On September 28, Eva Moskowitz closed her Success Academy charter schools for the day so her students, teachers, and families could attend a political rally. Alan Singer wonders why this is permitted? The students, the staff, and families are used as pawns to advance Moskowitz’s political goals. Certainly, the children don’t need more charters. They already attend one. They can’t attend two or three. Eva is using them for her own benefit.
Who pays the bills? Families for Excellent schools. They are not the families of the students. They are billionaires and hedge fund managers whose excellent schools are private and have a tuition of $50,000 or more. You surely won’t see them hanging out with the children at these political rallies.
Face it: the kids are pawns being cynically used to advance adult interests.
Why is it legal?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Rode the subway this day with kids attending rally. Nobody seemed very psyched.Teachers least of all. Didn’t really know what was happening but first words that entered my mind were “Eva Moskowitz.”
What this Success Academy rally reinforces is not Success Academy’s priorities, which we always knew, but how corrupt the ENTIRE charter movement is. They are corrupt the way that the Republicans who are endorsing Trump, or who are remaining silent about him are corrupt. They don’t have the ethical backbone to stand up and say when charters are wrong. That’s why Trump is so scary – because so many of the current Republicans in office have fallen in line behind him even the ones who absolutely know what is wrong with him — thinking that they can grab some of his power so they don’t care.
The same is true of charter folks. They REFUSE to call out what is wrong with Success Academy. They are like the Republicans who want the crumbs thrown their way and their own self-interest is far more important to them than calling out a seriously unhinged demagogue like Trump.
You have people like Robert Pondiscio who is the Ted Cruz of charter schools. A year or two back he mildly noted that charters could be for strivers — his willingness to acknowledge at least the mild possibility that Eva Moskowitz was Trumpian in her claims that she could educate all at-risk kids in large class sizes, or claimed she only suspended the violent 5 year olds when she had 20% suspension rates. I’m sure he was castigated because he has kept his mouth shut tightly since then. I think of him like Ted Cruz, who dared to speak out and now “endorsed” Trump.
A similar think happened with Democracy Builders who released a report that cited all the missing kids at SA schools. Did any of the charter schools support it? No way! They know better.
The more ethical charter school operators — and I use the word ethical lightly — may run their schools fine but their complete silence when seeing the true corruption of the charter schools who are getting the most resources — resources that are coming right from the mouths of the most vulnerable at-risk children — tells you that their silence is bought and paid for and they put their own self-interest above speaking out. Just like Ted Cruz and the Republican Party faithful that have fallen in line to endorse Trump by saying “but he agrees with us so who cares about how many of those immigrant or children or people without power get harmed as long as the people we like get helped. Especially if we benefit ourselves.”
The Republican Party refuses to condemn everything that is wrong with Donald Trump — not his political views, but his utter lack of honesty, concern for any person who doesn’t help him get where he can go, and unhinged belief that everything he does is right and good — they are as much to blame for Trump’s rise as Trump himself. He could not do it without the support of so many leaders in the Republican Party. At least there are a few Republicans who haven’t signed on.
I’d like to say there there were a few charter school or reform leaders showing as much courage as the few Republicans speaking out about Trump. The sad thing is that there are more Republicans willing to point out the unethical and wrong behavior of Donald Trump than there are people in the reform business or charter school operators willing to speak out about the wrong behavior of Eva Moskowitz.
And that tells you just how corrupted the entire reform movement has become. And why BLM has finally realized that their children were always pawns for charters, and if throwing their children under the bus was demanded in the pursuit of high test scores and even higher incomes and rewards, those reformers would do it in a second. Their ethics are similar to the Republicans who look the other way at what Trump is doing and refuse to call it out.
“. . . but their complete silence when seeing the true corruption of the charter schools who are getting the most resources. . .”
And one can say the same thing about 99.99% of the GAGA Good German administrators and teachers “but their complete silence. . .” which has lead to the holocaust of many young student’s hearts, minds, being and soul (if one is religiously inclined) the the nefarious malpractices of standards and standardized testing and the grading of students in the process of separating, sorting and ranking of the students.
“Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self-evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.”
Yes, it is a holocaust!
Duane, you make some good points, but I think your question’s premise is wrong:
“Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?”
I am not aware that public school teachers and administrators everywhere are in favor of using those tests to “sort and separate” students. And if anything, they would likely support the most resources and benefits going to the students who struggle.
