John Merrow decided to calculate which school leader was making the most money based on the number of students enrolled.
Carmen Farina pulls down about $.20 per child, $.40 if you include her pension.
“New York’s most prominent charter school operator is, of course, Eva Moskowitz, the founder and CEO of Success Academies. She has received a significant pay raise and now makes $567,000 a year, as Ben Chapman reported in the New York Daily News. Success Academies enrolls 11,000 students, the same number as in Chicago’s Noble Network.
“Let’s do the math. 567,000 divided by 11,000 equals 51.35, meaning that Ms. Moskowitz is earning $51.35 per student, nearly two-and-one-half times what Mr. Milkie is paid per student.
“If Carmen Fariña were running Success Academies instead of the nation’s largest school district, at her current pay rate of 40 cents per student she’d be earning $4400 a year!
“Put another way, Eva Moskowitz is being paid about 128 times more per student than Chancellor Fariña.”
But guess what? Eva is not the highest paid charter leader.
Who could it be?
“Like Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academies, this network loses a lot of students, but, unlike Success Academies, the remaining students here perform poorly. Here’s the percentage of students in one school who scored ‘proficient’ in English Language Arts, by grade: 5th-8%; 6th-12%; 7th-11%; and 8th-28%. In another school, 4%, 20%, 17% and 30% .
“In Math: 5th-6%; 6th-36%; 7th-52%; and 8th-48%. In another school, 27%, 37%, 39% and 34%. (And as the NAEP scores below suggest, those high-ish math scores may be illusory.)
“Scores on the NAEP, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, were unimpressive. In 4th grade, 36% scored ‘proficient’ in Reading and 35% in Math. In 8th grade, 33% scored ‘proficient’ in Reading and 31% in Math. In another of her schools the respective numbers are 36%, 35% 33% and 31%.
“This same charter network has famously high turnover rates among teachers too. In the most recent report, 38% of teachers departed, meaning that 4 out of every 10 teachers left. In another school, 31% left. One thing that students in high-poverty schools need is continuity, which they apparently do not get in this network.
“Oh, by the way, the CEO who makes all that money also has her own car and driver, according to Ben Chapman of the Daily News.
“I am referring to Dr. Deborah Kenny, the founder of Harlem Village Academies, a network of just five schools and 1400 students. Somehow, I suspect she’s happy to have Eva Moskowitz taking all the flack in the media about harsh discipline and high turnover rates, because that means her network’s performance is not being scrutinized. It clearly should be.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé.
Okay, so that’s what the charter bosses are making?
What about the workers / teachers?
Here’s a great essay from a former charter school teacher that touches upon that and other issues:
http://www.brendanhalpin.com/girlinacage/2016/02/so-you-want-to-work-in-a-charter-school.html
“Having worked in an urban charter school, I thought I’d give you a taste of what your experience will be like. This is a composite portrait based on my experience and that of others.
” … ”
“Well, you’re going to be working VERY long hours AND a longer school year than those public school hacks, AND you’ll make less money. All of which will prove your virtue. You do this work not for the perks, like those union dinosaurs, but because you want to save children’s lives.”
——-
If you’re a charter teacher, getting lousy pay proves your virtue.
If you’re a charter boss, getting great pay is to reward your virtue.
Got that?
When questioned about Eva’s salary, Campbell Brown indignantly responded, “She’s worth every penny.”
Meanwhile, here’s what the Success Academy workers earn:
https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Success-Academy-Charter-Schools-Salaries-E381408.htm?utm_source=watcher&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=watch-n&utm_content=wat-n-salary
Associate teachers: $48,551
Regular teachers: $58,144
Lead teachers: (the equivalent of a vice-principal): $62,400
Try living off that in Manhattan, or one of NYC’s other boroughs.
Here’s well-paid charter school executive and documentarian Madeliene Sackler — whose father is also a well-paid and prominte charter school executive — defending those large salaries:
( 51:30 – )
( 51:30 – )
MADELIENE SACKER: “(Eva Moskowitz’ salary is very public.”
(then why did you leave it out of your documentary, Ms. Sackler?)
“Leaders of high-performing charter schools — they call them ‘charter operators’ — are making pretty good salaries. Those organizations feel that it’s A WORTHWHILE USE OF MONEY TO HAVE AN EFFECTIVE LEADER. … There is some resentment about (Eva Moskowitz’) salary, which I think, is confusing, because at the same time, everybody wants teachers to get paid more, which I think is something that the charter schools respect, that if we want great talent, we want to reward it.”
OH NO, THEY DON’T, … at least with it comes to teachers. CHARTER SCHOOLS, AS EVIDENCED BY THEIR RESPECTIVE FOR OPERATORS AND LEADERS, ONLY BELIEVE THAT THE BOSSES DESERVE THE HIGHER SALARIES.
