Politico reports that a former central staff member of Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter chain alleges widespread cheating on tests, as well as high staff turnover and demoralization.
“Success Academy CEO Eva Moskowitz did not approve of the finding — made by an “ethnographer” she hired to study her rapidly expanding charter school network — that some teachers at the high-performing network might be responding to the enormous pressure placed on them by cheating.
“So Moskowitz, Success’s combative founder, deployed senior managers to inform the staffer, Roy Germano, that he was banned from visiting schools for the remainder of the year. Moskowitz disparaged Germano to other employees, according to a memo written by Germano in July 2015 and obtained by POLITICO New York, and he was told to halt his research projects immediately.
“Germano was fired last August, approximately a month after the report was completed, and is now a research scholar at New York University.
“Germano’s reports and memo, along with a trove of other documents obtained by POLITICO — a separately commissioned internal draft risk assessment report, a compilation of exit interviews, and internal Success staffing records, among other documents — paint a picture of a growing enterprise facing serious institutional strain in the form of low staff morale, unusually high turnover, and the kind of stress that could drive teachers to exaggerate their students’ progress.”
Success Academy is the highest scoring charter chain in New York, possibly the nation. It is also very controversial, due to its no-excuses policies, it’s attrition rates, and its claim to have cracked the code of raising test scores of low-income minority children. At its last fundraiser, last month, it raised $35 million in one night, including a gift of $25 million from one of its hedge fund admirers.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If the allegations are found to be true, who’s going to jail?
Germano:
“I was told to write a follow-up report that would essentially downplay my findings and told by [recently departed Success vice president] Keri Hoyt not to use the word ‘cheating’ in any future reports.
“Finally, I was told that I was banned from visiting schools for the remaining 4 weeks of the school year, and that I could only visit schools next year if accompanied by ‘a chaperone.’ ”
That’s some “Classic Eva” for ya:
1) Hire someone to do an objective report on the strengths and weaknesses of your schools;
2) When he returns with a report that includes observations and conclusions that you don’t like, or truths you don’t want to face … well then order him to re-write it per your specifications, editing out all negative findings;
3) When he refuses, fire him and ban him from all your school buildings, then engage in a incessant public smear campaign against him.
Oooh boy, that’s a sign of healthy school environment, and a constructive management style. Let me tell ya!
———————————
POLITICO:
“Comments about a culture of fear at Success have been a recurring theme in my interviews,” Germano wrote in his July report, articulating a sentiment that teachers and staff have echoed in interviews with POLITICO New York.
Success principals — many of whom were teachers for only a few years before being promoted — are expected to have all the children in their schools pass state exams, and have up to 80 percent of their students scoring the highest level on the tests, according to the report. Principals are sometimes rewarded with 20 percent bonuses if their students do particularly well or improve dramatically on state English and math exams, the report states, although the network’s bonus decisions are not purely based on student performance.
And Success teachers are publicly ranked according to their students’ performance on tests. According to Germano’s first report on cheating, titled “Unintended Consequences of Ranking Teachers” and prepared by Germano in May 2015, teachers say the public listing of performance leads to “toxic” relationships between instructors.
“Lower performers feel like they’re being shamed in the public square even when they claim to be putting forth full effort,” the May report reads.
The listings can also have a particularly harsh effect on Success students with special needs who typically struggle on assessments, according to the report.
“Some teachers say there is resentment of scholars who consistently fail assignments,” that report says. “Some teachers view scholars with learning disabilities as a burden because they make it feel impossible to get all kids out of the red.”
———————–
That last bit reminds me of the John Oliver video where Oliver acts like the teachers who are under pressure from testing mandates, and then pass on that pressure on their students so those students will score higher on standardized tests.”
( 7:01 – )
( 7:01 – )
JOHN OLIVER: “That explains why many teachers whose classroom decorations used do say,
” ‘BELIEVE IN YOURSELF.’ …
” … now say …
” ‘DON”T(expletive) ME ON THIS!’ “
The entitled frauds don’t go to jail. They just get more money. This is the USA … PROFITS, PROFITS, PROFITS. Heck we have FOR PROFIT jails and FOR PROFIT military. It’s all just so SIC.
Ed reformers should read the Atlanta report on cheating instead of just looking at the ridiculous perp walk photos.
The investigators wrote that ed reform had created such a hostile climate that teachers reacted in ways that were not at all healthy and productive.
http://clatl.com/freshloaf/archives/2011/07/06/atlanta-schools-cheating-investigation-full-report
It was a terrible work environment, which to me means it was a terrible school environment for children.
I’m not sure how “It seems possible if not likely that some teacher cheating is occurring at Success on both internal assessments and state exams” translates into “alleges widespread cheating on tests,” particularly when the report doesn’t offer any actual proof of anything, but maybe that’s just me.
It also strikes me as odd that with all these disgruntled and churned employees who take the time to write lengthy screeds on Glassdoor none of them, to my knowledge, has claimed that the network cheats on tests. It’s odder still that teachers would have confided in and made these observations to, you know, a network employee rather than the school’s authorizer, the DOE, NYSED, a reporter, etc. Again, maybe that’s just me.
It’s funny to recall that this ethnographer’s hiring was pointed to as a sign of Success’s excesses and overflowing coffers. It’s also funny to think about how crazy Eva Moskowitz must be going trying to find out who Eliza Shapiro’s source is.
Tim
Wake up and smell the erasures.
Funny that you refer to them as disgruntled. From Atlanta:
“His bosses had no trouble dismissing Ryan Abbott’s report of cheating on standardized tests in an Atlanta school. They simply cast him in a self-fulfilling role, Abbott says: “disgruntled teacher.”
http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local/whistle-blowing-teachers-targeted/nQpxt/
or
I felt like an honest accountant working for Enron.”
– Former North Atlanta High School principal Mark MyGrant yesterday revealed that he was among the whistleblowers in the 2009 Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal.
http://clatl.com/freshloaf/archives/2013/08/28/aps-whistleblower-i-felt-like-an-honest-accountant-working-for-enron-during-cheating-scandal
Teachers also went to the press and were ignored and/or MSM interest was squelched by the Chamber of Commerce folks who brought Beverly Hall to Atlanta in the first place. Once the press started digging in, the CoC folks paid for a sham investing to “prove” there was no cheating.
“A panel created and selected by The Atlanta Board of Education in 2010, dubbed the “Blue Ribbon Commission,” conducted its own investigation of cheating but found that the CRCT testing environment was “tight.””
http://www.georgiapolicy.org/2015/04/the-atlanta-public-schools-cheating-scandal/
Maybe it’s just me, but you’re a graceless troll and shill.
Okay, Tim. I’m an innocent until proven guilty person. Until something actually happens, like in Atlanta, I’ll assume everything is on the up-and-up.
But let’s not kid ourselves at the same time. SA has scores that are mind-bogglingly non-sensical. If they perform so magically, then why did none of their students gain admission to prestigious NYC schools?
But here’s the big one: Wouldn’t Moskowitz make a mint from revealing these amazing practices nationwide? Why hoard such a brilliant system of educational achievement? Why not scale it up?
