Success Academy’s public relations firm (Mercury LLC) must be working overtime to try to outrun the stories about the charter chain’s tactics. While critics have alleged for years that the chain produces high scores by a combination of suspensions, attrition, and high-pressure test-prep, the mainstream media–led by the New York Times– is now all over the story.
George Joseph writes in the Guardian (U.K.) about Eva Moskowitz’s “got to go” list–the kids who need to be suspended and pushed out to protect the brand and the other allegations swirling around the high-test-score boasting charter chain.
Joseph writes:
A Guardian analysis has found that the school system loses children between the third and fourth grade, the first two years of New York state testing, at a rate four times that of neighboring public schools. Success lost more than 10% of its enrolled student population from grade to grade, compared to the average rate of 2.7% at public schools in the same building or nearby during the same years.
The analysis compared Success and traditional public school populations in high poverty neighborhoods and therefore excluded data from one Success Academy site on the Upper West Side where only about 25% of students were classified as “economically disadvantaged”. This school’s relatively well-to-do student population features the only example of a Success Academy class that grew in size from second to fourth grade.
According to Jeff Jacobs, a researcher at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, chance alone cannot adequately account for these enrollment drop differences. “Within testing years, the enrollment drop rate observed at Success Academy is greater than the enrollment drop rates at next door public schools 70% of the time. Furthermore, in 61% of these cases, this difference is so large that we can reject the hypothesis that it occurred due to random variation in attrition rates, at the 5% significance level.”
Eva believes that the media is piling on, but she has made herself and her charters a media sensation. Once you set yourself up as the sine qua non of “excellence,” a model of the perfection that can be attained by everyone, you also set yourself up as a target for skeptics. The biggest problem for SA is not its critics, who could be easily ignored, but the former teachers and parents and administrators who spill the beans.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Quite possibly the attrition rates in some Massachusetts charter schools include only those students
who finish a school year in June and do not return in September. Rates recorded by the Department
of Elementary and Secondary Education are merely self-reported and rarely, if ever, checked for
integrity; and, thus one can testify before the Board of Education that there is little evidence of
attrition.
*** MORE SUCCESS ACADEMY ABUSE VIDEOS TO COME ***
———————–
“If we want to truly reform education in the United States, we must fundamentally reform how we train America’s teachers. Innovative approaches like those employed by small organizations such as Success Academy to create better teacher training programs should be viewed as a model for achieving this important goal.”
— EVA MOSKOWITZ, writing for THE 74
at:
https://www.the74million.org/article/eva-moskowitz-student-performance-is-a-mirror
————–
“Innovative approaches”? Oh, you mean like THIS?
This news coverage BELOW is good because the reporter
says he talked, off-camera, to the teacher’s aide who shot
the the video. She told him that the reason she recorded
the teacher’s behavior was that what was recorded was not,
as Eva and the supportive parents claim, just “an anomaly.”
And she has more proof to back up that claim.
( 01:18 – 1:30)
( 01:18 – 1:30)
REPORTER: “The video was recorded be an assistant
teacher who told Pix 11 News that she was tired of seeing
it was because she was tired of seeing this kind of
behavior by Ms. Dial every time there was a ‘Numbers
Stories’ exercise.”
Now, here’s the mind-blowing kicker at the end of this
news report. The teachers’ aide says she’s got more
videos showing abusive behavior at Success Academy:
( 03:57 – 4:21)
( 03:57 – 4:21)
REPORTER: “The (assistant) teacher who recorded
that video surre – tiously… sur-REP-titiously has told Pix 11
that that (video) is not the ONLY video. She has
OTHER videos that show that this was typical behavior
in that classroom, again, with the teacher that has
been touted as being ‘exemplary’ for other
Success Academy teachers.”
