There is a website called Glass Door,where employees rate their employers.
The most startling reviews have been posted by teachers (former and current) at Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter chain in New York City.
https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Success-Academy-Charter-Schools-Reviews-E381408_P2.htm
The last one, posted October 18, is titled “Flee, everyone else is.”
As you read other reviews, they are similar.
The last time this happened, Glass Door was suddenly flooded with rave reviews.
Take a look as soon as you can, before the trolls and sock puppets arrive.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
But the Obama Administration tells me they are “empowered” by “employee voice” so they don’t need labor unions or workplace regulations! The Best and the Brightest don’t need unions- ed reform managers and CEO’s are just…better people.
You mean that’s not working? Their “voices” are being ignored by the CEO? Never happen.
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“STOP EXPANDING and focus on improving the existing schools! Focus on improving morale – whenever something went wrong, the narrative often deteriorated into “you’re failing our children” and that was incredibly frustrating when everyone was working so hard. I think this led to high turnover even more than the long hours. Focus on hiring mature, experienced school leaders with a background in managing a team of teache…”
That will never, ever happen.
The growth strategy depends on more kids in seats, quickly. They’re expanding operations based on current revenue because they can’t up the revenue – they can’t raise prices and they can’t raise tax revenue for new schools.
They admitted this in the emails that were FOI’ed out of the Detroit EAA. It was a high growth strategy based on current (capped) revenue. That depends on shifting money forward, always forward.
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It sounds like something out of Kafka or Orwell. All the staff are under 30, lunch is almost non existent for the peons and the turnover rate is phenomenal. Having a personal life is out of the question with the long hours and the paper work burden that is taken home.
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A character in a new book, by New York author, Francine Prose, is a TFA teacher.
The thoughts of the teacher, Sonya, are described, on p.116-7, “Please merciful God don’t let some parent complain…(My) principal makes all of the teachers feel as if she is on their side. But, the principal has her own back to watch, her own career to consider….(reflecting on a class situation, Sonya continues trying to soothe herself), as they used to say in Teach for America, every mistake is a teachable moment. A lesson. In this case, a lesson (the students had asserted different views and Sonya had joined in with comments), about prompt intervention, about ending instructive, interesting ….discussion….”
That’s what the plutocratic privatizers fear and have stamped out- education presented as democracy. Instead, the richest 0.1% want, control and the rigidity of conformist thought.
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The GlassDoor review fiasco has been happening for quite a while. I collected the first 24 reviews here a couple years ago, and Schools Matter made an article of it here:
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2014/08/citizen-jacks-compendium-of-teacher.html
A funny thing happened after this. In the next few days, GlassDoor was flooded with positive reviews, with verbatim quotes. Apparently, you can’t sue to remove these reviews, as Glassdoor insists on keeping all reviews, no matter how negative. Instead, Eva ordered her staff to flood GlassDoor with positive reviews about how wonderful it is to teach at Success Academy school, and very likely handed out a paper with talking points on what to say — that’s my guess, or why the verbatim sentences and phrases?
One of the CON’s in one of the fake reviews was something like, “You just love working here so much, you hate to leave at the end of the school day.”
Yeah, that sounds credible. (COUGH! COUGH!) Seriously, if you’re gonna scam people, you have to be a littler more believable or subtle than that.
Here’s what I wrote at the time:
Hey, why don’t we hear from the current and former instructors at Eva Moskowitz’ SUCCESS ACADEMY Network? Thankfully, we can actually do that, and hear the unvarnished truth that they have anonymously shared, thanks to the “Glass Door” website that provides employees an opportunity to share the good, the bad, and the ugly about the people for whom they work, and the workplace culture that they’ve experienced.
(Get it? The “glass door” gives transparency.)
Finally… FINALLY (!!!) in post-Michael-Winerip era, there is a free and independent entity that is beyond the control and clutches of Eva and her ruthless multi-million dollar PR leviathan. Indeed, Glass Door’s posted motto or promise is:
“Your trust is our top concern, so companies can’t alter or remove reviews.”
http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Success-Academy-Charter-Schools-Reviews-E381408_P2.htm?sort.sortType=OR&sort.ascending=true
I just cut’-n-pasted the first 24 teacher reviews from the site above (settle in, it’s a long read if you care to read it all.)
