Supporters of Eva Moskowitz would have us believe that she has created a national model for the education of poor black students. Her proof: Her schools have very high test scores.
But, as Gary Rubinstein points out in this post, very few of the students who start in Eva’s charter chain actually persist. The attrition rate is high. Since Eva adds and subtracts students until the third grade, the actual attrition rate may be even higher than what is reported.
He writes:
“Something that I think has not been reported widely enough is the attrition rate for Success Academy students. Success Academy opened in 2006 with 83 Kindergarteners and 73 first graders. Eleven years later there are now 17 twelfth graders set to be the first graduating class. So we know for sure that at least 56 out of the initial 73 students, which is 77%, have left Success Academy before graduating. But it is likely more than 77% attrition because Success Academy allows ‘backfilling’ in the early grades. We don’t know how many of those 17 students currently in twelfth grade were among the 73 original first graders in 2006 and likely we will never know. But even assuming that all 17 were among the original students, that is still 80% attrition. Even over an 11 year period, that amounts to about 10% attrition per year for that cohort.”
For a chain that claims to be “public,” Success Academy is very secretive about its data.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
For a chain that claims to be “public,” Success Academy is very secretive about its data.
….and certainly not the only one.
This goes on at the IDEA charters in Texas as well. Every year after the October funding snapshot, they start sending students back to the traditional public schools who do not meet learning expectations, may have disabilities, and have other behavioral issues.
This was interesting. I never considered “backfill” or how that influences attrition.
Why are charters allowed to deny entry after a certain grade? May public schools start doing that? If not, why not? Why are there special rules for charters?
If Moskowitz said “this is the charter version of a magnet school” I wouldn’t have any problem with her boasting. Maybe there weren’t enough magnet schools in low income areas and she’s filling a need.
But she doesn’t. She insists her schools are on the same playing field as public schools, and they’re not.
Just being a very high scoring version of a magnet school isn’t enough- she has to make dishonest claims. It’s like they can’t help themselves- they feel compelled to exaggerate.
I agree with this but since magnet schools in NYC always do well, the state charter law was not to give private organizations the right to run magnet schools for easy to teach kids.
Also, Moskowitz is running out of at-risk kids who meet her criteria — she has more charters in the richest school districts then in the poorest. Three elementary charters in the richest school district in Manhattan where her charters located there have more more middle class and affluent students than economically disadvantaged ones. While she has one charter in the poorest district where her wait lists are longer.
She probably tells herself she is lying for the poor kids on the wait lists while she opens more schools in rich neighborhoods. I’m sure that’s what she told herself when she so strongly endorsed Betsy DeVos and demanded that the Senators confirm her.
Profits:
https://pando.com/2014/06/19/the-big-money-and-profits-behind-the-push-for-charter-schools/
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/success-academy-charter-schools-revenue-doubles-year-article-1.2050561
“In other words, Moskowitz earns about 100 times more than King for each student enrolled in a Success Academy Charter School. Carmen Farina, New York City School Chancellor is paid $212,000 a year to oversee 1.1 million students or about 19 cents per student.Apr 7, 2014.”
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-singer/charter-school-executive-profit_b_5093883.html
A couple of points — I think that this underestimates the actual Success attrition rate b/c as we know from Karen Sprowal and other former charter parents, Success is very good at pushing out Kindergarten students during the first few weeks of school — before official enrolllment counts and even before the regular district school year has begun. Thus those students will not register anywhere as having left Success charters.
Secondly, the estimate of 10% attrition at Success is still less than what WNYC found in 2013 for NYC district schools at 13% (though found rates lower for Success than 10%.). See the article here https://www.wnyc.org/story/nyc-charter-school-attrition-rates/ and the data here https://github.com/datanews/charter-attrition-2013-14
The IBO found something similar in comparing overall NYC charter attrition compared to DOE schools – though w/o specifying which charters had which rates:http://www.ibo.nyc.ny.us/iboreports/2015schoolattrition.pdf
The alleged lower student attrition rate at Success than DOE schools has been cited many times, including in the reviewer reports approving their multi-million dollars grants from the US Dept. Of Education.
I think that one point not made sufficiently however is along with uncounted and early Kindergarten attrition is that the vast majority of students who leave (or are pushed out of ) charters go into district schools, as do the students who leave district schools. Thus, more and more the district schools get saturated with the kids that don’t make the grade in the charters.