If she’s so interested in kids, why not spread the gospel of SA achievement? Perhaps she isn’t so selfless after all.
Again, I’m not saying that the scores aren’t real. I’m even removing the cheating idea from the table. But I can tell you that either these methods of innovation education should be published for public consumption or there’s actual cheating.
Let’s see the secret sauce!
NYS Parent and PJL: this is the typical reaction of rheephormsters when they have “actionable intelligence.”
It’s not a spur to self-reflection and self-correction but to the opposite: the best defense is a good offense aka proof by assertion and the sneer, jeer and smear employed by Non Sequitur (here and below).
Let me make this simple: when you create perverse incentives by employing worst management and pedagogical practices the consequences are predictable and inevitable.
But never ever expect those in favor of corporate education reform to own up to its failures and failings.
Paraphrasing Leona Helmsley, the former Queen of Mean:
“Thats only for the little people.”
😎
P.S. To be fair, she also said:
“I wouldn’t believe Donald Trump if his tongue was notarized.”
Although, strangely, both the paraphrase and actual quote go together quite nicely, especially if you trade out the Trumpster’s name and put in the saintly head of $ucce$$ Academy…
😏
Tim feels very confident about this since he is aware that the only people with real oversight is the SUNY Charter Institute board that is absolutely unwilling to question anything Ms. Moskowitz tells them.
This is the same board that received documented evidence of significant empty seats in Success Academy schools (due to attrition, no doubt) at a time when Success Academy was claiming it had a wait list of thousands. Instead of looking into why there were so many empty seats, SUNY said (recorded on video for all to see), that Ms. Moskowitz told them the empty seats were because of a “glitch” so that’s that, case closed.
The NY State auditor tried to audit her schools, and Success Academy spent copious amounts of time and money to bring a lawsuit in federal court. They claimed that the ONLY entity who should be allowed to audit them was SUNY! If their dishonesty was not so destructive to public schools everywhere, SUNY’s oversight would be laughable.
Steve K,
We are missing too many pieces of data to make much out of the fact that Success hasn’t placed a child in a SHSAT high school, such as what their scores were, what schools they were applying for, what the pass rate is for black and Latino kids who are FRPL-eligible (Success’s first two 8th grade classes were roughly 80% economically disadvantaged; the overall pass rate for blacks and Latinos is 5%), and whether or not they prepped.
It doesn’t appear to me that Success is keeping anything hidden from those who approach them in good faith, and a lot of what they do isn’t innovative or revolutionary, just stuff that’s not possible in district schools because of work rules and collective bargaining. They expect superhuman things from their teachers, and fully expect that huge numbers of them will leave after 2-3 years. They put a lot of effort into streamlining everything and making it “teacher proof”. They think curriculum matters a lot, and are constantly tweaking theirs and keeping data on everything. Even when they shorten their school days next year, they’ll have much longer days and years than NYC DOE schools. They do a ton of test prep (so do my kids, who attend traditional public NYC DOE schools, fwiw). I don’t think any of it is rocket science.
Tim
You are making too many excuses Tim
“It doesn’t appear to me that Success is keeping anything hidden from those who approach them in good faith” —
These words alone ought to win Non Sequitur some kind of award.
So $ucce$$ Academy won’t keep anything hidden from those that approach them in good faith—“good faith,” natcherly, as determined by them. And, by extension, they will keep everything hidden from those evil and vile critics and haters that don’t approach them in good faith—“good faith,” natcherly, as determined by them.
Hmmm…
Sounds very much like admitting that those that will uncritically endorse and praise and cover-up for $ucce$$ Academy will be allowed to investigate and pry all they want—rheephorm research! “Studies Show!”—while everyone else had better darn well back off and keep their prying eyes and moral scruples and noxious independence to themselves.
$ucce$$ Academy. Code of Silence. Cover blown by one of its biggest defenders.
Merits something like Inadvertent Whistleblower of the Year Award.
Credit where credit is due.
😏
“I don’t think any of it is rocket science.
You’re absolutely right, Tim, it isn’t rocket science: it’s hype, branding, manipulation, support from very wealthy and powerful people, combined with social darwinism and and racially-premised behaviorism.
Tim says:
“We are missing too many pieces of data….” YES! That is intentional. The only people who are allowed to see the data are the ones who Success Academy decides are acting “in good faith” (i.e. will come to the conclusions that Success deems appropriate) They do make the occasional error as we can see from this ethnographer, so those people must be fired and quieted. For anyone else, Success will spend as much as necessary to find friendly judges to prevent any public disclosure.
Obviously, among the unethical administrators happy to get their nice paycheck in return for keeping the practices that harm children quiet, there are at least one or possibly two employees who feel sickened at what Ms. Moskowitz and her billionaire funders are able to do with virtually no oversight. They are far too afraid to speak publicly but they do seem to leak some of the documents to the press which actually has one or two reporters not too frightened to report on it. (Not reporters like Beth Fertig who are always called upon by Success Academy’s PR firm to file a report with the cherry picked data that will make it seem that Success educates every single child who wins the lottery).
Comrade Fiorillo wrote: “You’re absolutely right, Tim, it isn’t rocket science: it’s hype, branding, manipulation, support from very wealthy and powerful people, combined with social darwinism and and racially-premised behaviorism.”
Ha. No, it’s nothing as complicated and sinister as that. Charters are a rational response to a bureaucracy that is unresponsive to parents and kids and that treats curriculum as an afterthought when it isn’t an excuse for patronage (http://www.city-journal.org/html/because-carmen-fari%C3%B1a-says-so-11496.html). It’s a rational response to a collective bargaining agreement that eliminated extended-day small-group tutoring for struggling learners and that mandates the same workday structure for a kindergarten teacher and an AP physics teacher. It’s a rational response to the fact that there are hundreds of traditional public schools in New York City that you and everyone else who comments here would do everything under the sun to avoid sending your own kid or grandkid to (the “hype” and “branding” for charters is usually little more than word of mouth and an abysmal environment at the local zoned school).
Success’s elementary teachers eat lunch with their students and take them out for 45 minutes of recess every day (the same is true at many other NYC charters and, interestingly, lots of the elite private schools). It’s an opportunity for the kids to bond with their teachers and get some additional “soft” instructional time, and it frees up a bunch of money. If someone proposed such an arrangement for NYC DOE elementary school teachers, who get a 50-minute duty-free lunch period and a 40-minute “prep” period within every 6.5-hour-long school day, there would be outraged cries that the DOE was trying to break the union and take us back to the Triangle Shirtwaist days. If the kids aren’t getting recess, that’s the breaks. Look over there, a hedge fund!
The good news, however inconvenient it may be for your arguments, is that not even the wealthiest, most morally bankrupt and darkly cynical person in the world can force a family to send their child to a charter or compel a teacher to work in one. If they are as bad as you think they are, they’ll soon cease to exist. Keep those fingers crossed!
I continue to seethe about the elimination of extended day. We used the small group, before-school extended day services and it was great for my son.