Standardized tests have been around for what, 70 years? It is only recently that they were mis-used for political purposes. I don’t think most people believe the (pre-politics) success of George W. Bush and Donald Trump is because they scored high on standardized tests. The physicists and mathematicians who are likely to score high aren’t particularly well rewarded nor given positions of high power.
I don’t believe that the existence of standardized tests are the problem. It is the way they have become political tools that has little to do with education. Decades ago, a smart high school student who may have been subject to biases of principals or teachers while more favored students were rewarded had some more objective means to demonstrate academic prowess. That doesn’t mean there weren’t just as smart and worthy students who didn’t do well on the tests, but at least there was one additional standardized means for those who did beyond only the judgement of the teacher. Taking those standardized tests as a high school student was voluntary. When I was in grade school, we were given Iowa tests each year, but students didn’t know their scores (unless parents told them) and schools weren’t compared. Perhaps schools used those tests to some degree to “rank or sort”, but it was just as likely to be “wow this kid is performing high on this test but isn’t doing well in school, let’s take a closer look” than anything else. And low-scoring elementary school students weren’t ranked and sorted for the future — I suspect the top 10% of students at graduation had some students who scored high on those Iowa tests 8 years previously and some who didn’t because those scores were not used to rank but in context.
And this is why charter schools are NOT public schools. They are publicly funded schools that can thumb their noses at rules public schools are required to follow. In what world could a public school close down shop for the day and take their students to a political rally? And why do the parents allow it?
They probably called it an educational field trip….to watch democracy in action! NOT 😦
Exactly! That is how it was presented to the families
They do call it a rally, but the issue here is not Eva, SA parents are very scared of Eva…they see her as above them & so never question anything. When you get question matters that do not work, you stand out like a sore thumb & her stuff will do whatever it takes to frustrate you out. To quiet the storm, it’s always beetr to seek the help of NYPD & bring ina lawyer. The parents here are the issue.
YpM – I agree.
Even the intelligent parents at the school do not post questions to the management either out of fear, or out of blind trust. It resembles a cult
What I don’t understand BkParent is why parents keep their children at SA when they feel this way? There are so many other choices. My friend’s neighbors send their son to UWSA and said the Mom refers to it as a gulag. The word gulag should not be used in reference to a school. These accounts of the environment at SA bring to mind scenes from the Broadway musical, Matilda, and especially, the evil character Trunchcoat. I know they say truth is stranger than fiction, but really?
Beth,
I will play Devil’s Advocate here, answering your question:
why parents keep their children at SA when they feel this way?
There are a few forces at play, in my opinion.
First of all, parents and kids are thoroughly brainwashed into believing that the world of public schools is a horrendous one, with unsafe classrooms, incessant bullying, bad teachers which cannot be fired, etc. There is a lot of “us (dynamic, great and shiny) vs. them (shabby, backwards and indifferent)” talk going on.
Second, the “gulag” is a feature to 1. drive out the least desirable families, and 2. attract the “tiger mom” types driven by the results. In the end you get a much more dedicated group of families as opposed to a mixed bag when it comes to most NYC schools.
Third, SA has resources most NYC public schools lack – for example, 2 adults per classroom in earlier grades.
Bkparent, you make excellent points. SA likes to advertise itself as “free private school” to the affluent parents they covet. That means they have extraordinary resources to offer extras like catered lunches and highly paid chess coaches and free trips abroad.
They also (“wink wink nudge nudge”) make it clear that those disruptive — mostly poor — children that you find in public schools won’t be tolerated. No worry that your child’s teacher will have to spend any time, nor the school use any financial resources, to deal with those kids. They can foisted off to public schools, leaving all resources for the students who are up to snuff.
The question is why we have given charters the franchise (and excessive funding) to be the “private schools” of public education — the one job where public schools have always succeeded? Charters were supposed to serve the at-risk kids failed by public schools. Instead the “successful’ ones demand to be allowed to serve only the strivers among those kids, along with as many affluent students as they can convince to come. While public schools now have a disproportionate share of the most expensive students AND pick up the costs of the enormous overhead it takes to run the system that provides the safety net that allows charters to remove expensive children from their midst.
Fix typo in headline.
Why do parents allow their children and themselves to be used as pawns?