So, according to the IBO, SA could start with 83 students, end up years later with 17, and have a low attrition rate. If so, I suggest an investigation of who is writing the IBO Reports.
Yes, I agree. The IBO report I noted below took great pains to aggregate all charter network longitudinal attrition rates to hide whether some charters like Success Academy have significantly higher attrition than other NYC charter networks.
That might have passed muster IF on page 22 and 23 that very same IBO report went to great trouble NOT to aggregate the “achievement” of charter networks (which was mediocre as a whole).
On those pages, the IBO pointedly showed that Success Academy’s achievement left ever other charter network’s achievement in the dust! They actually RANKED the charter networks separately according to how the students did on exams and the IBO made sure readers were aware of what they call the “CONSIDERABLE GAP between
Success Charter Network and the rest of the charter sector. ” (page 23 of this report: http://www.ibo.nyc.ny.us/iboreports/school-indicators-for-new-york-city-charter-schools-2013-2014-school-year-july-2015.pdf
In short, the IBO never ranked charter networks by their attrition rates but instead hid individual charter attrition rates. But in the very same report the IBO ranks charter networks individually by “achievement” and made sure to note that Success Academy’s achievement dwarfed every other NYC charter network.
One would ask whether Success Academy’s longitudinal attrition rate — the number of Kindergarten students who made it to 5th grade — ALSO showed a CONSIDERABLE GAP in which parents go running in droves from Success Academy and not from other similar charter networks. Which would have raised red flags that the IBO seemed to prefer remained covered up. Why?
Leonie is absolutely right that there are an unknowable number of kids — probably at-risk kids — who are pushed out in the first weeks so they never count in attrition. That fact is absolutely documented in the NAACP report about charters that was released last year.
Secondly – the WNYC report cited here was very limited in scope — so limited in exactly the way that is most favorable to Success Academy that it is clear that Beth Fertig’s aim was to clear Moskowitz after numerous news reports of got to go lists. Despite that, what was buried was the fact that Success Academy has one of the HIGHEST attrition rates of any similar NYC charter network. Which is quite odd because not only does it offer extra luxuries those other charter networks don’t offer, but it has the best results by far. Since no one believes that parents who choose charters run away twice as often from high performing ones than mediocre to failing ones UNLESS their kids are pushed out, that little buried data fact that Beth Fertig expressed no curiosity or desire to follow up on speaks volumes.
The main problem with the WNYC report is it looked at attrition only for an entire school during one year. Imagine a charter that pushes out 50% of their Kindergarten class, 30% of their first grade class, 20% of the 2nd grade class, but 0% of their 3rd, 4th and 5th grade class. The “average” attrition of the ENTIRE K- 5 school during a 9 month period masks a policy in which the kids in the earlier years are weeded out ruthlessly but the ones who make it to third grade rarely leave.
Third – the most revealing IBO report is this one:
Click to access school-indicators-for-new-york-city-charter-schools-2013-2014-school-year-july-2015.pdf
This did LONGITUDINAL attrition of charters and found that in a group that included Success Academy schools, 49.5% of their entering Kindergarteners were gone by the start of 5th grade. Given that we know that SA has one of the highest attrition rates of any charter, I suspect their high attrition rates were hidden by allowing them to be “averaged” in with other charters that don’t ruthlessly cull their at-risk population of students and force older students to take a test after which the ones who don’t shape up are discouraged from enrolling by being told “your kid must repeat a grade if he wants to join this school. Perhaps they even tell the kids they really don’t want that they will have to repeat 2 years. Can you imagine a charter having the freedom to tell an 8 year old kid’s parent that he can’t come unless he starts in first grade? Nice way to prevent any “unworthy’ kids from taking attrition seats that are saved for pre-tested students who already work at or above grade level.
Although a letter to the New Yorker defends SA’s discipline, the writer does not seem to understand that SA is not responsible for giving discipline to the child but selects for children who have personalities that accept SA’s form of discipline. Anyone and school can do this. One class day I simply sent six of thirty-six students out of the room with an aide to sit just outside the room where I could see them. I then had a perfectly attentive class.
