Alan Singer is not impressed with the sensational test scores posted by Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy.
“On its website, Success Academy reported “For the ninth consecutive year, Success Academy Charter Schools have scored among the highest-performing schools in New York State,” claiming that “students with disabilities and English Language Learners at Success Academy schools not only surpassed their peers statewide, but also outperformed students without disabilities and native English speakers, respectively, across New York.”
“But a closer look at a successful Success school shows how selective recruitment and pressure to leave “cooks the books.” According to the website Inside Schools, Success Cobble Hill of “got to go” fame, with 469 students grades K-5, has 10% of its students with registered disabilities and 5% who are English Language Learners, compared to 16% of students citywide with registered disabilities and 14% who are ELL. Students with disabilities and ELL are also very broad categories. For teaching and testing, there is a big difference between a middle-class student who has a 504 designation for mild attention deficit syndrome and needs additional time to complete tests and assignments, and a disruptive student with severe emotional issues or a student with serious learning difficulties. ELL students range through four categories from new arrivals who speak no English and may never have attended school in their home country to children who are very literate in their first language and are rapidly mastering English. An accurate comparison of schools requires knowing who the students are that attend the schools.”
The real damage done by Success Academy is that it “succeeds” by playing a game that many educators believe is inherently meaningless and harmful to real learning.
As Singer writes:
“It may just be that success at Success demonstrates the illegitimacy of the entire national high-stakes testing regime. Before celebrating Success Academy test scores and granting the network waivers to hire uncertified teachers, New York State education officials should investigate how the schools operate. If they do magic, they deserve credit. If it is a smoke and mirrors show that produces test scores through selective recruitment and the intimidation of children and families, it should be shut down.”
I would put a different spin on the conclusion.
Whether or not the scores are valid misses the point. Education cannot be measured by standardized tests. Standardized tests corrupt education. Getting the right answer is less important than asking the right question. What matters more than scores? The four C’s. Character. Citizenship. Creativity. Compassion.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
‘Online college courses are a rapidly expanding feature of higher education, yet little research identifies their effects relative to traditional in-person classes. Using an instrumental variables approach, we find that taking a course online, instead of in-person, reduces student success and progress in college. Grades are lower both for the course taken online and in future courses. Students are less likely to remain enrolled at the university. These estimates are local average treatment effects for students with access to both online and in-person options; for other students, online classes may be the only option for accessing college-level courses.’
can someone explain to me why all of ed reform is pushing these classes into public schools?
if the results are poor for college students why would anyone ever push public schools to adopt them?
All that Gates money must be blinding them or something. They can’t see over the huge stacks?
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“Can someone explain to me why all of ed reform is pushing these classes into public schools?”
That question has a one-letter answer:
$
Lots and lots of $
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In my experience the motivating factor was graduation rate. Six or seven years ago, I was tapped to run a computer-based credit recovery program in our school. I will not comment on how I perceived its success. I will relate, however, that my administration specifically told me that the money we spent on the peogram was because of the graduation rate part of no child. NCLB meant that schools were constantly trying to find ways to keep off the list. One black mark in the wrong column put you on the list and got your name in the paper and on and on. Our program was strictly to check the box of graduation rate.
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and very little regulation
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And another is belief that teachers are stupid and that we need to “teacher proof” our educational delivery. No understanding, there, of the transactional nature of learning–of how much it depends on relationships.
Before the USDE decided that education was supposed to be Stairmastery–remember the race to the top Common Core stairway video?–I always thought that that education was
a. An enormously rich, varied, and community-creating hand-off whereby many, many older individuals passed on to many, many younger individuals what they knew and cared about in art, music, literature, history, science, mathematics, philosophy–you know, in culture; and
b. A garden of many, many forking paths for young people to explore so that they might discover and follow those suited to their disparate talents and interests–differing paths leading to enormously varied adult roles in a highly complex, highly diverse, highly pluralistic society; and
c. Lighting a fire, not filling a bucket; and
d. A delight, an adventure, a satisfaction of innate curiosity, and a great, good time.
Turns out I was all wrong.
Education is competing in a race up a stairway. It’s Arnie Duncan’s Race to the Top. (The dummies always go for the sports metaphors.)
But these people–the technocrats–think that they can do away with the sharing, modeling, and mentoring (a and b, above) and deliver it, on the cheap, at enormous profit, via machine. What are the cost of schools? Well, those costs are primarily in facilities and wages. But what if you could dramatically reduce the latter? That’s been the plan all along. That’s why the Plutocrats bought national standards–they wanted one invariant list to correlate their software to in order to scale their product and reduce development costs.
But they ran into a snag–all the studies show abysmal completion rates for online classes. So now, their goal, I think, is 400 kids in a room with one “instructor” who is there to keep them on task. Cheaper, still, by far.
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A piece that I wrote some time ago on this push for online delivery of standards-correlated educational materials in K12 schools:
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“Education cannot be measured by standardized tests. Standardized tests corrupt education.”
Standardized tests can NOT measure how good a teacher is.