I love how Tim’s response once again ignores the children that are invisible — all the ones weeded out of Success Academy because they cost them far too much money. Not just in the expense of teaching them, but because they are getting a disproportionate amount of hedge fund billionaires’ donations based on the big lies that they “educate every child”. Tim doesn’t actually care that the charters that DO educate the kids they were chartered to educate — I mean ALL of them, Tim, not just the ones who are deemed worthy with the rest thrown in the trash — because he doesn’t have a problem with Success Academy’s dishonesty. As long as some at-risk kids benefit, who cares about the other ones.
Of course, public schools could make the same claim. Some kids do well! Therefore it doesn’t matter what happens to the others. People like Tim think it is more admirable to throw those kids out with the trash than to do their best to educate them with a shrinking amount of dollars. Therefore, a charter school that fails lots of kids but gets rid of them is what Tim admires most; and a public school that keeps them all is an object of scorn and derision.
There are low-performing charter schools that also keep their struggling kids instead of throwing them away as Tim wants them to do. But their low scores must be kept completely separate from the high scoring charters who specialize in got to go lists and high suspension rates of the kids they label as “extremely violent” at age 5.
They must only be trotted out when Success Academy needs to hide their high attrition rates and average them with those low-scoring charters so that losing “only” 50% of their Kindergarten class is supposed to be admirable.
If you have $35 million in donations to dangle at the “good” kids you can buy them lots of luxuries. If you have $35 million to reward the “good” administrators to develop got to go lists and look the other way when the “model” teachers are abusive, you can survive a very long time. But the bottom line that you absolutely refuse to address Tim is that Success claims to be for every child and they use so much of that money to figure out how to get rid of so many of them instead of using it to teach them.
Since you approve, I don’t know why I bother to call you out on what you gleeful think is wonderful — making struggling and always low-income minority children feel like they are nothing if it gets them out of Success Academy before 3rd grade testing.
Tim, like all of the other reformers, still hasn’t explained what happens, after all of the schools are privatized, and the “philanthropic” dollars are pulled. Is that when the for-profit BIA, takes over?
Linda,
I know this is difficult to believe given the histrionics, but charter schools enroll only 4% of New York State’s public school students and just 10% of New York City’s. State law requires charters to open only where there is a concentration of at-risk students, which rules out the vast majority of the state’s districts, and the majority in the state assembly tries to do harm to charters each and every legislative session.
100% “privatization,” like the kind we have for New York City’s libraries and hospitals and many of its parks and cultural institutions, is a pipe dreame, alas. It’s a shame because man did we have some amazing stuff up our sleeves regarding the for-profit BIAs.
Tim,
Only 4% of the students and about 95% of the airtime. Amazing.
All those editorials in the NY Post, the Daily News, etc. for only 4% of the state’s students.
I think there is no need for private sector, autocratic, for profit anyway you look at it copperplate charters.
Please explain why we have this private sector,for profit, corporate public education reform movement in the first place, and then once you throw out the mocking bird propaganda talking points that have been proven wrong repeatedly, provide reputable evidence from primary sources that prove the allegations the corporate powers keep slinging at the traditional public schools is real.
There was and never will be a real need for the public to fund private sector, for profit schools. This corporate public education reform movement should have never happened in the first place, and the country should end it and refuse to pay one more public dollar to this frauds.
Tim’s inadvertently hilarious comment gave me my best laugh today:
“State law requires charters to open only where there is a concentration of at-risk students, which rules out the vast majority of the state’s districts….”
Success Academy is above the law! They already were given free space in Manhattan’s silk stocking District 2 — perhaps the wealthiest school district in NYC and one of the wealthiest in the entire country. There they opened two elementary schools that did NOT give priority to at-risk students and had a majority of middle class and upper middle class students. One school had less than 1/4 at-risk kids. And yet it had empty seats, mysteriously through a “glitch” where many of those out of district poor families on the long wait lists were left out in the cold.
And when it came time, Success Academy demanded a 3rd elementary school in very wealthy District 2 Manhattan where the other two served primarily affluent kids! Despite no demand there and huge demand in poorer NYC school districts.
SUNY was ready to grant this wish. In fact, they DID grant this wish. But a group of public school parents embarrassed them by publicizing the empty seats in District 2 and Eva Moskowitz withdrew her application for the District 2 school the day of the vote. And then SUNY was embarrassed because it was too late to change it and they approved a 3rd district 2 school!
So much for Tim’s misleading claim that charters have to open where there is a concentration of at-risk kids. He is wrong. They are allowed to cherry pick expensive neighborhoods and drop priority for at-risk kids if they wish. And if they do serve at-risk kids, nothing is stopping them from suspending over 20% of the 5 year olds or treating them in the manner that model teachers are trained to use in order to get them out of their school.
Linda, Tim doesn’t want 100% privatization. The Success Academy model demands that there are public schools available to take all the (mostly at-risk, minority) low-performing kids their model principals are rewarded for dumping.
But there is plausible deniability. As the internal documents make clear, just because Ms. Moskowitz says “who will successfully turn around this school with too many low-performing kids” does not mean the principal should use a got to go list to achieve what she demands. She expects a far more subtle approach to weeding out the low-performing kids, as demonstrated by the Harlem Success Academy principal who delights in not sending renewal forms home with the problem students.
Without public schools to be the dumping ground, where would all the unwanted kids who win the lottery and leave Success Academy go? And if Success Academy was forced into transparency by the authorizing agency or anyone else, we might know exactly how many public schools will be needed to take all their unwanted students. Is one public dumping ground school for the unwanted kids in wealthy District 2 enough to serve the unwanted students in that affluent district? Or in very low-income districts, is it 10 public school dumping grounds for every 1 Success Academy necessary because Ms. Moskowitz can only find one in ten “worthy” students to educate in those poverty stricken neighborhoods?
Maybe Tim can tell us what the calculation is for how many public schools are necessary to educate the “unworthy” students?
Stranded on an island? Tim
“Our goal is to develop charter management organizations that produce a diverse supply of different brands on a large scale,”
Kim Smith, founder of New Schools Venture Fund, which rec’d $22 mil. from Gates.
Gates finances, “Senior Congressional Education Staff Network”,
just to help at-risk kids?
The Gates Foundation has to infiltrate the U.S. Dept. of Ed., just so philanthropists can give money to at-risk kids?
Still no answer to the question, which is stranded on the island with Tim.
Non Sequitur: “State law requires charters to open only where there is a concentration of at-risk students” followed by—
NYC public school parent: “Success Academy is above the law! [read everything in-between this and the following.] So much for Tim’s misleading claim that charters have to open where there is a concentration of at-risk kids. He is wrong.”
I see “pants on fire.” Preceded by two words that rhyme with “fire.”
But you have to admire someone who finds his inspiration in Homer:
“I didn’t lie, I was writing fiction with my mouth.”
Although that’s HOMER SIMPSON, a cartoon character that we’re supposed to laugh at, not the immortal Greek bard.
And this from one of the few “sane” people that write on this blog. Sanity, I guess, means departing from faithfully reporting notorious and public facts.