No magic strategy involved. Attrition, suspension, and careful selection is all that is needed. One doesn’t even need fancy rules.
When you gain the trust of those six I sent out (often against the parental lapses in instilling self-discipline) then you will you have something to write home about.
I am not a fan of Draco. Remember that he reacted to the trouble in Ancient Athens by enforcing harsh justice that was so unbending that it’s account in history gave us the word draconian. Cliesthines followed with the beginnings of democracy. While we look to this as the cradle of our democratic ideals, we often forget that it did not last the turmoil of history, but returned ages later.
While I do not believe in the weed out techniques described in Success and other no excuses models of instruction, we must admit that it is easier to teach attentitive children who have had guidance in life and whose families teach them to care about school. We should not be surprised to learn that one human reaction to aberrant behavior is to separate thee aberrant from society. Humans have done that for years. That is what happens when we remove unruly children temporarily from class.
We all know that the larger the class, the less deviation from a narrow set of prescribed behaviors we can allow. A class of 20 with one kid who sways back and forth and has to be prompted several times to cease this behavior is really no problem. You can figure out little unobtrusive signals with the kid and things will be fine. But teaching a class of 30 or 40 with various tics is quite another matter, especially when the tics are linguistic in nature.
Public school around here used to just weed out people who did not fit. The student was responsible for his behavior, and if this behavior was too far away from the necessary norms of the class, he was usually among the dropouts. As many as four out of five students did not make it to grade 9. While I do not condone this sort of exile, it is a natural result of a financial scarcity in the system. Around here, that scarcity was the result of being an economic backwater due to the catastrophe that was the American Civil War. Today it is the result of the catastrophe that is modern conservatism. We have the money to shrink class size, but we do not have the political will.
“We should not be surprised to learn that one human reaction to aberrant behavior is to separate thee aberrant from society.”
That is why the U.S. has the largest prison population in the world.
#1. The U.S. of America 2,145,100 (out of a total population of more than 324 million)
#2. China 1,649,804 (out of a total population of more than 1.4 billion)
China has been accused of having an autocratic government and the U.S. brags about being a democracy with freedom.
Really?
“U.S. poverty rates higher, safety net weaker than in peer countries”
http://www.epi.org/publication/ib339-us-poverty-higher-safety-net-weaker/
“China’s formula to reduce poverty could help developing nations
“600 million of the nation’s people were lifted out of a life of hardship in the past 30 years. Beijing’s methods could help other developing countries”
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1202142/chinas-formula-reduce-poverty-could-help-developing-nations
When children exhibit that behavior in KINDERGARTEN and first grade, I very much doubt any public school system simply dumped them on the street. They did not “weed them out”.
I suspect your public school figured out a system to deal with them. And their education REMAINED your school system’s responsibility. No public school system simply dumped all their low performing K – 2nd graders before 3rd grade in the street and said “look how good our test scores are”.
But that is exactly what Success Academy does.
NYC: you are quite correct. Thirty years ago, the largest drop population generally came between grades 8 and 9, when children became 16 after being held back a couple of times. I do not pretend that this was a good system. Lord knows we tried to get kids to stick it out, but many of them bailed at the earliest opportunity. We figured out programs and techniques and agonized over every kid. We could have done a whole lot more with more money, but the public seems rarely interested in that investment, seeming to prefer the prison expenditure Lloyd mentions above.
Roy,
It bothers me that one reason that Eva Moskowitz gets away with some of her most reprehensible practices is that people assume when her charters suspend 18% of 23% of their students, that means middle or high school students.
But in fact, those suspension rates have been found in her schools where the oldest students were in first and second grade!!! Can you imagine 18% of the kindergarten and first graders acting out so violently that they need to be suspended? That’s what Moskowitz insists is true and she gets away with it because those outrageously high suspension rates are in her charters which have virtually no white students.
Here is the casual racism that the racist supporters of Eva Moskowitz keep insisting is true:
Success Academy Union Square (first year opened with only Kindergarten and first graders): only 25% of the students are economically disadvantaged, 40% of them are white. And the suspension rate at SA Union Square is 2%.