The gift* (German for poison) that keeps on gifting (grift also works)
“Chartering a Course to $ucce$$”
The lesson of the charter
The key to their $ucce$$
Is focus on the “smarter”
Eliminate the rest
“Branded for Success”
Eva’s brand
Is “Tests R Us”
“Worst” are canned
And “best” are bussed
“Successful Turnarounds”
Eva’s found,
Without a doubt,
That “turn-around”
Means “turn ’em out”
“Success Academy ‘Got to Go’ List”
The author of the “got to go”
Has simply got to go
It’s not that we don’t like him, though
But that the public know
Brilliant poem. But truly sad that somehow the charter movement has morphed from something that was supposed to help all those at-risk kids “trapped” in failing public schools into something that is ONLY supposed to help the strivers and allow them to be in schools with as many upper middle class students an expensive marketing campaign can attract.
That’s why the pro-charter folks are suffering from amnesia and pretending that educating the strivers (which means any poor student who can work at average or above average level) is a worthy goal. The only problem seems to be that the charter schools can’t find enough acceptable “striver” students among the kids in failing public schools. That’s why Success Academy has empty seats when they supposedly have thousand of kids on the wait lists. Better an empty seat than have one of those unwanted kids in their school.
We all saw on the video exactly how they treat the children on their “got to go” list. Their model teacher was trained at Success Academy in exactly those tactics. “How to turn a struggling child into a violent one in 10 easy steps: 1. Humiliate them and tell them they are ruining it for the other children in the class and make sure the other students are aware the this child is a problem child. 2. Punish a child by sending them to a “calm down” chair even though the child is perfectly calm, in the hopes that being humiliated might cause her to act out and justify one of those suspensions that Success Academy loves to give out to 6 year olds they deem “violent”. 3. Post the test scores prominently so that struggling students are made the object of ridicule and shame. 4. Repeat step 1 and 2 as many times as necessary until the child acts out so you can suspend them once again. 5. If parent still doesn’t get the message that his child has “got to go”, force the child to repeat 1st or 2nd grade as many times as necessary until his parents realize that the child will never reach 3rd grade if he remains in the school. 6. Repeat as much as necessary with as many kids as necessary. 7. Fawn over the rich and high achieving kids and tell their parents they are so gifted they should skip grades in the hopes that will make the parent ignore the trauma that the unwanted kids are subject to.
Really, it is sad that the charter school movement has embraced this. Why are so few people in that movement willing to say “No, this is not what we are about.” Is it because that is what they are about?
BREAKING: the teacher at Harlem’s PS 194 who was removed from the classroom after surveillance video showed him lifting and throwing a seven-year-old boy across a hallway was arrested late last night on charges of assault and acting in a manner injurious to a child under 16.
http://nypost.com/2016/02/23/teacher-arrested-for-throwing-second-grader-across-a-hallway/
The school has been “gaslighting” and misleading families: the parents of the assaulted child were not informed by the school until a full month after the incident happened, and only after the discovery that the incident had been taped.
The teacher involved has been reassigned but is still employed by the Department of Education.
Between this incident, involving both a teacher and a school with a history of abuse and failing to protect children, and the shocking story from last week at PS 207 in the Bronx, it is clear that there is a lot of reporting to be done on conditions at poor hypersegregated NYC DOE schools. If only there were a massive, abundantly-resourced media outlet in town able to do a deep dive on what are clearly systemic and widespread failures by the NYC DOE to keep children safe . . .
Does the principal of that public school travel the country and testify before Congress on how the schools “system” should be adopted by every public school?
Because Eva Moskowitz does.
Proclaiming that she has come up with The System to educate low and middle income students comes with a lot of celebrity and national recognition and influence but it has a downside.
Maybe she should concentrate on running that school system she created and appointed herself superintendent of, instead of spending so much time lobbying for her system to be “scaled” in front of adoring crowds of powerful lemmings.
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/city-hall/2014/07/8549878/moskowitz-success-academy-could-be-national-model
“Does the principal of that public school travel the country and testify before Congress on how the schools “system” should be adopted by every public school?”
It’s already been adopted.
Was the teacher trained in tactics in how to humiliate children by throwing them across the room by the school’s model teacher? Was this teacher training other teachers in his “methods”?
Tim, what makes you unique is that you EXCUSE it when a charter school teacher abuses a child. So does Success Academy. What I see is the DOE doing due process to fire this person. What I see Success Academy doing is promoting the people who are best at making the struggling children feel miserable enough to leave. Remember the first Fort Green SA principal wasn’t good enough at getting those kids out of there, so they had to bring in Candido Brown who had trained under the Success Academy principal famous for not sending renewal forms home with the kids on her own private “got to go” list. It’s SYSTEMATIC. It is not a bug, it is a feature.