Go figure…
😳
From Chapter 3 of my first-printing hardcover edition of The Death and Life of the Great American School System, emphasis mine:
“One urban district was said to have solved the puzzle of raising achievement across the board with a diverse enrollment, *including a substantial number of poor students.* That district–Community School District 2 in New York City–became a national symbol of success in the late 1990s.
“District 2 . . . stretched from the southern tip of Manhattan to the midsection of the island, including the affluent Upper East Side . . . *the district contained public housing projects and pockets of poverty, especially in parts of Chinatown and the Lower East Side*.”
New York State’s charter school law requires that charter schools “Increase learning opportunities for all students, with special emphasis on expanded learning experiences for students who are at-risk of academic failure,” which the law later defines as English language learners, students with disabilities, and children who are eligible for a free or reduced price lunch.
Per data.nysed.gov, there are:
— A whopping 5,615 PreK – Grade 5 students in District 2 who are eligible for free/reduced-price lunch. To put this number in perspective, there are 4,842 children eligible for free/reduced-price lunch in the *entirety* of the Albany City School District, Pre-K – Grade 12.
–3,224 Pre-K – Grade 5 students in District 2 who have a disability. The entirety of the Syracuse City School District has 3,978 students with disabilities in Pre-K – Grade 12.
–1,950 Pre-K – Grade 5 students in District 2 who are English Language Learners. The entirety of the Yonkers City School District has 3,035 English Language Learners in Pre-K – Grade 12.
But wait, you say. This is in New York City–Manhattan!–a beacon for liberal thought, tolerance, and acceptance. So surely those poor kids and ELLs and the 2,700 black and Hispanic Pre-K – 5 kids don’t need any options because they are evenly distributed throughout the district and get to go to PS 6 and PS 41 and PS 290 and the other schools the rich kids go to, right?
Alas, that’s not the case. Those children are concentrated in about 8-9 elementary schools in the district, and they are present in practically non-detectable numbers at the most desirable, high-performing schools (which is how those schools like it and will do everything in their power to keep it that way).
tl; dr: District 2 in New York City has a clear, obvious, and verifiable concentration of at-risk students and is an appropriate place to site charter schools according to the laws of the State of New York.
Tim,
You are relentless. Everyone needs charter schools. Especially if they are Success Academy charter schools. Everyone needs No-Excuses. But what about parents who really don’t want their children treated like “little test-taking machines”? What if they have higher aspirations for their children? Or are you saying that this is a particular kind of conformist treatment that black and Hispanic children need? I don’t get your point.
from data.nysed.gov (2014-15)
% of economically disadvantaged Kindergarten students in District 2: 27.5%
% of economically disadvantaged Kindergarten students in Success Academy Union Square District 2: 21.5%
Tim, if you are going to locate lots of charter schools in an affluent district because you claim you care about the (relatively few) poor kids who reside there, your school should have MORE than its share of low-income students, not less.
It certainly takes a lot of chutzpah to request a third school there when you already have a school where nearly 80% of the K seats are NOT being filled by those relatively few low-income students you keep using to justify your location in that neighborhood.
Bronx District 12 has 90% low-income students and 0 Success Academy schools.
Manhattan District 2 has 27.5% low-income students, 2 Success Academy school, and requested and was granted a 3rd school there based on “need” by the SUNY Charter Institute.
The ONLY reason there is not a 3rd Success Academy school in District 2 is that a group of public school parents publicized the empty seats in the 2 Success Academy schools already there and Success Academy decided on the day of the vote to change their application. It was a fiasco, since SUNY was so happy to oblige and save Success the embarrassment that it broke its own rules and approved a change, then had to backtrack and admit it did approve the 3rd school in District 2 because that is what the proposal requested.
SUNY had the proposal for months, and could have asked questions about why a charter school that claimed it wanted to serve poor students would ask for a 3rd school in one of NYC’s wealthiest school districts if their other school wasn’t even serving a majority of those students. But that would involve the same degree of oversight that might have caused them to wonder why the network’s elementary schools that WERE located in those primarily low-income districts were suspending over 20% of their 5 year olds and losing so many students along the way.
Or maybe SUNY did quietly ask questions and Success Academy told them they couldn’t lower their suspension rates if they were going to open schools in those low-income neighborhoods, but they promised not to suspend many kids if SUNY let them open schools where they could be certain that most of the students were middle class.
Is that it, Tim? Is that the kind of “oversight” you approve of?
Diane, I believe Tim’s point is that Success Academy promises not to treat little children like test taking machines and suspend huge cohorts of 5 year olds as long as SUNY agrees to open schools in districts where they can be sure that most of the students are middle class.
They promise to serve special needs students as long as their parents are college-educated and/or the needs are relatively mild.
NYC public school parent,
My understanding is that SA claims that its special ed numbers are low because it is able to remediate disabilities.
Diane, SA claimed it was desperate to serve at-risk kids when it asked for a 3rd elementary school in very wealthy District 2. As Tim noted, not every kid is affluent — it just triple the % of affluent kids than those truly poor districts that apparently don’t have the same “need” for Success Academy schools as District 2. Or more likely, those poor district where Success Academy does’t have the same need for most of those kids.
The likelihood of students’ disabilities being “cured” by the wonders of the Success Academy program is about as likely as Eva Moskowitz targeted most of her schools in District 2 because she really wants to serve at-risk kids.
She also claimed ELL students lose the classification within months. Look closely, and you will see that often the typical ELL student has at least one parent who is completely fluent and literate in English, often college educated. Not exactly the kind of ELL students who have to translate for their parents who are very poor and illiterate in English.
Why not be honest? Why can’t Tim say “I know that Success Academy wouldn’t touch most kids in failing schools with a ten-foot pole but they do a good job with the few they find acceptable to teach”. I know why — because that would mean there was no longer any justification for the vast sums of money they get because people believe they really have solved the problem of failing public schools. So they think it is better to pour the money into Success Academy’s coffers instead of give it to those failing public schools. It is always a zero sum game, and the idea is for public schools to function with as little money as necessary to drive all the “acceptable” students into the charter schools that then toss back the expensive kids they find unworthy. With Tim’s blessing, and the blessing of billionaires, that is the goal.
The question now about SA is why no legislative investigations. In Georgia, allegations of cheating persuaded the governor to initiate a full investigation of the Atlanta public schools. Don’t expect Cuomo to act. He is funded by same people who fund SA.
Eva Moskowitz is the Lance Armstrong of the charter industry. Her results are unbelievably extraordinary (taking a random group of the exact same kids found in failing public schools and getting 100% passing rates) and no charter school has ever come close. And like Lance Armstrong, she has a good story that financially benefits not just her schools, but the “privatization industry” that makes a lot of money off the belief that her success is real.
There were rumors about Lance Armstrong and doping very early on and they continued throughout his career. It was always “disgruntled” people so the overseers were happy to either ignore or do the most cursory investigation that was supposed to reassure the public that absolutely no cheating was going on. “No proof!” (And no real investigation to find any, of course.)
