubble test over four consecutive mornings, three students threw up. “
In any case, Eva will leave soon—probably by the end of the school year. Too much controversy is not acceptable to sponsors, so her fate will be similar to Rhee or Barbic.
Note that she wrote the article only in Wall Street Journal. That’s the only place where she could get sympathetic, supportive comments. I’d like to see the comments, though. Or just a survey to see if they are supportive of her or not.
Stepford Students!!! Start playing The Wall in the background.
This one goes out to all of Eva’s “little test taking machines” (i.e. scholars):
This one is for Eva:
Karma’s going to get her and it won’t be pretty. It will be as ugly as her behavior and contempt for fellow humans.
As non-sensical, as Eva.
What? Children need to pay attention in class? I have been teaching twenty years, and that never once occurred to me. Thank God for Eva’s article! I’m looking forward to her next articles: “The Sun is our Primary Source of Heat and Light,” and “Humans Need Oxygen to Survive.”
Good one, Kevin!
Thanks!
Just another brick in the wall. Hey Eva! Leave them kids alone!
Perfect here!
no dreams, only rigor http://i.imgur.com/9yHhNQQ.png
Here is an inspirational video which nicely brought together much of the important educational principles Eva is advocating in her article. As if the teacher just popped right out of Eva’s article. I bet, not only he could be as effective as Fucaloro, but he’d be willing to do his transformational work for a fraction of Fucaloro’s $250K salary.
Scary. But I bet that Eva and Fucalaro would have a problem even with this guy, because the children were clearly moving around a little as he was teaching them. They weren’t sitting absolutely, perfectly still.
I wonder how Eva would have disciplined Einstein.
Anyhow, why is this cow afforded every opportunity to bloviate in the newspapers? I’m sick of reading about her, I’m sick of hearing about her and her miracle network of penitentiaries. “Scholars” – rhymes with dollars. You heard that hear. Ka-ching.
I guess though, if the parents love to have their precious children treated this way, power to the people, so long as this is their “choice” right?
When the choice is taken away, and all NY schools are silent prisons, maybe parents will get it.
And in Floridah – kindergarten kids can’t have bathroom accidents. A kindergarten kid was expelled for having two bathroom accidents. They also did a search of the kiddies to figure out who flushed a pair of panties down the toilet.
DCF is investigating Mason Classical Academy (founder is a county school board member) for mental injury and inadequate supervision.
http://www.nbc-2.com/story/30495402/exclusive-dcf-investigating-collier-charter-school#.Vk-jQL-YGDk
It looks like the EEOC ought to be investigating the schools hiring practices. See the faculty here
http://www.masonclassicalacademy.org/apps/staff/
Thank you, Substitute Teacher, for that story link. I know about that school and its affiliation with Hillsdale College’s *classical* and entirely hypocritical charter school initiative. I also know that two of the Collier County School Board members have connections to the school, and these two have been causing a lot of trouble for the public schools as a result.
I’m not sure she’s crediting, or blaming, Fucaloro. Deflecting? Hmmm.
I know it’s wrong of me to say this, but Eva Moskowitz should be flayed in the public square, then left in the pillory for an hour to be mocked and humiliated by the public. She’s a beast.
I believe the criticism leveled against Success Academy was not about what the students are expected to do, but about what is done to them if they don’t comply. Don’t change the subject, Eva. Let’s get back to those suspensions of five year-olds before one more small child gets hurt. Now, Eva, right now!
I tried unscrambling Moskowitz’ name, but somehow the letters don’t spell Montessori.
I bet you could get them to spell “Mengele.”
Omigosh, I just finished writing a long comment comparing Evita’s attitude w/that of the uptight principal in the terrific scene in John Candy’s “Uncle Buck”–the one where this woman tells Buck that his 6-year-old niece is “a silly-heart, a dreamer, &, quite frankly, she doesn’t take one thing about her academic career seriously.” And Buck puts her in her place, “I don’t think I want to know any 6-year-old who ISN’T a ‘silly-heart’ or a ‘dreamer,’ & I sure don’t want to know one who ‘takes her academic career seriously’!”
He then warns her that she’d better not admonish his niece–or ANY other kid in the school–or she’d have Buck to deal with. Then he saunters down the hall, inappropriately lighting a big, fat undoubtedly smelly cigar while still in the school.
The principal looks thoroughly cowed; the little boy waiting outside her office & heard the conversation giggles rather than squirm in fear.
Evita needs to have an Uncle Buck come to her office for a reality check!
(I meant that my original comment disappeared, but the above’ll do.)
How does Eva Moskowitz get away with her misleading statements about attrition?
NY State just updated their data website so I had a look. The anomalies are striking:
At Success Academy Williamsburg, you can compare the socioeconomic status of the students who were there at the beginning of 2nd grade in 2013-14 with the students who took the 3rd grade exam as 3rd graders the next year.
There were 47 economically disadvantaged children in 2nd grade comprising 75% of the grade. They added 4 at the beginning of 3rd grade, and LOST 7 over the year so only 44 low-income students were around to take the state tests. (By the way, that means that between October and May, nearly 14% of the low income 3rd graders disappeared!)
However, the school MORE than made up for those missing poor students by adding lots of middle class students. In 2nd grade, there were only 16 middle class students, but they DOUBLED that number at the beginning of 3rd grade — up to 32. Naturally, all the middle class students stuck around to take the exam. So while 14% of the economically disadvantaged 3rd graders in October were MIA by spring testing, the school managed to increase the number of middle class student by 100%. There is no way that is “average” attrition in NYC public schools – where poor kids disappear and middle class kids double in number from 2nd to 3rd grade. It shocks me that reporters accept this at face value and don’t even bother to see the huge red flags in the numbers of poor children who disappear.
I don’t expect the SUNY Charter Institute to care, since they have made it very clear that as many poor kids as necessary should be counseled out if it improves test scores (and apparently ALL charters should do this now in order to get SUNY’s approval). Attrition is GOOD and mediocre test scores are bad when it comes to SUNY.
But I do expect education reporters to do their homework and very few of them do.
We don’t need no education,,,,,,,,we don’t need no full control……the dog a hazard in the classroom……….teacher teacher leave those kids alone……eva sing along its encouraging and inspiring for all of us whether public or charter crap.
“Thought control” and “no dark sarcasm.”
Can you make the whole text available for those who aren’t registered with the WSJ??
I get that the crowd here does not like Dr. Moskowitz or her methods at Success Academy. What I do not see is any practical alternative being offered to those of us who have had to choose between a rigorous education for our children at SA and a local Gen Ed program that is wanting that would have our kids bored and phoning their work in. It is one thing to criticize, it is another to offer constructive alternatives. Trash this or other charter networks all you like, but you are just talking to each other and not helping concerned or even desperate parents in the process.
Eric, alternatives are offered quite often, by lots of different people. Don’t assume they aren’t by a quick glance at this page…
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
Hmm, there is clear data on student attrition at Success Academy – it’s about 10% a year, using the data, provided by the NYC DOE and covered by Beth Fertig of WNYC radio. How exactly is that data doubtful, Diane?
My source: DOE-provided attrition data for charters, discussed in this article by Beth Fertig of WNYC: http://www.wnyc.org/story/302728-top-ten-charters-with-high-attrition-rates/ . Raw DOE data used in the article is available here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1e48Jl7bNHk06-6AQb4pt3yiTwfQvI3a1e_Df1nRaveA/edit?pli=1#gid=0
What is your data source, Diane?