In DOE schools these teachers are not “model” teachers who are doing what is necessary to get promotions in the system. But at Success Academy the people doing this are the ones getting ahead and promoted. They are the STARS!
Until you realize that, you can cite all kinds of incidents but it doesn’t address the pertinent point. Is that type of behavior by teachers rewarded or punished? At Success Academy, making the unwanted kids feel “misery” is a documented praiseworthy activity. And until people like you stop enabling it for some weird and strange reason, I don’t know why you keep saying it is all okay because some bad public school teacher somewhere gets arrested.
Maybe you can can explain to the many children who are no longer at Success Academy schools because they were victimized by Success Academy’s got to go lists why their victimizing is okay. Be sure to tell those unwanted children that there is a bad public school teacher out there — maybe even in the school that Success Academy told them would be a better “fit”! — and that’s why Success Academy’s model teachers and principals have to humiliate and punish them that way. It’s all for the good for the “better” kids and those “got to go” kids just don’t deserve to be in the same room with them. You tell ’em, Tim, that they are undeserving violent 5 year olds who have no business in a school that Eva Moskowitz calls her own. And be sure to tell those young children that you think it’s perfectly fine to treat them that way because some teacher at some public school was arrested.
http://gothamist.com/2013/12/04/ps_194_teacher_incident.php
Master manipulation, perfected by Rush Limbaugh, involves taking an isolated incident and casting it as representative of the whole.
The distinction between an anomalous situation, at a N.Y.C. public school and, the charter school branding of “no excuses” discipline, touted for emulation, should be evident.
But, thanks, Chiara, for setting the record straight.
Notice that the link is to an article about a school where the very pro-charter Mayor Bloomberg appointed a principal who allowed this teacher to go unchecked. Tim must think Mayor Bloomberg was purposely looking the other way and appointing principals that looked the other way. Why would Mayor Bloomberg’s DOE not investigate when a teacher was so abusive?
It’s too bad that Mayor Bloomberg’s DOE was so busy spending time handing over valuable resources, money and staff time to the charter schools favored by his hedge fund friends that he allowed this kind of abuse in a public school to go unchecked. Good thing that Mayor de Blasio’s DOE removed this teacher when pro-charter Mayor Bloomberg allowed him to remain.
I guess Tim blames Mayor Bloomberg for all the problems at that school.
Look out, everyone: the TimBot algorithm goes into hyperdrive to distract people from the fact that Carmen Farina, unlike Eva Moskowitz, did not call a press conference to defend this teacher, and that the DOE is trying to fire him, unlike SA’s Charlotte Dial, who was defended by Moskowitz and received a promotion.
And, apparently, in TimWorld, only public schools are segregated, while Moskowitz and other charter school operators would never, ever, engage in such practices.
Michael,
Tim never misses his chance to distract attention or change the subject when the discussion centers on Success charters.
What off-the-charts unintentional comedy.
“Trying to fire him,” as if the obstacles to removing a teacher were created by an act of God!
It sure would have been nice if the DOE had tried to fire him after the first time he abused kids (that we know of) in 2004. Or again in 2006. Or especially in 2013, when no one in their right mind could look at this teacher’s history and conclude that he was fit to remain around children: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/abusive-harlem-teacher-history-violence-article-1.1536841
Instead, due process worked! And it’s working right now: the DOE *still* can’t fire this person, even when there is videotaped evidence of him attacking a child (which should be released to the public immediately), without going through the 3020-a process. The DOE has decided to send him to whatever the rubber room is called now and await the outcome of the criminal proceeding . If he is found innocent of the criminal charges, there is an excellent chance that he’ll be back in a classroom–but don’t worry, it’ll be at a PS 194-type school, not PS 321 or the Brooklyn New School.
At Success, throwing a kid across the hallway would not be considered a “$ucce$$”
$ucce$$ is throwing them out of the building entirely.