Often I found myself asking the question, “Did I just read what I THOUGHT I read?”
For example, “FORMER SUCCESS ACADEMY TEACHER NO. 11” said that Eva banned any administrators or even teachers from writing letters of reference for SUCCESS teachers—current or former—who wished to teach elsewhere. As this teacher put it put it:
“They will not give you reference letter; its against company policy.”
What is this? The Hotel California? “You can check out any time you like but you’ll never be able to work again as a teacher…. that is, if I, Eva Moskowitz, have anything to say about it.” It’s like… “If I can’t control you—i..e. you leave or I push you out—I won’t help you with continuing your teaching career elsewhere.” (So much for the charter industry’s professed claim — and one of their primary rationales for being started in the first place — that they will share their innovations and best practices with the traditional public schools.)
In my two decades of teaching in the traditional public schools, I’ve never heard of a administrator acting like this.
Some of them are even “LEAD TEACHERS”—NO. 17 is both a “CURRENT TEACHER” and a “LEAD TEACHER.”
A common refrain is that the 60-80 hour weeks make it utterly impossible to have any kind of personal life or “work-life balance”, and how they “work you until you are sick” and don’t care about your well-being.
Oh, and the workload and lifestyle make it impossible to have a family or children. But hey, wait a sec. Eva was allowed enough time that have and raise her three kids. As Orwell put it in ANIMAL FARM… “All of us are equal, but some are more equal than others.” And she makes over $ 480,000 / year. (Since then, Eva’s salary has gone up to $600,000.)
Perhaps my favorite comment came from a teacher comparing Eva’s personality and behavior to that of a Meryl Streep movie villain (from a few years back). “FORMER TEACHER NO. 14 compared working at SUCCESS ACADEMY to…
” ‘THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA’ — except not funny and you actually can damage hundreds of kids lives in the process.
“Any advice will fall on deaf ears because hers is a method that works well. Google ‘sick system’ and you will find SUCCESS, in its shiny, primary colored glory.”
Any-hoo, go to that link to read the first 24 reviews ever:
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2014/08/citizen-jacks-compendium-of-teacher.html
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What is an “Associate Teacher?” Wonder what they are paid, what they do, and what their credentials are. I
Also on the PR front, note that Politico Morning Education news is sponsored by The 74, with opening “news” and closing sales pitch. This is to say they are now officially shills for the haters of all things not favorable to charters and not pleasing to the billionaires who fund The 74.
I am waiting for Politico’s reporting on education to become more like Education Week, where nine foundations “sponsor” reports on their favorite topics while the writers on those topics, and management, claim to have editorial independence.
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Recently, there was some severing of ties, between Politico’s management and ownership, resulting in some of the top people leaving. IMO, it’s always been iffy in terms of objectivity. There was the puff piece about Arne Duncan’s departure from the Dept. of Ed. And, Politico, seems eager to print quotes that assign some questionable politicians, the label “progressive”. The distinction between false equivalences, like the richest 0.1%’s campaign spending vs, that of worker collectives, who represent millions of citizens, living in the places where they vote, appeared to be, off the publication’s radar, in a piece awhile back.
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Thanks for the background. I knew about the puffery and willingness to just recycle press releases.
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Pretty much perfect–thanks, Diane, for bringing this to our attention.
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The reviews of Harlem Village academy are equally as awful. It’s so bad that some parents even reviewed it on yelp. https://www.yelp.com/biz/harlem-village-academies-new-york
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Great anti-reform T-shirt: FLEE, everyone else is.
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Like!
I can see it now, bunches of teachers and students all wearing their mandatory SA shirts running out shouting “I can’t take it anymore”.
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Okay, I paid the price (even though the event was free) to run to St. Louis last night to hear Eva speak about her supposedly highly successful business adventure in education. It was appropriately held in the Business School and not the Education School of St. Louis University (a Jesuit Catholic university). Y’all owe me for that five and half hours of wasted time. At the next NPE conference I expect someone to buy me a beer!
