Here are two of my favorite bloggers, reacting to the same article: Elizabeth Green on Eva Moskowitz.
Elizabeth Green in co-founder, CEO, and editor-in-chief of Chalkbeat, which covers education in several cities. Chalkbeat is funded by the Gates Foindatuon, the zwalton Family Foundation, and several others.
I would describe the article as loving. Peter sees it as worshipful. Mercedes says it is perplexing.
Read it yourself and come up with your own adjective.
Peter Greene read Elizabeth Green’s worshipful portrayal of Eva Moskowitz and commented in his inimitable stye.
This is the short summary:
In the end, Green seems ready to dump Democracy, scrap public schools, and elevate an autocratic Beloved Leader CEO charter system. In a way, it’s fitting that in an era in which some people are willing to turn to a one-person authoritarian form of the Presidency under Beloved Leader Trump, some folks will also yearn for the same system for schools, arguing that she may be a dictator, she may be autocratic, she may require the suspension of Democracy, but I think she means well, and she makes the trains run on time. Just don’t look too closely at where the train is running or exactly who gets to ride on board.
What surprised me was that in her fulsome praise for Eva and charter schools, Green makes no mention of the NAACP report calling for a charter moratorium or EdNext’s poll showing plummeting support for charter schools in only the last year or the cascading number of charter frauds and scandals. It is a very rosy and one-sided picture that she paints.
Mercedes Schneider sees a somewhat more nuanced article.
“The piece reads as if it were written by two people: One who is impressed with Moskowitz and her schools (and who perhaps wishes to please Moskowitz with this article), and another who sees the problems of the likes of Moskowitz continuing to expand a hedge-funded, education empire that could buy its way to doing whatever it so desires– with the term, “whatever” holding dark and damaging overtones.
“Green might have been trying to include both pros and cons of Moskowitz and a Moskowitz-styled education, but the concerns Green expresses cannot be reasonably reconciled with the language of admiration included in the selfsame article.”
Mercedes sees an undertone of worry and concern in the article.
What do you think?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
My first thoughts: When Moses climbed down from the mountain after 40 days and 40 nights carrying the heavy Ten Commandments after his meeting with God shrouded in the clouds at the top of Mount Sinai, he discovered his tribe worshiping a Golden Calf, and Moses got really pissed.
Here’s the parallel:
Elizabeth Green worships the Golden Calf that Eva Moskowitz and other corporate reformers forged to replace the U.S. Constitution. Peter Green and Mercedes Schneider support the Constitutional Republic and the democracy the U.S. Constitution was written to guide. The U.S. Constitution is similar to the Ten Commandments vs the Golden Calf the corporate reformers of public education worship.
Most of the people are slowly waking up and they don’t want to replace the U.S. Constitution with that Golden Calf that Eva Moskowitz and the oligarchs that fund/support her worship. One bit of evidence that supports what is starting to happen across the country is what happened recently in Douglas County Colorads when the parents/people fought back and drove out the corporate reformers that worship the Golden Calf.
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Lloyd, I love reading your comments.
TRUE.
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Greene’s analysis of Moskowitz is less laudatory, they both profile a driven, ambitious woman that is the darling of delusional billionaires. She is determined to spread her interpretation of “excellence” as far as the market will take her. While they both allude to the partiality that Moskowitz enjoys in political circles, they do not get too specific about her tactics such as the “got to go” list. Moskowitz can crow about her results because she creams the students with the highest potential and castes off the non-compliant through a variety of unsavory tactics. Her outstanding results are a lot less unique when, in many cases, more than half of the beginning cohort of students have dropped or been pushed out. How can this approach be a success when it is unacceptable, unrealistic, undemocratic and unfair?
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Elizabeth Greene: Eva Moskowitz is frightening but right “because democracy as we know it is the problem” and charter growth is the solution. Greene is scared that democracy has to go. What kind of premise is that?
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“What do you think?”
I think Elizabeth Green is a PR professional masquerading as a jourtnalist, so that she can slip in a few “critical” observations in an effort to inoculate herself against charges of what the article really is, brazen propaganda.
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Could someone tell us exactly what is happening or being taught in Moskowitz classrooms that is good or bad? What is the reading program? What is the elementary math program? What is the official attrition rate? What is average class size and for what grades?
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To answer your questions:
“Could someone tell us exactly what is happening or being taught in Moskowitz classrooms that is good or bad? What is the reading program? What is the elementary math program?”
I suggest you read the New Yorker story this week that is one of the few that really tries to delve into what happens in the classroom.
There is a lot of jargon used about what is taught, but it isn’t clear that it is a whole lot different than what is taught in other NYC public schools.
“What is the official attrition rate?” This is kept hidden as if it was top secret, which should tell you something.
Success Academy likes to point to a WNYC study because the SUNY Charter Institute – the only oversight Success Academy has — has taken great pains to NEVER closely examine attrition rates! Doesn’t that seem absurd?
The WNYC study was not really scientific but done by some journalists who used the limits that Success Academy likes best. They compared a single year’s attrition rate of different charters and public schools. If you just compare Success Academy to publics — i.e. apples to oranges — there are a few red flags where their attrition rate is higher but it is generally lower.
However, when WNYC compared Success Academy to other charter networks educating the same kids — apples to apples — Success Academy had one of the highest attrition rates of any charter network in NYC. That should be a red flag because the test scores at Success Academy are also sky high compared to all those other charter networks. Parents should want to stay in high performing charters and not leave them but when it comes to SA, they leave twice as often as they leave lower performing charter networks.