I don’t really expect the truth to come out until after her career is over. Although I think it is no coincidence that she chose not to run for political office. When you run for political office, you are liable to be scrutinized by one or two reporters much less willing to simply rewrite press releases.
The only way to get real oversight is to have the reporters start looking closely at the SUNY Charter Institute. Starting with the videotape of their October 2014 meeting in which they “accidentally” approved the 3rd District 2 school just like Success Academy wanted. Their giggles when they talked about a “glitch” and their promise to “convene a committee to talk about how to best convene another committee” to look more closely at high suspension or attrition rates was truly laughable. No doubt SUNY has not yet managed to convene that first “committee to form a committee” and it will get done as quickly as the cycling oversight agencies got around to investigating Lance Armstrong’s remarkable results. In a decade or so.
Nothing “odd.” No decent and competent teacher wants to be linked to a scandal or the possibility of being a difficult employee. Administrators report to the DOE, NYSED, a reporter? Only with protection. I feel really bad for the teachers subjected to this nightmare.
Don’t worry, I’m sure any teachers who cheated will be caught and punished. I think seven years imprisonment is the going rate, no?
Nothing further to see here folks, move along now.
Ah, that “special sauce”! Recipe direct from Atlanta? or is it Houston? Eva just had to get her some of that good Gulf Coast cooking (the books).
Secrecy breeds an environment of fraud and lies and Eva fights to keep everything about her publicly funded financial empire under her direct control, secret and opaque.
I was on a local community school board (#15 in brownstone Bklyn) from 1989 – 1993. At that time, we had a handful of high-scoring schools that didn’t impress me (and others) as having particularly good educational practices. Then a funny thing happened. When the principals of these schools retired (or died), the test scores in their schools plummeted, usually by 10-20 points. I guess the students were too sad about their principal’s retirement (or death) to do well on the test! At one principals’ retirement party, one of the gifts he got was a big eraser — an allusion to how he managed to get such good test scores! I remember calculating at that time that score inflation in these schools actually raised the DISTRICT’s score by 1 or 2 percentage points.
This affects the integrity of state testing and the perception of that integrity. I think a fair thing for the STATE (Commissioner Elia) to do is to place monitors in schools where allegations of cheating have been made.
We have a public school district that employees “no excuses” to chase people out- Ohio has a limited form of open enrollment so if you just make people feel unwelcome enough or punish enough, “low performers” get the message and enroll in another district!
They get awards for their test scores. It’s an ed reform success so no one actually looks at what’s going on. It’s the same for the “online credit recovery programs”- “low performers” end up in those too.
Maybe dishonest practice explains why none of Success’ students qualify for the specialized high schools in New York City.
Surprise!
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
Didn’t several teachers and administrators get 20 years in jail for similar actions in Atlanta?
Moskowitz’s claimed test score result were always preposterous, and could have only gotten the traction they did via the laziness and/or connivance of a credulous media piggy-backing on her own huge marketing budgets.
The cracks in Evil’s empire are widening, and her shell game will collapse in five years or less, probably far sooner.
And none of Tim’s strenuous efforts at misdirection will change that.
Ding!
Due process, Michael. Due process!
I wonder why Diane edited her original post, which said that she met with Dr. Germano after his removal from Success last summer.
I learned that Roy was not the source of the leak so I removed any reference to our conversation. I wrongly assumed he was. The leak came from an active staff member who has access to all the internal files. I don’t know who it is. It was not Roy.
“Due process, Michael. Due process!”
Yes, that’s what we’d like to see. We’re a little tired of “scott free!”
And, a maximum dose of democracy in education policy, not the oligarchy of DFER, Reed Hastings and Bill Gates.
I hope he goes public.
Tim,
Who is that “third party” monitor?
Isn’t there something about Success getting to grade its own tests?
All charter schools in New York City except for Teaching Firms of America Charter School utilize a scoring consortium run by the NYC Charter School Center that’s monitored and audited by a third party.
http://www.nyccharterschools.org/test-scoring-consortium
Tim,
Who is that “third party” monitor?
I have no idea, Duane. What I do know I learned from the consortium’s website and this article:
“All New York City schools are responsible for scanning multiple-choice answers into a centralized data system. To ensure consistent scoring and prevent cheating, the city has long kept district schools from scoring their own students’ written responses, instead requiring that schools send teachers to centralized scoring centers to grade tests without knowledge of who took them.
“Charter schools, the privately run but publicly funded schools that are exempt from some state regulations, aren’t allowed to participate. They are considered their own districts by the State Education Department and therefore have to handle their own scoring.
“But for years, the city’s charter school sector has run a program that mimics the district’s and includes a third-party vendor to monitor the grading in real time. Schools invariably opt in so that their all-important scores aren’t vulnerable to challenges.
“Most charters are going to jump at joining the consortium because it’s a way to both have credibility in your scores, but also ease your mind that there are professionals who know how to do this,” said Constance Bond, executive director of St. Hope Leadership Academy, a charter school in Harlem.
http://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/ny/2015/08/27/charter-school-where-english-scores-spiked-scored-own-state-exams/#.VzIXD8j3bCQ
The cost to taxpayers for all of the enforcement (monitors) , adjudication and penalties?
The richest 0.1% wanted to box kids, like they were widgets, in order to maximize profit in a $500 billion dollar potential public school market so, the taxpayers get fleeced.
A similar corrupt boondoggle in Ohio, E-Check, fleeced Ohioans, also courtesy of the bought and paid for politicians.
I reached out to Dr. Germano for comment but he said he was not the source of the leak and he doesn’t know who was, but that many people in the organization were aware of his reports.
Let’s be clear how it works for charter schools.
1. each school administers its own test. If there is a monitor in place, it is a monitor who is paid by the school itself. And obviously a single monitor at every school — if there is indeed one — can’t monitor a dozen classrooms properly.
2. Public school tests go to a central location. No teacher can even grade a test from a school in their district. The incentive to cheat by graders is missing. Plus there is an incentive to grade the written portion strictly and not be lenient since the teachers’ own students papers are graded elsewhere where those graders are liable to be strict.
Charter schools are graded in a central location by a for-profit grading company hired by the charter industry.
As far as I know, there is absolutely nothing stopping charter schools from having their tests graded together with NYC public schools – out of district – to insure that all grading was consistent and fair. Charter schools have not even made this request of the DOE as they seem to have found it better to pay a company to oversee charter school testing rather than have it be graded together with public school students’ tests.
As far as I know, no one has ever made any effort to examine why Success Academy’s test scores are such an outlier when compared to every other charter school in NYC. There are 3 possible reasons:
1. Success Academy’s teachers and schools are miles above every other charter school. (If so, why aren’t KIPP or other schools coming close to matching those results?)