Ignorance!
Because they are required to do so, I would guess. Many charters have parent contracts to ensure compliance and home support. Not a bad thing in general but it can be used to counsel out kids. My neighbors sent their kid to a charter and they had to do many things to stay within the required commitment. One thing they had to do was participate in at least two fundraisers per year. And the charter was a for-profit. Therefore, they were free labor.
Needless to say, their kids were back in public schools the next year.
Here is what I suspect you would find:
Success Academy has a few schools intentionally located in high-income neighborhoods where the majority of parents are middle class or upper middle class and have college degrees. Less than 1/3, sometimes less than 25%, are poor.
Those parents always feel that they have a “choice” as to whether to participate. Some do, but are the participation rates at those schools as high as they are at the SA schools serving low-income families who see the strongly worded “suggestion” that they and their child be at the rally and take it in the manner in which it was intended.
It would be interesting to see if Success Academy Upper West and Union Square had 100% participation of parents and students at their rally. Or 75%. Or 50% And compare that participation rate with the rate at SA’s charters that are mostly low-income students.
If you don’t live an entitled lifestyle, you are easier to push around. The suspension rate for early elementary school age children at high income Upper West and Union Square is tiny — it can be 15 or 20 times LESS than the suspension rate at schools that serve mostly poor students. Now perhaps Eva Moskowitz and her defenders will claim that’s because those mostly white kids are just “better” and not nearly as violent. But maybe that isn’t true. Maybe their parents just don’t get pushed around as much. Or the third reason could be that the school doesn’t want to suspend the affluent kids as much. In any case, I wonder which of those reasons the SA defenders would say is true? Low income minority students ages 5 and 6 are just more violent and need suspending more? (I when I say more, that means 20x more!) Or they aren’t more violent but SA is just able to get away with suspending them more because their parents fight it less?
IF YOU DON’T LIVE AN ENTITLED LIFESTYLE, YOU ARE EASIER TO PUSH AROUND. And dupe. And ignore. And abuse. And exploit.
Why… (to foster a $1 trillion business sector?), “to develop diverse charter school organizations that produce different BRANDS (my caps) on a large scale.” Philanthropy Roundtable’s description of the goal of New Schools Venture Fund, an organization that received $22 mil. from Gates and, was founded by Kim Smith, who also was a founder of TFA, Bellwether and Pahara Aspen Institute.
Bonus to business- charter school debt returns 10-18% to Wall Street.
I was reading the letter the Obama Administration sent to the Ohio Department of Ed on the huge new charter expansion grant.
The charter cheerleaders in DC anticipate that the charter sector will continue to grow in Ohio. Ohio has the worst charter schools in the country but another huge expansion is in the works.
Apparently these decisions have already been made-we’re privatizing. How many public schools are they planning to defund and abandon?
Do the appointees in the Obama Administration ignore public schools because they’re winding them down? Is that why public school kids don’t have a single advocate in government?
What a shame that we can’t find a single public employee at the federal OR state level who has any interest in the unfashionable “public sector” schools.
https://www.scribd.com/document/323993880/Ohio-CSP-Letter-From-USDOE
Other than test and punish, the Obama administration has ignored public education for two terms. His test and punish policy has merely been a vehicle to destroy public schools. You could fairly say, they have done less than nothing.
retired teacher.. I agree but I would say that they have done MORE THAN NOTHING… THEY HAVE MADE A BAD SITUATION MUCH WORSE. 😦
And, “progressive” Sen. Sherrod Brown is on that bandwagon, too.
I want to mention a few things here.
First, on the question why parents and kids attend these rallies – because they do need more charters. Success Academy opened a lot of new elementary schools recently, with plans to move the kids to their own middle and high schools, which are not created yet. Thus, SA wants to keep momentum going so that these new bulk of elementary kids would have middle and high school seats waiting for them within the network as they age – and for that they would need to open these schools when the time comes.
Second, I am not entirely sure it is legal. Success Academy is 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and as such, based on this document:
https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organizations/the-restriction-of-political-campaign-intervention-by-section-501-c-3-tax-exempt-organizations
is “absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign”, and “violating this prohibition may result in denial or revocation of tax-exempt status…”
I am not a lawyer, though, and I am not sure of whether this rally falls into this category.