The other problem with the WNYC study is that it is a one year study only. What should really be studied is longitudinal attrition rates — how many of the Kindergarten students who win the lottery make it to 3rd grade 3 years later? What little evidence we have does not look particularly good – especially with the at-risk kids.
But no worry, recently Moskowitz has made a concerted effort to open charters that only have 25% economically disadvantaged kids and far more middle class and affluent kids. Is that to hide the attrition of at-risk kids and make sure her schools don’t have to serve too high a % of the at-risk students in any given geographical area? Do birds fly?
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A WNYC study of charters?
That’s akin to a Breitbart “study” of the Trump administration.
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Because Eva’s schools are charters, not public schools, it is not easy to get information that is easily available from public schools.
Here is an indication of the attrition rate, which appears in Rebecca Mead’s article in The New Yorker:
“This year, a Success high school, on Thirty-third Street, will produce the network’s first graduating class: seventeen students. This pioneering class originated with a cohort of seventy-three first graders.”
73 students won highly coveted seats. 17 are expected to graduate in 2018.
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17 out of 73 is not a success. That is almost a total failure, a 76.7 percent failure rate! That’s worse than the failing virtual voucher schools.
And it took seconds to discover a piece by NPR that revealed just how big of a failure those virtual voucher schools was:
“They’re wrong.
“The Nevada Virtual Academy, for example. Its graduation rate for the class of 2015 wasn’t 100 percent. It was 63 percent, according to Nevada’s own school report card.
“Ohio Virtual Academy’s 92 percent graduation rate? Try 53 percent.
“Utah Virtual Academy’s 96 percent rate? Cut it in half.”
https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/02/04/513220220/betsy-devos-graduation-rate-mistake
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Betsy boasted about the virtual charters, which have dreadful records.
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Billionaire Besty is just as ignorant and clueless of true facts and reality as alleged billionaire and liar, con-man and fraud Donald Trump.
Have you read “Tracking Trump’s Agenda, Step by Step” in the New York Times? Knowing how rock bottom deplorable Trump is is one thing, but reading about his daily behavior and tantrums in the White House is frightening since he is allegedly the President of the United States.
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In truth, we don’t even know if it is 17 out of 73.
It’s possible that even fewer than 17 of the original 73 are left. Some of those students may have come in later grades (up until 3rd) to replace those who left.
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I live in the Boston area and cannot visit a Moskowitz classroom easily. It seems that many of Moskowitz’ critics are unhappy with the strict discipline enforced in the classrooms. Stricter than what was in the typical Catholic school? I have visited several of those in the Boston area, among them Cathedral Grammar in the South End. When little kids passed from one subject-classroom to another, in pairs, you could hear a pin drop. They got to their seats fast and within a few minutes the class lesson began. Hands were raised to ask or answer questions. No one spoke out on their own. No time was wasted on non-academic matters. All teachers were lay teachers (some once in the Boston public schools), only the principal was in the religious order in charge of the school. Originally attended by Irish and Italian Americans, who now as grown-ups living in the suburbs help to support the school (I was told), this prestigious parochial school now enrolls mainly black and Hispanic youngsters from Dorchester/Roxbury. Most aren’t Catholics, I was told. The African American grandmother from Dorchester in charge of the cafeteria told me she made sure her grandchildren attended this school. “The sisters don’t let anyone get away with anything.” I was told by a school counselor that this school sent the most A-A kids in grade 6 to Boston Latin.
All kids were there by choice of their parents. They had no choice but to learn. What was wrong? Anything?
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Come to my public school classroom and see students voicing their own opinions. See students expressing themselves instead of regurgitating material in uniformity and in uniforms. See them work hard because of mutual respect instead of fear. See them be imperfect and have the diversity of their “imperfections” lauded instead of oppressed. Oppression breeds rebellion later in life. Come to my classroom and see how public education works. It works.
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I almost mentioned the “effectiveness” of education in Germany during the 1930’s. Thank goodness I didn’t do that!
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See my students show up on time because they want to, not because they fear the consequences if they don’t.
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If that’s what the parents want, I have no complaints until you take the taxes I pay to fund those schools. I want my taxes to only go toward supporting community-based, democratic, transparent, non-profit, unionized traditional public schools.
When I first went to school, my parents put me in a Catholic parochial school until there was a big labor strike and when the strike ended, my dad lost his job. Then I attended real public schools.
If you want to raise your children like a Spartan, and you want them to attend child abusing boot camp schools as young as age 5, pay for it but don’t expect me to.
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Well said.
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I attended public schools and a public university. I taught in public schools and community colleges. Loss of democratic input into public schools is indicative of American descent into fascism. I am in complete agreement. If parents wish to make choices other than public schools, they are welcome to pay for them. I do not wish to spend one penny on sectarian agendas.
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Agreed, Abigail.
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Great writing today. I just got a chance to sit down and look at the blog.
Yes, Moskowitz does seem to epitomize the kiss up/kick down, do as I say not as I do, might makes right mood of the “Trump Era.”
When someone gets around to writing our own generation’s version of Frederick Lewis Allen’s “Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s”, she’ll one of the cast of hundreds of miserable, embarrassments to our nation.
Hmmm….what to call this era we’re in right now? The Dismal Teens??
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John Ogozalek: your second paragraph goes to the heart of much of what is in this and two other postings today and their threads.
Donald Trump. Eva Moskowitz. Why resort to facts and logic and consistency when bullying and proof by assertion and “truthful hyperbole” will do? To paraphrase the late Leona Helmsley aka “The Queen of Mean”: “We don’t have to pay attention to decency and honor. Only the little people pay attention to decency and honor.”
Thank you for your comments.
😎
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