2. Success Academy’s system weeds out the academically struggling students who win the Kindergarten lottery via suspension and other tactics. Success Academy discourages weak students from filling backfill spots by demanding that lottery winners for older grades prove their academic chops by passing their own test. If they don’t, they are told they must repeat a year — which effectively discourages many of their parents from enrolling them. And finally, Success Academy mass fails large cohorts of students so that a very large number of the students who do stay in the school and take the state tests are over age in 3rd grade. At any given Success Academy school that serves primarily at-risk kids, the percentage of test-takers who started in Kindergarten and made it to third grade testing in 4 years is shockingly low.
3. Teachers actively cheat due to pressure to achieve top scores. This is likely to be hints like “look at that answer again” rather than actively giving students answers.
I happen to think the likely answer is number 2 and there are certainly lots of hints that this is going on in their schools. I looked at Bed Stuy 1 – where “100% of the 3rd graders met standards” – and I saw that the number of economically disadvantaged 2nd graders declined by 40% by 3rd grade testing time. Well over 1/3 of the low-income kids in 2nd grade didn’t take that 3rd grade test. Success has implied – when questioned about it – that only half of them left “by choice” and the other half stayed and were held back.
It is truly shocking that the SUNY Charter Institute has taken Eva Moskowitz’ word — over and over — that the answer to this is #1 — Success Academy has a secret sauce that KIPP and Democracy Prep and other charters are far too inept or ignorant to copy. In fact, SUNY has gone out of its way NOT to see if #2 is correct — which makes me pretty certain that they know if they closely examined the attrition rates and failing students over and over again rates that the real reason for those high scores would be revealed to all.
Tim,
Yes, I also went to the consortium’s website to find the information and found nothing that was why I asked as I thought perhaps you knew.
To me what is scary is that by funneling all the information through one “centralized” source the possibility of fraud greatly increases (see Michael Connell and the 2004 Ohio presidential vote counting being funneled through a computer before being sent on to the state’s Secretary of State for verification). If there is no independent third party verification (and even then if it is paid by the party subject to examination) then my assumption is more likely than not there is fraud of the control fraud type (see William Black who investigated the Savings and Loan debacle in the 80s for control fraud definition).
So it would be easy for the results to be manipulated electronically just enough to make the results look dramatically better than what they are.
Josef Stalin put it best in his statement (paraphrasing) “It doesn’t matter to me who votes, only who counts the votes”.
Tim does stand-up, at the charter school comedy club.
“He compared Success’s data-driven, high-stakes environment to the state of the Atlanta public school system when a widespread cheating scandal was uncovered there. Germano also suggested that Success introduce measures to spot check and prevent cheating, including regular reviews of exam scoring, interviews with teachers, a statistical analysis to track how often students changed incorrect answers to correct ones, and anonymous reporting channels.”
More and more external controls probably won’t fix this. The Atlanta report pointed to that same managerial approach as contributing to it.
SA kids can’t pass the SHAT and they won’t reveal their Common Core Regents algebra I scores. Hmmmmmm . . . .
I think SA’s practices are terrible and I’m gobsmacked how they can continually not follow any of the procedures everyone else does.
However, these are real kids that we’re talking about and sometimes some of these comments veer towards exulting in their failures.
I hope that long delayed repercussions eventually reach the chain. But at the same time, there are large numbers of kids enrolled there now and I’d also like to see there educational environment improved (as soon as possible)
Ben, the educational environment of SA students will improve when those Skinner Box sweatshops are closed down, and not before.
And you’re presumption that people on this site are taking pleasure in students’ failure (textual evidence, please) is a red herring.
Ben, I would engage in exulting the failures of children. But, as a teacher for 20 years, I would be very suspicious of any test results that claimed the excellence of SA’s scores. I’ve taught AP my entire career. I had one year where 30+ kids were accepted to one of the top 50 universities in America. Those 30+ kids did not all pass the AP test. It was a pretty even distribution.
So it doesn’t make statistical sense that SA can pull down these scores year-after-year with a revolving door of students. Never a weak class? Never?
But idf they have methods that work, well, share by all means Eva! Do it for the kids of America! You could be the savior of American education and one of the great heroes of our history. Kids would do biographies of you 100 years from now! Think of the legacy.
No one is celebrating the failure of students here. This is just the sound of another education “miracle” collapsing.
Important public service announcement!
If you are a former or even a current Success Academy teacher who has documented evidence or simply witnessed scrubbing, erasing, redirecting, or other forms of cheating on NYSED 3-8 state tests, you should know that as part of the Nonprofit Revitalization Act of 2013, whistleblower protections for employees and volunteers in New York State nonprofits were strengthened and improved:
Click to access Charities_Whistleblower_Guidance.pdf
I’ll add a corollary to what a very wise person once said after the Atlanta scandal: “The bottom line: don’t cheat and don’t permit students to cheat.” My addition: if you witness other teachers cheating, you are bound to report it.
This is a part of non-profit regulations. Does that apply to a government-sanctioned entity, like a public or charter school?
“A wise person once said” Tell the richest 0.1% to dismantle their system that created the stage for cheating.
Sorry, Tim, you are wrong.
The state has the right to audit any charity in NY State.
But your favorite charter school who you believe can do no wrong has successfully had its highly paid lawyers argue in court that they are exempt from the auditing that a NY State charity is subject to.
Something is smells fishy. According to the article there are about 10,000 students and about 1,400 “teachers” (it looks like non-teaching staff may be included in that figure). If so that means that the student/teacher ratio is 14/100 or roughly seven students per teacher. Really????
I would gladly submit to a polygraph, present any student for questioning, polygraph any student or administrator, or force the students to retest in any format on demand (verbally, computerized, paper and pencil etc.) if I was ever accused of something so rancid. And the students would willingly comply after I pepped them up. Why didn’t the person go to the Board of Professional Standards if this is true? Teachers are sometimes all these kids have, and if they are not teaching them or cheating them out of an education they must go to jail. I would love to prove to you via polygraph or anything else that there are teachers who get the highest scores in the, school, district, and state legitimately when the population is extremely poor blacks (90% or above free lunch). They even beat the suburbs at the math bowl (although they did not win because the rules were not given correctly about having to solve the problem in the first minute). This is the only way you will understand that these kids are capable.
“cheating them out of an education”- Does that also apply to Indiana’s Bennett and Ohio’s David Hansen? Does it apply to all of the charter schools that perform worse than public schools? KnowYourCharter.com
Gates launches yet another promotion for charter schools:
“Some of the most inspiring signs of progress in K-12 education can be found in our nation’s charter schools. High-performing charter networks like Summit Public Schools, Green Dot Public Schools, and KIPP Schools are dedicated to helping all students succeed, and they’re delivering on this vision, backed by research: Charter schools are especially transformative for low-income students, students of color, and English language learners.”
It’s odd how no one in the elite reaches of reform world can find a single positive thing to say about any public school, anywhere.
That can’t be “science”, can it? I mean, what are the odds? All of the thousands of public schools and they can’t find even one or two?
Hmm. I’d check that “data” if I were them. Seems unlikely.
Then why aren’t these “high-performing charter networks like Summit Public Schools, Green Dot Public Schools, and KIPP Schools [that] are dedicated to helping all students succeed” EXPORTING their ideas to the struggling public schools. Why keep that kind of unprecedented success a secret? Come on Bill, you can’t be that stupid.