At the rate that the class gets weeded down through the years, Success Academy may never have enough incoming 9th graders to fill up even one decent sized high school.
Vast majority of the new schools were open mostly in high-income neighborhoods – UWS, Union Square, Williamsburg, Cobble Hill, etc. I am sure attrition (and suspension as you mentioned above) rates at these schools are lower than in other locations.
Perhaps, but Cobble Hill only tested 54 4th graders last year, so how many do they have in their 5th grade class? Even fewer than 54? (By the way, they started with 77 3rd graders the previous year, so they lost 30% of the starting 3rd graders before 4th grade testing.) Upper West only tested 61 5th graders last year. (In 3rd grade that class had 77 students).
How many 9th graders are in their high school now? There were 242 7th graders 2 years ago
And the gist from a recent article …
http://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2016/05/internal-documents-lay-out-threats-to-the-success-academy-model-101592
… is that Eva and Company are now upset,
believing that they did not get a good bang for the
$734,000 buck they shelled out for a rally in September
2015… in contrast to the aftermath of the similar 2014
rally almost exactly one year prior.
(Again from internal documents leaked to Eliza Shapiro at
POLITICO. The link is at the end of this email.)
It’s interesting that Eva appealed to the NY State
Supreme Court in her demand that the N.Y DOE
fork over $720,000 to run a pre-K program, when Eva
spends more than that on a failed 1-day publicity stunt.
3-quarters-of-a-million, in a one-day splurge,
doesn’t buy you what it used to, apparently.
10% of that $734,000 total went for beanies ($71,900)
and another 9% went for T-shirts ($62,795).
Did Eva sign off on blowing $134,000 for
freakin’ LL. Bean apparel to juice up a photo op?
The internal Success Academy document justifies this
thusly:
“T-shirts are a critical part of large-scale events,”
said one receipt. “They help get the event’s message
across, demonstrate mass participation, and provide
the primary visual that captures the public’s attention.”
The network also spent $539,923 on busing
and $59,375 on lunches for the rally.
Ahhh, that was money well-spent. … NOT!
Indeed, unlike the 2014 rally, which led to legislation
favorable to her schools, the 2015 rally was a bust for
Success Academy Schools, if not for the charter sector
in general.
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
POLITICO:
“While this year’s state budget included a funding boost for the
charter sector as a whole, it also contained a stinging loss for
Success: Proposed legislation that would have blocked the city
from having oversight power over pre-K programs in charters
failed at the eleventh hour of negotiations.”
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
Here’s the details on the rally and its expenses:
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
POLITICO:
“Success and Families for Excellent Schools, the pro-charter
group that officially organized the rallies, have denied
requests to disclose its spending on the events, but financial
documents obtained by POLITICO New York indicate the
network spent at least $734,000 on the 2015 rally.
“The spending included $71,900 for the beanies and $62,795
for the T-shirts, according to receipts submitted to Success’s
board of directors.
“ ‘T-shirts are a critical part of large-scale events,’ said one receipt.
‘They help get the event’s message across, demonstrate mass
participation, and provide the primary visual that captures the
public’s attention.’ ”
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
The network also spent $539,923 on busing and $59,375
on lunches for the rally.
The Albany rally represented just a small fraction of Success’s
total spending on political advocacy and its public image,
according to several internal financial documents.”
Lots more in the new article…
25% of Eva’s highest-level
management (5-out-of-20) left in the last year.
More than 50% left in just two years, while Keri
Hoyt, one of the rare executives who has
stayed with S.A. over decade, has also bailed.
Working for Eva must be challenging, indeed.
A data system that they had developed internally
— one that Eva had earlier believed would
turn into a lucrative product they could sell to charter
groups outside S.A. — has turned into a worthless
$20 million boondoggle. The guy behind it
has left the S.A. fold in a hurry.
There’s more, a lot more…
http://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2016/05/internal-documents-lay-out-threats-to-the-success-academy-model-101592
I could not have put it better. I am parent @ SA & have sent a written statement to Eva & told her, no more rallies & have had to block both her email messages and the principal’s as well. Removed myself from the telephone updates & plenty of communication that was quite a distraction this past school year. It has been peaceful ever since. Eva’s ambitions know no boundaries, it’s easy to move from liking her to resenting her. She can leave one with the impression that she sees herself as “a queen of the castle”, this Success Academy is about her success & not the kids & even worse, she knows that she has parents who are too scared to let her know that a number of things are not working. Hhhmmm, let’s give it to Eva, I guess it’s fair to say, she is good.