Setting: The commons area of the Cook School of Business. Cash bar and a mini buffet of appetizers (of course it included toasted ravioli, it’s St. Louis.) First hour dedicated to getting all there and networking-many seemed to know each other. There were about 80 people (90 if counting the staff of the event) with about 35 unclaimed name tags. The crowd was overwhelmingly business casual attire dressed. (I was way out of place with my bagging khakis-hey I’ve lost a bit of weight-Orwell quoting t-shirt and white Converse All-Star high top tennies.) The crowd was also overwhelmingly white and male with around 8 or so African Americans, no other discernible “other” minorities. Ratio of men to women, 3-1. Hey, it was in the School of Business, what else should I have expected. Eva no where in sight!
I just observed, although I probably should have asked questions of those there: Why are you here? What do you know about SA?, etc. . . . After the networking we were shuffled down to “Busch Auditorium” (yep we’re in St. Louis) that looked to hold around 450 or so. So the audience of 80 was spread rather thing. The Dean of the Business School introduced Brenda Talent the CEO of the Show Me Institute (Rex Sinquefield founder and main financier-think of him as the Missouri equivalent of the Koch Brothers) Talent is married to the ultra conservative former senator from Missouri-Jim Talent. Talent introduced Eva. She spoke for about 30 minutes and then there was a Q&A session where the audience had written down questions from which Talent chose which one to ask. I didn’t bother to write one down because at that point I knew the Q&A was bogus. That lasted about 15 minutes and then back up to the commons area for the food and more schmoozing. I left at that point.
Eva’s presentation was quite insipid at best featuring two very brief videos of the students and of a large rally for charter schools. The audience was quiet with a smattering of polite applauses here and there. Eva even commented what a nice crowd it was, especially in comparison to those in NYC where she might get pelted with rotten tomatoes. She seemed relieved to have a “friendly” audience as she pointed out that the NYT, the mayor, the union and its detractors were out to crush her little empire. She seemed quite on the defensive in that regard.
She spouted many of the edudeformer lies and prevarications:
Success Academy is a “public charter school” (public charter school was repeated many times)
Public schools “miseducate the vast majority of children”, that there is “a crisis in public education”.
There is a lack of “rigor and engagement” in the public schools.
She stated that “We’re a joyful community”. (tell that to those commentators on glassdoor, eh).
They play a lot of games, that “games are a great way to learn”.
That she is fighting, “threatening a monopolistic system” and “if the US doesn’t fix education others [countries] will pass us and we’ll end up with a permanent underclass”. (now public education is to be held guilty for the capitalist excesses? Wait a minute isn’t SA a ‘public’ school?)
All quotes are Eva’s.
Nothing new at all other than her spirited defense of herself and SA’s methods and pedagogy. She even fluffed off the “got to go list” principal and the “rip and redo” teacher saying she had personally spoken with them, they were young and not very experienced and that those were learning experiences for the two.
There you have it. Including travel, 5 hours of wasted time.
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Thanks for your willingness to endure the insipid pitch.
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Your welcome. I’m just worried about what Sinquefield has up his sleeve in bringing her here to speak as he’s been trying to buy his will here in the Show Me State for a number of years now. Wonder how much it cost?
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Thanks, Duane, I owe you a beer.
I should have warned you that Eva’s routine is to play victim. Everyone is picking on her. She is fighting for the kids, but the union, the mayor, and everyone else is against her.
Except the hedge fund managers and billionaires, who come up with many millions to buy the governor’s support so she can have free public space, so she can get paid $500,000 a year, so she can expand at will.
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We’ll have to meet up then. Any idea what a local “working class” beer is in Oakland?
You are right about the persecution complex. The thing is she didn’t even need to go that route last night as the audience was quite in her corner. I’d bet that 99% of those in attendance didn’t have a clue about the “got to go list” or the “rip and redo” incidents.
I felt very out of place last night, as if in alternative world. It certainly didn’t have the inclusive feel that the NPE conferences have (even those are a little over the top for me, but then I’m more a meat and potato kind of guy when it comes to “intellectual dining”.