Standardized tests can NOT measure how much a student was taught and how much he/she remembered days, weeks and months later.
Standardized tests ignore the ravages of living in poverty for children.
A January 2013 study out of Stanford provided proof that poverty is the problem and not teachers. In fact, that same study provided evidence that unionized public school teachers in the United States were doing a better job teaching children that live in poverty than the countries the U.S. is compared to on the international PISA tests.
“The report also found:
“There is an achievement gap between more and less disadvantaged students in every country; surprisingly, that gap is smaller in the United States than in similar post-industrial countries, and not much larger than in the very highest scoring countries.
The report also found:
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/january/test-scores-ranking-011513.html
That report out of Stanford is not the only report to discover these results by comparing the actual facts and not the crap dished out by the Alt-Right lying media machine that is supported by extremist billionaires like Richard Mercer, the Waltons, the Koch brothers, etc.
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Singer is again spot on.
Youth suicide rate in US.
http://amp.usatoday.com/story/356539001/
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I have gone on Twitter and replied to Ms. Moskowitz, challenging her to prove her theories by opening a 1000+ student HS. I know that the readers will be shocked that I never got a reply. There is a reason that there are no SA high schools, because they know that the crap they pull in first graders would last about 30 seconds.
Ms. Ravitch has challenged every charter operator to take over an entire school district and prove that their “theories” work. I’m also sure the readers of this blog would also be shocked to know that her challenge has not be taken on…
It’s all a union busting money grab.
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Yes, I used to call it “the KIPP Challenge,” years ago: take on an entire low-performing district and include every child.
Now it will be “the Eva Challenge.”
Not to worry. They won’t accept. KIPP defenders said that to take on an entire district would distort their mission, whatever that is.
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We know what that mission is. It’s $$$.
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“Succe$$ful Mi$$ion”
The mi$$ion is dollar$
For Double-0-Eva
The tools are her “scholars”
The gadgets of diva
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Alan, Diane and other commenters are right, of course, so I needn’t reiterate what has been stated.
I would add a perspective that is seldom offered: The practices that raise test scores not only fail to address Diane’s 4 C’s. The school practices, at Success and elsewhere, that raise test scores actually inhibit real intellectual development and fluid intelligence. And, as many know, the chase for achievement often includes anxiety and stress, which also inhibit brain function.
There is abundant evidence that the scores are a sham. If they weren’t a sham, they’d be meaningless. But the process also harms children, which is the hidden shame.
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Duane said even if we all agree standardized tests are meaningless, it is still fine to point out how Eva Moskowitz cooks the books so here I go.
NY Times 11/03/2008 “The Education Crusader – Slideshow”:
“Greeting parents coming to pick up their children. Ms. Moskowitz asks a lot of participation from parents, as a condition of admitting their children. She told one group, “If you know you cannot commit to all that we ask of you this year, this is not the place for you.”
Aug. 2017 MDRC report:
“Of the lottery winners in the sample (both kindergarten and first-grade entrants), about 82 percent attended a welcome meeting. Approximately 61 percent of lottery winners attended student registration, 54 percent attended a uniform fitting, and 50 percent attended a dress rehearsal…….Ultimately, about 50 percent of lottery winners enrolled in Success Academy schools in the 2010-2011 school year.”
In other words, the students who actually enroll have been culled into those whose families are most motivated to get them an education. The ones without the very strongest motivation are weeded out before enrollment.
“Charter Network Attrition in Grades K-4 in the 2013-14 School Year” — Table from WNYC’s 2016 study comparing the attrition rates of 9 charter school networks in NYC:
Success Academy had the second HIGHEST attrition rate! Out of 9 charter networks, the one with the best test scores loses the most students! 609 students disappeared in a single year. 7 charter networks teaching similar students under the same rules as Success Academy kept a much higher % of their students. Only one of the 9 networks lost a higher % of students than Success Academy did. Just one.
So, we have half the lottery winners who don’t enroll. Of the ones who do enroll, they leave at a rate that is higher than all but one charter network despite having a coveted seat in the top performing charter network in the state.
And there is more! From the Aug. 2017 MDRC report:
“Sixty percent of the control group members (i.e. children whose family entered them in a Success Academy lottery but they chose a different school) who did not attend Success Academy schools performed at or above grade level on their 3rd grade NY State reading exams. These percentages are at least 10 points higher than the percentage of students scoring at or above grade level in the New York City district schools in the neighborhoods surrounding Success Academy schools.”
In other words, the children whose names were entered in the lottery performed significantly better than average on state tests regardless of whether they attended Success Academy or a public school.
So, let’s recap what we know with the most limited data that is available for Success Academy:
The students who ENTER their lottery are a significantly higher preforming group of students and the ones who did NOT attend Success Academy scored much higher on standardized tests than the average NYC student. (Aug. 2017 MDRC report)
The students who WIN their lottery among this higher performing bunch are told in no uncertain terms that if their parents cannot commit to all that is asked of them, they should find another school. HALF of them find another school and do not enroll. Leaving Success Academy with the most motivated group of parents and students who came from the already higher performing group of students who enter their lottery. (NY Times report that followed Eva Moskowitz interacting with parents; Aug. 2017 MDRC report that noted only 50% of the lottery winners enrolled with a shrinking number after each pre-enrollment meeting.)