NYC public school parent: you nailed it—
“Tim, what makes you unique is that you EXCUSE it when a charter school teacher abuses a child. So does Success Academy. What I see is the DOE doing due process to fire this person. ”
But credit where credit is due. He is merely trying to give voice to, however ineptly, his unbounded admiration for those in favor of a “better education for all.”
¿😳?
“Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.” [François de La Rochefoucauld]
You don’t always need a very dead and very old and very Greek guy when a French one will do.
😎
I was asking around for the the PR firm that represented my school. I was told we had to buy paper instead.
Public schools in Ohio advertise now.
Unlike charter schools, they can’t use public funds to do it- they have to raise the money from donors.
So glad we’re all contributing to the financial health of Ohio’s radio and tv stations, and employing more marketing people. Ed reform really is a job creator.
Is this a particular aspect of reform that can be brought to legislation and changed: No more tax funding to be used for school advertising (not for charters, nor vouchers, nor choice, etc.)? It feels important; I’ve experienced so much advertising in our district and it’s always pro-charter. (Even our state’s public radio is sponsored by the charter movement!)
Sorry Tim, but the plural of “ancedote” is not “data”, and no one here denies that violent episodes do not occur in NYC DOE schools. However, by your logic re violent episodes, I think you and everyone else should much more alarmed about the rate at which violent episodes apparently occur at Sucksess schools, since that’s the rationale Eva herself uses to explain the high suspension rate. Why then aren’t you calling for an investigation of violence at Sucksess schools?
I think you misspelled the name, it’s $uckass Academy schools.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
America’s 4th estate, once more humiliated by Guardian reporting. from England.
You got that right.
The Guardian reminds us on a regular basis what good reporting looks like.
The small minority who get news from media outside the US, anyway.
It would be easy to forget if all one ever did was read the NY Times, Washington Post, watch Fox, CNN, CBS, MSNBC and/or listen to NPR.
Is this reporter, George Joseph, the same one, who scooped New York media, by publishing an article in “In These Times”, titled, “Students Urge Columbia Teachers College President to Cut Ties with Pearson”? It appears that crackerjack reporters are blocked from space in MSM.
And she id one of the people being considered for the chief of OFSTED in the UK !!!!!
I’ve been perusing some of the reaction to the Success
Academy child abuse video. I’m going to post some of that
now.
Months ago, John Merrow spun the possibility that Eva Moskowitz
could act as the ed world’s possible equivalent of Nixon — in his
going to China, that is. In a similar fashion, she could be the one to
reach out to the other side and heal the rifts in the educational
community.
Well, Education Week’s Dave Powell uses that now dashed
hope — including Merrow’s awakening to the truth about
Eva — as the starting off point from his article on takeaways
from the recent Success Academy scandals… in particular
Powell’s own conclusions about the significance of the infamous
“rip and redo” video.
Powell ends the article concluding that Eva sure is
like “Nixon” alright, but not the “going to China”
Nixon.
Education’s Nixon: The Success Academy Debacle
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/K-12_Contrarian/2016/02/educations_richard_nixon.html?r=1553451093&preview=1
Education’s Nixon: The Success Academy Debacle
A lot has been said about the video that surfaced recently of the charter school teacher belittling her student for not doing what was on her paper. That teacher’s …
———————————————————–
“Actually, now that I think of it, maybe Merrow was right. Threats, intimidation, arrogance—maybe Moskowitz is the new Nixon after all.”
— Dave Powell, EDUCATION WEEK
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Education’s Nixon: The Success Academy Debacle
By Dave Powell
on
February 19, 2016 6:19 PM
In a post he titled “Who Will Be Public Education’s Nixon?,” the esteemed and estimable John Merrow played around with an interesting idea: what if someone took public education by storm and renounced a previously deep-seated affinity for standardized testing, like Richard Nixon did when he normalized diplomatic relations with China in the 1970s?
As Merrow points out, Nixon, well known for his paranoia and for using his office to intimidate his political opponents, bucked conventional wisdom and took the risk of looking “soft on communism” when he visited China in 1972, but did it as one of the most well known anti-communist politicians in America. (That he could have been lionized for this while he was also, at approximately the same time, plotting to steal a presidential election to maintain his hold on power is delicious irony, but we’ll just put that right there and let it sit for awhile.)