Although she did say in response to a question about expanding that she was interested only in perfecting her schools and only wanted to expand in NYC (to 50k students I think). The “finance metric” quote was from that question I think. It sounds like the finance metrics aren’t very favorable at the moment. Wonder if she is losing some of that hedge fund and billionaire financing?
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It would not surprised me one bit if Donald Trump gave Eva Moskowitz a high ranking job turning public education into a “business” worthy of Trump. He admires her for her work. And like Donald Trump, she has never had a problem saying the most offensive and outrageous racist lies (“so many violent 5 year olds win our lottery we have no choice to suspend them”; “There are millions of parents just dying for a spot in one of our schools, and we know that when they get one, half of them are just dying to leave our schools but that’s just because they are ignorant fools and it has nothing to do with our targeted humiliation of their low-performing children”.)
Like Donald Trump, the press just goes along with the lies. When every other word out of your mouth is misleading, the press doesn’t know what to do with it and they are too lazy to do homework. Without the videotape scandal, they are stenographers reporting any press release handed to them.
I call out Ben Chapman, at the NY Daily News, and Beth Fertig at WNYC as the two stenographer/reporters who show no curiosity about the missing at-risk children at Success Academy and demonstrate an unusual amount of genuflecting toward Ms. Moskowitz. They could be the Fox News of Republican policy reporting, where all the good news is the only thing fit to print and if something ugly seems to be going on, it’s their job to come up with whatever nonsense they can point to prove that Eva Moskowitz and her schools are blameless and perfect. Ben Chapman destroyed the life of a 16 year old boy because he saw a chance to destroy one of those “good” public schools (Bronx Science) which admit students by a test that can’t be gamed by Success Academy. Like Eva Moskowitz, Chapman delights in finding some ugly thing to print about a public schools while he offers unconditional love and praise toward her schools. And if a few kids are destroyed because it enables Success Academy’s public criminalizing of their behavior at age 5 so their failure is all on the kid — well that’s just something Chapman is fine with. And some idiotic 16 year old kid’s life is ruined because Chapman chose to report a real story in the most exploitative and ugly way to smear an entire school, well, that’s just the price that kid will have to pay because Chapman’s career is far more important.
None of this glass door reports matters because the truth has been warped by a media that is easily swayed by big money guys and power that excuses every ugly action by Trump and Moskowitz by breathlessly telling us “both sides are just as terrible so it doesn’t matter”. If you want to know why twice as many people think Donald Trump is more honest than Hillary Clinton, they are getting their news from the same “majority” who thinks Eva Moskowitz really cares about teaching all at-risk kids and not only the ones who make her look good.
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I read 233 reviews, going back to 2011, and saved all of them. Here are some of the things that struck me about the reviews taken as a whole:
(1) Success Academies (SA), unlike almost any other real public school system, has enough funding to provide teachers with daily snacks, a computer, a cell phone, and other technology.
(2) Even many of the reviewers who rated SA highly admitted that the workday was long and/or that there is not time for a life outside of work.
(3) The “pro” points of loving the students, wanting to make a difference, etc. are applicable to pretty much any school.
(4) A number of the reviews state that other classes are suspended literally for months when it comes time to prepare for standardized tests, meaning that students are not being taught for the full school year in anything other than English and math.
(5) SA schools use a scripted curriculum. Ironically, one of the reviews even praises that as being positive.
(6) Associate teachers, whom I assume to be beginning teachers without a credential, are not given a lunch break because they are required to supervise students during that time.
(7) There is an extremely high attrition rate for both teachers/staff and students–either due to voluntary actions or being forced to leave.
(8) The high turnover rate of workers means that young, immature, and inexperienced people can [and do] quickly and easily attain positions of authority and are not good role models.
(9) Taking any time off at all is looked upon as a lack of commitment.
(10) Management rules by fear, and so do the teachers. My guess is that this could, over the course of years, turn kids away from becoming–or even wanting to become–lifelong learners.
(11) Some of the rosy reviews seemed inauthentic to me, and I wondered if people had been told to write them or whether they had been written by shills.
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