Mercedes Schneider dug into the records of Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy in Fort Greene (Brooklyn). This is the school where the principal prepared a “Got to Go” list of the students that would be pushed out one way or another.
The school was opened in 2013. Its first principal, Kate Cunningham, had a Teach for America background. She had earned her “master’s degree” at the fake Relay “graduate school of education,” where charter teachers teach other charter teachers and give each other degrees without any reference to scholarship. She ran Success Academy’s special education program, although her resume doesn’t mention any credentials for doing so.
She didn’t last long–not even a year.
She was succeeded by Candido Brown, who had been with SA since 2009. It was Brown who compiled the “Got to Go” list. As Schneider points out, SA in FG needed to be “turned around” less than two years after it opened. Brown has recently taken a leave of absence.
Her post includes the details of a lawsuit filed by parents of some of the children who were pushed out. Their complaint goes into detail about the strict disciplinary policies at Success Academy schools. They are suing the principal, Success Academy Charter Schools, the city Department of Education, and the New York State Education Department.
This should be interesting.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’d go a step further and request a DOJ investigation. Civil rights, due process. All those thing they SA seems to have jettisoned. Just a thought.
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Not necessarily a bad thought, but this is the same DOJ that doesn’t seem to think that cops shooting black people in cold blood is a civil rights issue. Can’t imagine that they’d think keeping them uppity little poor/minority kids in their place is a civil rights issue either.
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I hope the parents prevail. If charters use public funds, they should have to follow IDEA. You cannot “reform” disabilities out of students; their needs must be met and accommodated.
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Time for Tim to now tell us racist public school parents are, and how Eva Moskowitz will save poor children crushed by those evil public schools.
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Michael Fiorillo: what you are hearing now is—
The sound of silence. It echoes throughout many postings on this blog, e.g., most recently re the “got-to-go” list of Eva Moskowitz and Ohio public schools starving themselves by paying charters local (rather than state) money.
It’s been that way since the inception of this blog.
Thank you for your timely reminder.
😎
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That is a nice bit of shameless trolling, Michael.
I am still waiting to hear what your plan is for de-segregating traditional public schools — I know that like Bill de Blasio you care about it very deeply.
The law, society, and school districts have long accepted the notion that no individual school needs to be held responsible for accommodating the education of every single child. This is why New York City has District 75 schools. This is why the DOE pays a billion dollars every year to educate a small number of students with disabilities in a private setting. It’s why PS 321, PS 107, PS 29, PS 234, PS 290, PS 6, etc. have zero students who require a self-contained educational setting.
This lawsuit, which is being brought by an organization and attorneys with deep ties to the UFT and other labor unions (shopping for plaintiffs–it’s okay when the good guys do it), contends that the Success school in question and the DOE did not properly evaluate children, and that the Success school created an inhospitable environment for children with disabilities (while at the same time enrolling a substantial number of children requiring special education services, 16% last year). It does not propose to take away from charter schools the same flexibility that district schools enjoy in this regard.
Whatever the outcome, here’s hoping that it will lead to fewer barriers for families in finding the educational situation that fits their family best–whether at a school of choice, the school that the system assigns them on the basis of where they live, or an alternative district placement.
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In other words, what Tim is saying is that he hopes charter schools can be free to continue to make the choice to make a child they don’t want feel as much misery as required in order to get their parents to “choose” another school. It’s all about “choice”, but that includes the freedom of charters to make a child feel misery! Tim’s fine with that.
That’s why whenever we mention the fact that Success Academy suspends 20% of 5 and 6 year olds (not the white middle class ones, of course, but 20% of the low-income minority 5 year olds) Tim insists that those kids just deserve it.
Tim, when you tell me that 50% of the low-income minority kids are disappearing from PS 321, PS 107, and every other school you listed, then I will believe you actually care. Instead, you just seem desperate to change the subject from the fact that you favorite charter loses a huge number of low-income minority students — which is weird for a school you keep claiming parents are desperate to attend. And are desperate to leave.