Of the students remaining after an already high performing group is culled into one that contains ONLY the ones whose families are the most motivated and willing to commit to all that is asked of them — those highly motivated students who actually ENROLL — the attrition rate at Success Academy is higher than every other charter network serving similar students, except one. (2016 WNYC table) Which is surprising since Success Academy is not just the top-performing school but also one with millions in donations to lavish on the students who enroll.
Anyone who says this isn’t “cooking the books” is just not paying attention. It takes a special chutzpah and disregard for honesty to compare your test results to a failing public school and claim you are teaching the exact same students but your secret recipe turns them all into scholars.
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That is a shocking stat. You win the lottery but change your mind. So when they crow about all those “waiting lists” we should just assume half are merely window shopping?
As Success has four Puerto Rico debt predators on its board, lets dispense with the idea that they are looking to help children of color. The reality is that they are aggressive pushers of privatization for the purpose of busting unions and pushing economic austerity.
Anyone can get good results by isolating high achievers, NYC has had specialized schools for decades. But Success has no idea what to do with disruptive kids or their families. So they stack the deck by their lottery application process, scaring off winners and then counseling out troublesome students for public schools to deal with.
Those are the methods we know about – but they could also be selectively marketing (sending postcards to families with good credit, for example). They could be doing background checks, and they could be assigning ‘fixers’ to discourage lottery winners they don’t want.
Because there is no transparency, we don’t know. But a new consortium of “independent” charter schools is promising not to cherrypick anymore by actively recruiting the highest need students to enroll. In truth, this is a requirement of the NY Charter Law that Success and their billionaire backers have flouted since 1998.
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That’s why the real investigation needs to be of the SUNY Charter Institute. They are legally obligated to establish charters that serve at-risk kids. They are legally obligated to do oversight of charters. They are legally obligated to do real oversight when they hear that the highest performing charter school in the state loses a high % of students than almost every other charter network teaching similar children. Especially when they have had a litany of complaints from parents of at-risk children getting pushed out. Especially when there are documented got to go lists from one principal and a high ranking Success Academy administrator responds with an e-mail reminding him not to put that in writing. Especially when a DIFFERENT celebrated principal admits she doesn’t send renewal forms with kids she thinks aren’t up to snuff. Especially when a THIRD principal oversaw the “model” teacher caught on video haranguing and punishing a child for not answering a question correctly. And ripping up a paper.
Instead of investigating this, the SUNY Charter Institute ENABLED this. Their investigation to any complaint that has evidence that makes it into the press is: “Eva Moskowitz says it was an anomaly so we are happy.” Their investigation to any complaint the many at-risk parents have made about how their struggling kid has been drummed out that ISN’T reported in the press is ignore.
Then they grant Eva Moskowitz’ wish to drop priority for at-risk kids. Then they grant Eva Moskowitz’ wish to locate school in the most affluent neighborhoods — as many as she wants — with the new rule in place so that only the children fortunate or rich enough to live in that district get first dibs on seats. Then they grant her wish for early renewals — years early! — because who needs to really look closely at her school. Then they grant her wish to just train their own teachers so they can be sure to avoid any teachers with consciences who might rat them out.
If anyone should be on the “got to go” list it is the staff and board of the SUNY Charter Institute, hand-picked by Andrew Cuomo who just happens to get huge donations from the same big donors who give millions to Success Academy. Just a coincidence I’m sure.
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The Measure of Success
Success for Eva
Test scores measure
Succe$$ful diva
Very clever
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Diane’s four c’s— Character. Citizenship. Creativity. Compassion.
Compare these with Ken Kay’s four Cs in the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21) project:
Critical thinking, Communication, Collaboration, and Creativity.
Creativity is the only common word, and Diane wisely does not call this a “skill.”
Historians of education know that the “21st skills” are not distinctive to this century with the possible exception of tech savvy. The Partnership for 21st Skills (P21) was a project of Ken Kay a long time lobbyist for the tech industry Diny Golder-Dardis, Special Advisor and Co-Founder of P21.
Diny Golder-Dardisis the Executive Director of JES & Co. In 2012, JES & received a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for $749,846 to support its work on the Achievement Standards Network, Common Core State Standards, and New Network Services. “The Achievement Standards Network provides access to machine-readable representations of learning objectives published by education agencies and organizations.
I will have more about the connections among these initatives later on, but in the meantime consider the difference between the skill sets endorced by founding members of P21 and those forwarded by Diane.
The founding members of P21 were: AOL Time Warner Foundation, Apple Computer, Inc., Cable in the Classroom, Cisco Systems, Inc., Dell Computer Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, SAP and, and
the National Education Association, and
US Department of Educaion
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