To answer the question of the post: Because they are private schools and not public ones. It’s that simple.
The Catholic schools that I attended used to close for Catholic saint’s days. Now as a kid that was a good thing!!!
Let me answer a few questions that were posted on original post (sorry for the tautology)
1. Certainly, the children don’t need more charters
In fact, they do! Success Academy opened a lot of elementary schools in the past couple of years. They need to be able to provide middle and high school seats within the network for these kids once the time comes. That means more charters!
And SA is trying not to lose momentum and capitalize on political gains in the past couple of years.
The rest is marketing and cult building.
2. Why is it legal?
I am not sure it is. Success Academy is section 501(c)(3) organization.
According to this document:
https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organizations/the-restriction-of-political-campaign-intervention-by-section-501-c-3-tax-exempt-organizations
they “are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign …”
and
“Violating this prohibition may result in denial or revocation of tax-exempt status…”
But I am not a lawyer, and thus cannot be completely sure if any violation occurred.
One thing I noticed in the press coverage of the rally is that parents were claiming their kids travelled from Queens and Staten Island to Brooklyn each day to attend SA schools there. But the only way that would be possible is if there were not enough students who lived in the district to fill those seats. Or if empty seats were being filled by non-district residents instead. It’s too bad the reporters never follow-up. How can there be thousands of students on the wait list and the charter school has to go to other boroughs to fill seats. For public schools, the demand is so high that they can’t even accommodate the students who live in the zone. SA schools give priority to an entire district — that is the size of as many as 10 or 15 elementary school zones — and yet they are still accepting students who live in other boroughs? Why?
Has anyone noticed that this site does not attract the same quantity of Success Academy apologists as it did in the past? It’s probably because the more commenters challenged these visitors, the worse the organization and their schools looked.
Click over to the Huffington Post Article and they are out in full force. Despite the many visits this site receives, I’m sure HuffPo gets tons more, so I am not surprised this is where the SA apologists choose to wage their battle in the court of public opinion. What I find most notable is the blatant lying. In the comment section Khari Shabazz, apparently an SA Principal, claims that politicians are in the pocket of the UFT and that their headquarters on Wall Street is evidence of this. How conveniently he neglects to mention that pro-charter advocates have spent more money in Albany than the teacher’s unions in recent years and that Success Academy’s offices are also on Wall Street! In one response, he lies and he demonstrates a lack of critical thinking skills. This is what what SA wants in leadership? Yes, I guess they do.
Success Academy’s supporters are Trumpian in their claims.
Honesty is for little people, not charters. The ends justifies the means. Like Trump, their certainty that everything they do is right and good borders on pathological. No doubt they all pray Trump is elected so they can go on repeating statements that have as much relationship to the truth as Donald Trump’s statements. Lies are fine as long as you can boast about your prowess and reap in the riches.
I am new to the debate and have been researching both sides of the fence. For all of the negative things said about Success Academy and their CEO, one big question remains unanswered:
What is the motive?
Why is Success Academy carrying out its agenda? Is their CEO a mindless zealot? Is she stealing hedge fund dollars that are earmarked for her schools? I’ve not seen anyone explain what they think the main agenda is behind all of the actions they are so opposed to. I’m wondering if anyone can explain.
Stray,
It would take at least half an hour to bring you up to date on the reasons Success Academy is criticized. One, it boasts of its great test scores but gets those scores by excluding kids who are likely to get low scores or pushing out those who do. It actively selects its students and has high attrition rates. Its CEO is paid nearly $600,000 a year. It organizes days of political activism where children and parents dress in identical T-shirts and demand more money and more charters, effectively intimidating legislators. Its board of directors is comprised of financiers, mainly hedge fund managers, who raise millions for the school. The teacher turnover is very high. Children are required to follow a code of discipline that is robotic. Its allies donate huge sums to politicians to win support for charter schools (e.g., Cuomo). It went to court to fight a public audit. It went to court to fight compliance with the city’s requirements for the pre-K program. It fights any public oversight or accountability. It aggressively seeks to oust public schools from their space. It used political clout to force the city to give it free space. It is divisive, boastful, and hostile to public education. Etc.