Maybe if instead of awarding charters based on their “wait lists” (which are manufactured), we award them based on whether the parents who choose them actually remain — especially the parents of at risk students.
Tim, will you join me in supporting that? If a charter school loses 40% of their at-risk students by 5th grade, it is shut down.
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Eva has absolutely no answers for educators or education.
We know that you can screen and get astronomical results. We know you can be unethical, enforce zero tolerance policies, skim and purge and achieve the appearance of really impressive data. We already know that. Time for her ideology to go. We need a Got to Go list for the all of the blundering and plundering ideologues. Including John King, on this day that has absolutely nothing to do with him and his idiocy.
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One thing I don’t understand is why they would sue the NYC Department of Education. I thought the DOE has no power whatsoever to stop charter school expansions, nor does it have any oversight ability.
The entity they SHOULD be suing is the SUNY Charter Institute. Watching them do oversight is truly a disheartening sight. In fact, the SUNY Charter Institute was well-aware of the high attrition rate for at-risk children at Success Academy and their total “oversight” consisted of asking Eva Moskowitz why so many kids were leaving and accepting her response — that their parents preferred a failing and underfunded public school over their well-funded charter with the best results in the state — as gospel. No need for them to look any further. Since when is that oversight?
When Success Academy requested that they drop all priority for at-risk kids, SUNY didn’t actually ask why and wonder how that desire corresponded to SUNY’s mandate to have charter schools to SERVE at-risk kids. Nope. Instead, SUNY happily allowed them to drop all priority for at-risk kids, and agreed to allow them to open new charter schools in rich neighborhoods instead of poor ones.
Despite report after report about how small the upper grades had shrunk, SUNY chose NOT to look closely at why so many at-risk children left. If anyone deserves to be sued, it is the people who run the SUNY Charter Institute. I prefer that the DOE not pay the cost of the SUNY Charter Institute’s shameful lack of oversight. Why should this be another cost that public school children will once again be charged for, so Tim can post on here how my child’s public school receives $20,000 per pupil when so much of that money is spent to pay for the charter school free riders.
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Sue Governor Cuomo, directly.
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I’ve always wondered how the TFA fakes get away with their Broad Supes dupes training and Relay masters degrees. When a true, real, certified, licensed and fully trained, via real colleges, real courses, with real diplomas and credentials, teacher becomes an administrator, they have to be vetted to be so appointed…have to have the credits, the education, the certifications – not so for the TFA wunderkinds. How in the world has Broad Adacemy, a school of nothing…….and Relay, a weekend fake master’s degree mill for the TFA, get away with it? How are these posers appointed to positions as Superintendents and Principals and Vice Principals, etc., and high/well-paid administrators, without any qualifications whatsoever? Why are the doors opened for them, when real, true educators have to meet specific/strict specifications, and jump through hoops? I don’t get it. Where is the pushback?
If Eva wanted to open a school, she should have opened a PRIVATE school. Period. How does she get away with it? These charters – remember the on Ms. Tisch granted to the 22 year old kid (?) – how are they getting away with it? Are the reformers so desperate to do away with public schools that they don’t even care who/what they approve? How has Kevin Johnson managed to say in the education game, with his pedophile tendencies? How has Michele Rhee not crawled under a rock and simply disappeared?
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How do they get away with it? It’s amazing what one can get away with when you are offered a lucrative role as a subsidiary of the politically connected super rich. And our unions and public schools happen to be the target of a cohort of the super rich. Money and status is the mechanism.
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It has been my experience that some charters treat severe behavioral issues as not the charters responsibility. Kick the student out and avoid getting to the cause of the problem. Either they cannot tell that an intervention might be necessary or they reject the expense and fly in the ointment of their preconceived idea of children. The charter at which I have experience accepted one such child, formerly of KIPP. We then evaluated the child and provided an alternative school for students with similar disabilities.
Generally, these students would enroll in the district home school and cause that schools scores to suffer. The district might eventually evaluate and enroll the student in the LRE.
The charter required the parent to allow an evaluation as leverage when enrolling the child. Something the public home school cannot do.
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