Merrow’s analogy depends on the idea that someone who really, truly believes in the power of standardized testing will suddenly see the error of his or her ways and understand that the arts and humanities matter too, and that everything can’t be tested. This person will then lead us to a new promised land where tests are used appropriately to measure real student learning. Merrow even says he once thought he knew who this person would be: it was Eva Moskowitz, the founder and “CEO” of Success Academies, a network of 34 charter schools serving some 11,000 students in New York City. But then he, himself, saw the light.
Very much to his credit (this is an example of the kind of thing that makes Merrow so estimable), Merrow realized that Moskowitz would not be the “Nixon of Public Education” after he conducted his own investigation of the way Moskowitz’s schools are run. He found, as many of us now know, that Success Academy Charter Schools have been the site of a couple of wince-inducing “scandals” recently. In one, a principal was found to have created a “Got to Go” list of students he wanted to get off his school’s rolls and exile to the island of misfit toys. The other one came to light recently when the New York Times shared a video showing a teacher reacting with disappointment when a student failed to give the answer she wanted to hear. Go ahead; watch the video yourself if you haven’t already.
“There’s nothing that infuriates me more than when you don’t do what’s on your paper,” the teacher, Charlotte Dial, exclaims after banishing the student to something called the Calm Down Chair. In addition to being a ridiculous example of hyperbole—many, many things infuriated me more as a classroom teacher than students not doing what was on their paper—Dial’s response, which has been widely excoriated, is embarrassingly incongruous. The Calm Down Chair? The student looks awfully calm to me. It’s the teacher in this video who looks petulant, impatient, and immature. Frankly she comes off like a bully, not a teacher. Maybe Ms. Dial should spend some time in the Calm Down Chair.
But we all lose our cool, and we all hope the camera isn’t rolling when we do. That’s understandable. What’s damning about the video, to me, is not just that the teacher behaved the way she did but that her bosses seem to have created a culture that supports and even encourages teachers to respond the way she did.
What we see in the video is a strategy that is, apparently, employed widely in the Success Academy schools—it’s called “rip and redo.” If you read the Times story, though, you see several excuses being made for the teacher’s behavior and blatant attempts to present the video as an anomaly. This video is several months old, we’re told, as if somehow that diminishes what happened in it. The behavior of the teacher is an abnormality, totally atypical.
“This video proves utterly nothing but that a teacher in one of our 700 classrooms, on a day more than a year ago, got frustrated and spoke harshly to her students,” Moskowitz says as dismissively as possible. And what’s wrong with a little crying? “Olympic athletes, when they don’t do well, they sometimes cry,” she told an audience in January. “It’s not the end of the world.” She might as well have had Donald Trump call a press conference to denounce the politically correct crowd for insisting that children not be belittled and demeaned at school for failure to answer a question correctly. Cry babies.
But school is not Olympic competition—or at least it wasn’t until a new generation of “no excuses” reformers came along to liberate us all from our soft, child-centered approaches to educating young people. These tactics may work for some students but it’s worth asking if the people who defend them would subject themselves, or their own children, to the same “educational” approach if given the option. (I think we all know the answer typically is no.)
There’s an underlying assumption here that high test scores justify anything that has to be done to get them, but that’s the same kind of thinking that leads police investigators and district attorneys to conflate earning a conviction with finding the truth. It’s also the same kind of thinking that led to a thousand cheating scandals. Beverly Hall didn’t tell anyone to cheat, right? She just reserved a few seats at the tippy top of the Georgia Dome for the terrible teachers who failed to get their kids’ test scores up.
In this sense, Merrow could not have been more wrong about Moskowitz when he was pining for her to be the “Nixon of Public Education.” He should have understood that her “no excuses” philosophy depends entirely on standardized tests for validation. The tests provide the only frame of reference for “no excuses” reformers who would rather oversimplify the act of teaching in pursuit of a single-minded goal than actually address the enormously complex political, social, and cultural challenges of teaching.
If they acknowledged this complexity they’d have to admit that the system they oppose isn’t as corrupt as they want to believe it is—they’d have to concede that just maybe there are good people working in our schools who want what’s best for kids too but realize that it’s not as easy to accomplish that as they’d like it to be. And so they struggle. That’s not an excuse, it’s an explanation.