Chiara: yes, indeed—
“what are the odds?”
Funny, although not in a “ha-ha” way, is that rheephorm numbers & stats and sacred data analytics and the figures produced by high-stakes standardized tests suddenly get abandoned for that old standby—
Known as “stuff” [thank you, Bill Gates!].
Kind of like Eric Hanushek having an opinion about a just-publicized report re the cost of charters to Los Angeles USD—without having read it yet.
“Data analytics” without the “data” but lots of “analytics.”
Oh my…
😎
P.S. Link: http://www.latimes.com/local/education/me-union-charter-study-20160509-snap-story.html
Yet another one with (way, way) too much money, and not enough sense.
And that line about charters being “especially transformative” for English Language Learners is pretty conclusive proof of what a liar the man is, and the contempt he feels for the public’s intelligence, since the overwhelming majority of charters go to great lengths to exclude ELLs.
I do love me some schadenfreude!
this is amazing:
“The 25 best-paid hedge fund managers took home a collective $12.94 billion in income last year, according to an annual ranking published on Tuesday by Institutional Investor’s Alpha magazine.
Those riches came during a year of tremendous market volatility that was so bad for some Wall Street investors that the billionaire manager Daniel S. Loeb called it a “hedge fund killing field.” A few hedge funds flamed out; others simply closed down. Some of the biggest names in the industry lost their investors billions of dollars.”
Billion. With a “b” 🙂
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/10/business/dealbook/hedge-fund-manager-compensation.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0&mtrref=www.nytimes.com&gwh=55D43916C28BED665731A14DB15A1355&gwt=pay
Donna, Success just needs one of those hedge funders to feel a bit generous to underwrite them. If you take home nearly a billion dollars, do you really think you miss $100 million? Are you struggling to survive on “only” $900 million that year to cover your living expense? I mean, those hedge funders probably shell out $300,000 each year to put their 2 kids through private school and donate generously enough to insure their own children are treated well and get good grades. That leaves them only $899 million and change for their regular living expenses that year. If Success Academy kowtows to them even more, maybe another million will be thrown their way to help with those administrator bonuses. Why should the lives of a few (or many) unworthy poor kids be considered when throwing them out with the trash provides all that money? All that is asked is a little bit of dishonesty. Or maybe a lot. Just lie and more money will soon come your way.
If you want to know why Success Academy is so dishonest about pretending they educate EVERY child “regardless of circumstances”, it is because they know who signs their checks. And it isn’t the taxpayers of NYC.
I’ll say one thing though, that is the best photo Ms. Moskowitz has taken. She looks positively human.
From the Politico article: Here is the Success Academy’s official spokesperson’s “answer” to the charges:
“…Our teachers have been instrumental in demonstrating that ANY AND ALL students can learn and succeed REGARDLESS OF OTHER CIRCUMSTANCES…”
Whenever I see the defenders of Success Academy admitting that this is an out and out lie, but “it doesn’t matter”, I cringe for how bad it makes them look. Poor Tim. Whether or not there is blatant “changing of answers” cheating going on is still unanswered. Whether or not there is lying going on is beyond question. “Any and all students…regardless of other circumstances…”!!!! I suppose Success Academy and people like Tim have decided that the many children who are expendable in their pursuit of high test scores aren’t important enough to acknowledge because they are so unworthy to be deemed invisible. Kids disappeared from the school? They don’t exist!
And it is clear that Success Academy’s administration (and their paid PR staff) are fixated on doing what is necessary to please the billionaires who so happily reward their dishonesty with millions to pay for their big bonus and high salaries. Because who needs to help children in poverty when cheap charter schools can teach every child “regardless of other circumstances”? Those kids don’t need 3 good meals or a decent place to live! They don’t need healthcare. Their parents don’t need jobs that pay a living wage. Those kids have Success Academy to turn them into scholars who will soon have high paying jobs (if they aren’t one of the many kids counseled out who no longer exist apparently).
Shameful.
SA on fire! Did Eva get hold of firefighters?
SA may have to change their t-shirt slogans (“Don’t Steal Possible” and “SLAM the EXAM”) to more appropriate versions:
“We Steal Answers”
“ERASE to the TOP”
Why would Success Academy need to erase answers?
They just make sure the low scoring kids don’t take the test,by whatever means are necessary
Check out their high 3rd grade proficiency rates last year (2014-2015) they have been bragging about all year at Success Academy Bed Stuy 1.
In 2nd grade the previous year (2013-2014), that cohort of students was 103 strong: 63 boys and 40 girls. 68 of the students were poor (economically disadvantaged), and 35 were not.
But let’s see which of those 103 2nd graders took that 3rd grade test that they got such high scores on:
ONLY 76 kids took the exam! 27 of the 2nd graders had disappeared. But HERE is what is really incriminating — there were STILL 35 kids who weren’t poor among the 76 remaining kids. But the number of economically disadvantaged students in the 2nd grade shrunk by the entire 27 students before 3rd grade testing. Instead of the 68 poor students, only 41 students took the test. Everyone of the 2nd graders MIA for the 3rd grade state tests was poor and those missing students were nearly 40% of the total low-income students from the 2nd grade.
Looking at JUST the low-income boys, we see that there had been 63 boys in the 2nd grade and just 43 of them took the 3rd grade exam the next year. Twenty missing boys — all low-income.
No doubt their supporters find it far more admirable to pretend the low-scoring children at Success Academy are invisible (the easier to get them out the door) than to have to change their answers on a test.
I think Success Academy’s greatest success is how to get rid of struggling kids while constantly claiming — as they did in response to this article — that they educate EVERY CHILD. With the help of people who support that dishonesty — who celebrate it! — like Tim, they have certainly been very successful in getting people to overlook any data that contradicts that nonsense.
^^^by the way, I should have added this:
40% of the low-income 2nd graders disappeared before 3rd grade testing time.
An untold number of the students who won the Kindergarten lottery 3 years previously disappeared before even making it to 2nd grade.
40% of the low-income students from 2nd grade were MIA by 3rd grade testing. No one will ever know how many “unworthy” students who won the lottery never even got to 2nd grade.
There is no need to erase answers if you are freed by your overseers to treat struggling young children in the manner in which their low academic performance demands. As long as your staff keeps quiet, you are golden. Once in a while one of those “disgruntled” teachers may actually video the model teacher showing us a bit of the Success Academy “special sauce” that invited dignitaries don’t get to see. And once in a while a “disgruntled” administrator might send some incriminating documents to the press that demonstrates how scary their system really is.
But as long as their supporters are like Tim and laugh about the unworthy children treated like dirt to get them out of their school, or just pretend those children are as invisible as people like Tim wish they would be, Success can continue along its merry way with these practices their supporters adore. No need to “cheat”.
I agree there are plenty of incentives for SUNY to look the other way.