Out here in Los Angeles, we just got a 10% raise, and the charter operators responded by condemning it, and, in the private Broad-Walmart Takeover Plan that was leaked claimed that this raise was an obstacle to them recruiting teachers to work for their lousy wages, and also for losing their teachers to leave them to go work in the unionized LAUSD public schools.
You noticed how the operators DID NOT respond. Their whole M.O. is to keep the pay low, as it’s all about their “market-based approach” to running a school — like a business. Low pay for teachers is not a bug, but a feature.
Well, one of the basic laws of capitalism is supply and demand. The charter operators apply it when it comes to leaders, but not workers.
You notice how the Los Angeles charter operators, the day after unionized Los Angeles teachers won a 10% raise, did not hold a joint press conference, saying,
“In our pursuit of educational excellence, we’re announcing OUR OWN raise for all of OUR teachers in response. We’ll match that ten percent, and add another five. That’s right. We’re giving a 15% raise to all our teachers, because that’s what it’s going to take to staff our schools with the best teachers, damn it.”
That ain’t never going to happen.
Their actual response is to lower the qualifications for what a teacher needs, so as to widen that pool of eligible workers, and further depress the wages, and by extension, the quality of teachers. Anybody can teach, they believe, if you give them scripted lessons, and put the kids on computers for a large part of the day, they believe.
And when your charter school teaching staff tries to unionize for better wages, better job conditions, protections, etc., the operators hire the most vicious union-busting organization to suppress such efforts, the same one used by Walmart to smother and smash any budding unionism in their own stores (I’m referring to their fight against the Alliance for College-Read charter teachers’ attempting to unionize. They’re the largest chain of charters in Los Angeles.)
Gotta go teach.
Bye!
It’s just weird that people can now appoint themselves head of a “public” entity. I think I’ll appoint myself, I don’t know, CEO of the local senior center. I’ll set my own salary too.
It’s amusing how the ed reform “movement” only mentions public schools when they’re used to promote charter schools:
https://twitter.com/PCunningham57?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
Apparently there are no public schools in the whole country deemed worthy of promotion of praise. It would be okay except so many of them are in government- they absolutely dominate at the federal level. Tough situation for public schools, such a hostile environment.
Hah! I’ve noticed Deborah Kenney has been “under the radar” for quite some time. I don’t think any teachers have had anything good to say about her.
The President’s Salary:
http://www.paywizard.org/main/salary/vip-check/barack-obama
Annual: USD 395,000.00
Monthly: USD 32,916.00
Weekly: USD 7,596.00
Daily: USD 1,082.00
White House/Forbes April 2014: According to the 2013 tax return President Obama earned a salary as President of $394,796 and he earned $104,809. His adjusted gross income on his tax return was $481,098.
Don’t worry, he won’t be that poor for very long after he leaves office.
Eva makes more than the President. Outrageous and shameful!
Don’t you know that people make exactly what they’re “worth” … 😉 Obama shoulda just “tried harder” and “made better decisions with his life.”
Yes, Deborah Kenny is probably the prime beneficiary of Moskowitz’s notoriety and grossly inflated salary, since if not for Eva, people would be looking at Kenny’s outrageous and unjustifiable pay.
Who said you can’t get rich in education?
In NJ Governor Christie set a cap on Superintendent’s salary with a premise of holding down homeowner’s tax but Charters are exempt! Many traditional schools are having difficulty retaining and hiring new qualified Superintendents especially with a few districts paying more for assistant Superintendents than the capped Superintendent can be paid!
Which leads to the obvious rhetorical question:
How is this not rigged to favor charters at the expense of public schools?
😒
It appears that after long years of forced test-score invasions charters are now simply “exempt.” No rules, no regulations, no audits, no liability — and, pretty ironically in this age of a viciously punitive school accountability, no “accountability.”
How much does Ohio ECOT’s (Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow) owner make, from community taxes? For net pay, we’d have to subtract the amount he forks over to politicians for their campaign funds.
A form of VAM based on administrative cost per pupil should prove to taxpayers that charter schools have been an abysmal waste of common funds intended for all citizens. Charter schools are less efficient and effective than public education. This accounting does not include all the additional waste and fraud associated with charters and the human cost of using children as guinea pigs so billionaires can cash in on the failed experimentation. It also does not include toll of the loss of funds that public schools continue to experience by being forced to offer fewer options to students or even closing their doors. It is time for citizens to vote out policymakers that have been captured by this failed movement, and restore dignity to public education, the best hope for our collective future.
Sheesh….
To Mr. Merrow, re: charters, as we say in Spanish: Más vale tarde que nunca.