Expect more of this, America. As long as we keep trying to make heroes out of people who repackage intimidation and arrogance as innovation we’ll continue to read stories like these.
Reformers like Eva Moskowitz fancy themselves as truth-telling crusaders for kids, in much the same way Michelle Rhee used to. They see themselves standing up to entrenched bureaucracies and ineffectual parents and teachers who want to coddle kids instead of helping them (forcing them?) to meet their potential. They may have a point, but having a point doesn’t justify creating a culture that, as one former Success Academy teacher put it, sends the message that “If you’ve made them cry you’ve succeeded in getting your point across.”
Actually, now that I think of it, maybe Merrow was right. Threats, intimidation, arrogance—maybe Moskowitz is the new Nixon after all.
Here’s my favorite of the pieces responding to
the video:
Teacher and historian John Thompson puts the video and
the realities of Success Academy in a historical perspective,
but doesn’t mince words, referring to the Charlotte Dial
abuse video as “brutal,” and as “that disgusting video”:
http://www.alternet.org/education/worst-thing-about-brutal-no-excuses-success-academy-video
——————————
——————————
“How could we see the existence of ‘No Excuses’ schools in the 21st century as anything but a tragedy?
“Have we lowered our horizons to the point where we replace engaging teaching and learning with indoctrination? If so, how can we hope to flourish in the 21st century?”
— John Thompson, award-winning historian
and inner city teacher
——————————
The Worst Thing About that Brutal ‘No Excuses’ Success Academy Video
The video forces us to confront basic questions about
the society we want to leave for future generations.
By John Thompson / Huffington Post
February 19, 2016
– – – – – –
As Vox’s Libby Nelson writes, the “undeniably upsetting” video of a Success Academy charter school teacher berating first graders is “the latest exhibit in a long-running debate about Success Academy and similar ‘no excuses’ charter schools.” Nelson is correct in explaining that “it’s part of a broader division within the Democratic Party on education.”
The video, however, is about much, much more. It raises basic questions about the society we want to leave for the next generations. I hope every parent with children old enough to watch the video will use it as an opportunity to discuss some of the most fundamental issues that we human beings must tackle.
My father and I had such a conversation in the 1950s after the Boston Red Sox star, Jimmy Piersall, had a televised breakdown in Yankee Stadium in the wake of his father’s death. As was explained in the book and the movie, Fear Strikes Out, Piersall was pushed over the edge by his father (played by Karl Malden in the film) who combined “the ignorant dominance of a bitter man with the occasional tenderness of a parent who genuinely loves his only son.” The baseball star (played by Anthony Perkins) carried “the weight of the paternal ambition” that “is felt by the nerve-racked observer to the point where it is recognizable that the young man must go mad.”
As my dad explained, many of my friends had parents who endured great suffering. Fathers who survived the Great Depression, and combat in World War II and Korea carried a heavy load, and sometimes dumped that stress on kids. Too often, they sought to “live through their children.”
Sadly, parents may put too much pressure on their kids, forcing them to grow up too quickly. But, with the post-war economic boom, many adults shielded my generation from such worries until we were old enough to tackle adult challenges. The “Baby Boomers” were more likely to be granted the buffer zones that children deserve, as well as opportunities and freedom beyond that which was enjoyed by our predecessors. My generation, we were told, should not be limited by the past. The fears of our fathers should not define our lives. We should express ourselves, create, explore, and take full advantage of our unprecedented opportunities.
Like so many other members of our fortunate generation, when I got old enough to understand, I was encouraged to be “inner directed,” to maintain an “internal locus of control,” as opposed to an “outer directed” person who just followed orders. Our job was to “learn how to learn,” and to practice “creative insubordination.” My friends who were more competitive were free commit to meeting objective metrics (like higher batting averages or yardage gained on the football field), to push themselves to the limit and/or outperform others. We who preferred to “go with the flow” were empowered to do that also. Moreover, we almost always had multiple “second chances,” so we could learn from our mistakes.