Nonetheless, those people on the SUNY Charter Institute board have an ethical obligation to do more than rubber-stamp approvals. They have an obligation to do oversight. There are CHILDREN involved. And not just the oversight they have done, which means as long as test scores are high, we won’t ask any questions about how the most vulnerable of those children are treated. Just like as long as Lance Armstrong was winning and “bringing honor” to the sport, no one would ask questions and he was richly rewarded by his cheating. Why would he ever stop?
I place nearly all the blame for Success Academy’s behavior on the SUNY Charter Institute. I truly believe those board members are responsible for each of the students who were pushed out of Success Academy and basically made to feel they were undeserving of their spot. The fact that most of those children were poor, often with learning issues, and so they didn’t have the connections to make a fuss just makes it worse.
It would have taken just one of those men or women on the SUNY Charter Institute Board to stand up and say “stop pushing out the problem kids, we are watching”. Instead they pretty much said “keep getting those high test scores and we won’t ask questions”. I truly hope the press starts asking questions of the SUNY board and their chief administrator. It’s not unusual to have people desire to win by cheating. But it is unusual when they are practically encouraged to do so because they are rewarded so handsomely for their cheating by the people who were in the only position to stop it.
^^^I am sorry this was intended to be a reply below
The cited article is quite damning. I still don’t understand how they have been allowed to open more schools.
All it takes is a few billionaires on your board who also (purely coincidentally, I’m sure) donate massive amounts of money to Cuomo and many politicians. Some of it is direct donations – some of it is supporting the faux “grass roots” organizations that purport to be for better schools for all but really are just about how much money they can take from public schools and give to charters. (“Families” for Excellent Schools seems to act as the lobbying arm of Success and it is funded by the same handful of rich people.)
The SUNY Charter Institute is supposed to be doing oversight but it is laughable. In truth, those appointees should be investigated for why they have looked the other way when the evidence has been brought to them and is staring them in the face. SUNY’s oversight is “how good are you test scores” and “how many lottery winners disappeared in order to get them” is something they prefer not to know. It’s not that they could not easily find out — it is that SUNY goes out of its way to avoid knowing. Their board members remind me of the Sgt. in the old “Hogan’s Heroes” sit com: “I see nothing….”
Bottom line is that Success is allowed to open more schools because their state test scores are good. Remarkably good. Unbelievably good. Out of this world good. It is not that they are better than public school test scores — they are better than other charter school test scores. And not just by a little — they are the Lance Armstrong of charter schools. And while rumors of the charter equivalent of steroid use keep popping up, the people who are getting rich promoting their brand — politicians who like their big hedge fund donations, education”scholars” paid to do the research that is demanded of them, people getting rich from the billionaires money directed to the education pro-privitaztion industry — keep ignoring it because there is supposedly no “proof”. Of course, if you intentionally refuse to examine anything closely, you will never have to find that proof, and that’s why the people in charge of regulating sports and the people in charge of regulating charter schools managed not to find the proof for a long, long time. In cycling, it was what – decades? – until Lance Armstrong was exposed, long after many people enjoyed long, lucrative careers promoting his brand. I won’t hold my breath that we will see any real examination of how those test scores are achieved for a long long time. Because many people are profiting from promoting the myth that all you need is a little of that special sauce to turn all public school kids into high-achieving scholars.
NYC Public School Parent, it is a non-virtuous circle. SUNY looks the other way, no matter what is reported, when its Charter School Institute is asked to approve new charters, especially any connected to the Success Academy chain. SUNY depends on the state for funding. Cuomo gets huge contributions from charter funders in the financial community. SUNY protects its future by turning a blind eye to charter failings.
Control-F tells me that the word “Tim” appears 24 times on this thread.
FLERP,
Just doing his job
Tim knows how to get the attention focused on him Do you think he learned from Trump?
Anything to deflect and distract from the actual issues at hand.
He’s especially intent on trying to use real issues – racism, inequality, segregation – to muddy and deflect matters regarding privatization, union busting and school governance, in the hope that he can confuse people and guilt trip them into being silent about what’s happening in the schools. In his charter spin world, racism and segregation apparently are caused by middle class parents, and Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the Walton’s, et. al. are selflessly trying to save minority children’s from those evil, racist teachers and their unions.
It’s a neat trick, used all the time by so-called reformers (ah, yes, “the civil rights movement of our time”), and is totally false.
Carlos O. Albarez . Betrayed Miami Dade County Publics schools and cheated .
Mr. Carlos O. Alvarez began his career in education 17 years ago in Miami-Dade County Public Schools. He began as a paraprofessional at Ben Sheppard Annex and assisted with fourth and fifth grade students. He completed his Bachelor’s Degree in Elementary Education from St. Thomas University and taught at Ben Sheppard Elementary for three years. Concurrently, Mr. Alvarez earned a Master’s Degree in Educational Leadership from Nova Southeastern University. In 2003, he transferred to Jose Marti Middle School where he taught half a school year and was then promoted to Administrative Assistant. At which point, he gained hands on experience in effective leadership skills and administrative duties.
Upon completing Miami-Dade County Public Schools Assistant Principal Preparation Program, he decided to venture into the charter school movement and became an Assistant Principal at Mater Academy Middle/High Charter School.
In 2008, he was selected to lead a unique charter school that had an emphasis on public service academies in the same community in which he grew up in. Since then he has lead City of Hialeah Educational Academy to four consecutive years of being an “A” school, recipient of Newsweek’s and U.S. News and World Report Best High Schools in America and the City of Hialeah’s Education, Mentoring and Inspiration (EMI) Award for Best School in 2014-2015.
Mr. Carlos O. Alvarez is passionate about continuing to lead City of Hialeah Educational Academy to new heights. He strongly believes that education is a powerful vehicle that leads to personal success and always encourages students to reach their highest potential. He is devoted to his students’ well-being and academic growth while preparing them to compete in a global market.
THIS IS A TOPIC { PROVE THE VERACITY OF NIGHTMARE’S AND ATRACTED ATETIONS , CHARTERS SCHOOL MEANING ???
NIGHTMARES MEANINGS ? WHEN PARENTS CAN’T PROTECT HIS KIDS AFTER CHATERS ABUSERS MEMBERS ARE MAYORS , POLICES OFICERS VERY CORRUPTS , TURN MY LIFE OUT SIDE DOWN
http://www.local10.com/news/hialeah-mayor-convicted-of-making-false-statements-violating-ethics-rules
THIS IS A TOPIC { PROVE THE VERACITY OF NIGHTMARE’S AND ATRACTED ATETIONS , CHARTERS SCHOOL MEANING ???
NIGHTMARES MEANINGS ? WHEN PARENTS CAN’T PROTECT HIS KIDS AFTER CHATERS ABUSERS MEMBERS ARE MAYORS , POLICES OFICERS VERY CORRUPTS , TURN MY LIFE OUT SIDE DOWN
http://www.local10.com/news/hialeah-mayor-convicted-of-making-false-statements-violating-ethics-rules
Cheating on a bunch of things this Mayors members of owner of a very Corrutcted i Charter Schools
Hialeah Education Academy . Inc
http://www.local10.com/news/hialeah-mayor-convicted-of-making-false-statements-violating-ethics-rules