After Sputnik, some worried adults condemned Baby Boomers as soft, and sought to impose more discipline, even using standardized testing to raise the bar for elementary students. I distinctly remember my feelings of anxiety when bubble-in accountability was briefly imposed on us. On the whole, however, the rising economic tide raised all boats and my generation was amazingly fortunate.
As the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, the message is that we must start early and toughen ourselves up for the global economic battleground. Vox’s Nelson notes that Success Academy teachers work in “a competitive environment with high expectations, and they work 10- to 12-hour days, which can contribute to burnout and frustration.”
I would add that non-unionized charter teachers aren’t they only workers who are overburdened. As corporate power grows and unions decline, more of the 99% have to struggle harder to merely keep their heads above the water. More and more fear is striking out towards all employees.
I can understand the anxiety which has come from the shrinking middle class, the decline of wages, the increase in inequality and a world where a single youthful error can doom a teenager.
But, it is wrong for Americans to succumb to our fears, as is often done in the face of economic stagnation.
And, this I can’t comprehend:
How could we see the existence of “No Excuses” schools in the 21st century as anything but a tragedy?
I have no doubt that some students, who have the personality for structured and/or competitive behavior, will become more productive due to such a pedagogy. Even a brutal “No Excuses” classroom can be better than the chaos and violence which often characterizes the highest-challenge schools.
But, what parent would want their own children to attend such schools? Would any parent or student — who had a real choice in terms of learning environments — settle for a Success Academy school? Above all, why would any person even think about imposing that regimen on other peoples’ children, as they do when they engage in the mass charterization of urban schools?
The first question raised by that disgusting video should be why in a democracy would the “No Excuses” ideology be imposed on children? Why commit so fully to grinding children into square and round pegs for square and round holes? Do we really have no alternative to a behaviorist system where students’ eyes must always track the speaker, as kids sit with their hands folded and where deviation from the script results in zero-tolerance discipline?
Second, is it not shameful that corporate reformers believe that they can impose a training regime on poor children of color that they would never dump on their own children? Do they really believe that America is completely incapable of devising humane and respectful methods for educating poor children?
That raises the third and, perhaps, most important question. Have we lowered our horizons to the point where we replace engaging teaching and learning with indoctrination? If so, how can we hope to flourish in the 21st century?
And that brings me back to Libby Nelson’s questions. As an Obama supporter, I’m terribly saddened that he and too many other Democrats have deferred to the elites who treat other peoples’ children in such a way. It seems like we Democrats have been so afraid of our shadows that we haven’t been embarrassed by our sacrificing of our principles.
The biggest questions, however, transcend electoral politics, education policy, and even our willingness to accept “Neo-Plessyism” in order to increase education “outputs.” The issue is what vision, what dream, or what lack of a dream do we want for our children and grandchildren?
– – – – – –
John Thompson is an award-winning historian and inner-city teacher.
There was another article in the NYT today where they interviewed the little girl’s mother.
Mother of Girl Berated in Video Assails Success Academy’s Response
http://nyti.ms/1LeVxUL
“If we want to truly reform education in the United States, we must fundamentally reform how we train America’s teachers. Innovative approaches like those employed by small organizations such as Success Academy to create better teacher training programs should be viewed as a model for achieving this important goal.”
— EVA MOSKOWITZ, writing for THE 74
at:
https://www.the74million.org/article/eva-moskowitz-student-performance-is-a-mirror
————–
“Innovative approaches”? Oh, you mean like THIS?
This news coverage BELOW is good because the reporter
says he talked, off-camera, to the teacher’s aide who shot
the the video. She told him that the reason she recorded
the teacher’s behavior was that what was recorded was not,
as Eva and the supportive parents claim, just “an anomaly.”
And she has more proof to back up that claim.
( 01:18 – 1:30)
( 01:18 – 1:30)
REPORTER: “The video was recorded be an assistant
teacher who told Pix 11 News that she was tired of seeing
it was because she was tired of seeing this kind of
behavior by Ms. Dial every time there was a ‘Numbers
Stories’ exercise.”
Now, here’s the mind-blowing kicker at the end of this
news report. The teachers’ aide says she’s got more
videos showing abusive behavior at Success Academy:
( 03:57 – 4:21)
( 03:57 – 4:21)
REPORTER: “The (assistant) teacher who recorded
that video surre – tiously… sur-REP-titiously has told Pix 11
that that (video) is not the ONLY video. She has
OTHER videos that show taht this was typical behavior
in that classroom, again, with the teacher that has
been touted as being ‘exemplary’ for other
Success Academy teachers.”
And of course, Eva Moskowitz had to chime in with her take on the nationwide teacher shortage, and her solution.
First, she dismisses talk about the teacher shortage as a lot of “hand-wringing.”
Second, she says the real issue is that United States teachers—and university-based teacher training—overwhelmingly suck because of teachers unions, and also because so many people use poverty and family distress as “excuses”.
Third, she proposes herself and her charter schools’ training system as the solution.
https://www.the74million.org/article/eva-moskowitz-student-performance-is-a-mirror
Eva dismisses the distress expressed by districts who started
the year short hundreds of teachers (or like Las Vegas,
over 1,000) just a lot of “hand-wringing”. Tell that
to the parents upset that their kids, as a result, are being
taught in giant classes, or being taught by untrained office
temps who have never taught a day in their lives.
Instead, she says we should focus on the vast majority
of current lousy teachers, and the institutions who trained
them, or failed to train them to be effective in the classroom.
——————————————
EVA MOSKOWITZ:
“It’s easy to blame the kids – poverty, single-parent families, etc. – but school isn’t really about the children, it’s about the adults, and the adults in our classrooms aren’t getting the job done. No wonder there’s a backlash against the Common Core and standardized tests: They tell the ugly truth about the quality of our schools, and the teachers and unions don’t want to hear it.”
——————————————
So says the woman who has never taught a day in her life.
So who’s got the solution?
Why Eva does, of course.
——————————————
EVA MOSKOWITZ:
“If we want to truly reform education in the United States, we must fundamentally reform how we train America’s teachers. Innovative approaches like those employed by small organizations such as Success Academy to create better teacher training programs should be viewed as a model for achieving this important goal.
‘We all know that strong teachers make a tremendous difference – maybe the greatest difference – in educational outcomes for children. As a country, we need to abandon the old, failed methods and instead foster programs that are improving teacher preparation and producing dramatic gains for children.”
——————————————
Hmmm…. Eva always says that parents will “vote with their feet” and leave lousy public schools for her charters.
Well you know who else can “vote with their feet”? Teachers at Eva’s schools. The website GlassDoor included comments from dozens former teachers who fled her schools:
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2014/08/citizen-jacks-compendium-of-teacher.html
When it happens at Eva’s schools, she lashes out at those fleeing teachers, “This is not a gig! By leaving, you’re behaving unethically!”
http://www.wnyc.org/story/302768-high-teacher-turnover-at-a-success-network-school/
————————————————————-
“High Teacher Turnover at a Success Network School
“Oct 19, 2011 · by Anna Phillips
“More than a third of the staff members at a Harlem charter school run by the Success Charter Network have left the school within the last several months, challenging an organization that prides itself on the training and support it offers its teachers.
“The unusually high turnover at Harlem Success Academy 3 and the network-wide issue of teachers quitting mid-year led the founder and chief executive of the Success Charter Network, Eva S. Moskowitz, to express concern in an October newsletter.
“This is not a ‘gig’ ” she wrote, informing staff members that by breaking their commitment to the schools and families midyear, they were acting unethically.
“At Harlem Success Academy 3, 22 of the school’s 59 administrators, teachers and classroom aides left between the end of the last school year and the beginning of this one, according to the school’s records. Some took jobs at other schools, some moved to new cities and some said they quit out of frustration with the school’s tightly regulated environment.”
————————————-
Eva accusing others of “behaving unethically.” The definition of irony.
Reporter George Joseph could be the first to report, that one of the economists, Laura D’Andrea Tyson, who signed the publicized letter, criticizing Bernie’s economic plan, is a member of the Board of Directors of Morgan Stanley and ATT. Tyson chairs the ATT, Committee on….Corporate Reputation. She’s affiliated with the Haas Business School at the Univ. of Calf.