Success Academy Springfield Gardens (first year opened with Kindergarten and first graders): over 70% of the students are economically disadvantaged, over 99% of them are non-white. And the suspension rate is 18%
So Moskowitz’ charter that is located in a poor area of NYC where most of the students were poor and non-white had a suspension rate for Kindergarten and first graders that was 900% higher (!!!) in their opening year than the charter school Moskowitz’ opened in a wealthy neighborhood where only 25% of the students were economically disadvantaged and the largest ethnic group in the school was white students.
Moskowitz gets away with implying that an incredibly high number of non-white poor kids would act out violently in their kindergarten classes because she knows that racists will believe her and never question it. The rest of us know that any school where 18% of the kids are supposedly acting out violently in their kindergarten class is doing something very, very wrong and presuming that non-white poor 5 year olds are so much more violent than white middle class 5 year olds is an outrageous presumption worthy of Betsy DeVos.
And my stomach turns every time I hear Eva Moskowitz telling the country how violent all those non-white 5 year olds are in her schools, knowing that the racists will never question her insistence that she just gets lots and lots of violent 5 year olds in some of her schools that have almost no white students.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but Eva gets to keep the annual total $$$ for each student even if they leave before the end of the year. Once an early certain date hits, all the money stays in in her Success Academy chain and when the students that leave return to the public schools, none of the money follows them putting an increased burden on those public schools to continue to function.
If this is correct, then the amount of tax (public) money that each child is worth each year should be divided up according to the time they actually spend in a school so when they leave, what’s left goes with them.
If correct, that formula benefits Eva in the early years as students leave to bring in more students ASAP to capture their cash.
My recollection from a prior discussion is that charter school tuition reimbursements are paid out in installments (perhaps monthly, not sure) based on actual enrollments. Details would vary by state. Don’t quote me on this, and of course there’s no substitute for doing the research, but that’s my recollection.
I taught in California and I remember that’s the way it was and probably still is in that state. But I could be wrong.
I thought that if the student is still in the school by a certain cut-off date, the school keeps all the annual funding attached to that student, whether they stay or leave.
I tried to figure this out a long time ago but gave up because the rules were so difficult to find, let alone construe.
Maybe this will help
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables/dt11_043.asp
I see people “scamming the system” all the time. I’ve been told that if a school doesn’t forward a transcript to another school by a certain date, they can “claim” that child as a student for the entire year. I don’t trust any data that my local high school puts out, because once you get into the details, it’s a lie. They can get away with calling drop outs “home schooled” and neither the school nor the State cares 2 squats about whether or not that child is getting educated.
I met a principal last night who told me that his school is in Harlem. He gets the kids pushed out by Success Academy. Odd, he said, they always arrive after October 30, after the school has collected the state money.
To be fair, I suspect Moskowitz could care less about the per pupil allocation she gets and there is lots of evidence — including the NAACP report — that SA specifically identifies “unworthy” at-risk kids during the first weeks of school and makes them feel misery until their parents get the message to pull them. That way those kids never show up on their books.
The other thing that is not talked about was revealed in the 2017 MDRC study that was commissioned by Success Academy itself but pretty much buried.
Click to access 2017_Success_Academy.pdf
On page 8:
“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. With few exceptions, lottery winners who did not attend an activity did not attend subsequent activities. Ultimately, about 50 percent of lottery winners enrolled in Success Academy schools in the 2010-2011 school year.”
HALF of the lottery winners don’t even enroll despite their parents being interested enough to attend pre-enrollment meetings! One wonders how SA administrators are encouraging or discouraging kids at those events.
61% REGISTERED but only 50% “enrolled. That is a loss of 18% of the “registered” students before official “enrollment”. In Kindergarten. Cherry picking before official enrollment days.
By the way, this MDRC report seemed to create a conflict between MDRC and SA and the report was barely publicized. Why? Because anyone who understands statistics would recognize how much vital information is left out when any other legitimate study would include it.
Funny coincidence, how the backfilling cutoff starts right around the grade testing starts.
Charter schools in New York are paid $2,421.17 per general education student every other month. Charter schools in New York City are required to use the same enrollment and attendance system as NYC DOE schools. Once a student leaves a charter’s register, the bimonthly payments end, full stop (see page 3).
Click to access Opertions-Resource-Guide.pdf
I’m happy to clear up the surprisingly stubborn and longstanding (and self-serving) myth that charters get to keep a year’s worth of money if a student leaves before October 31—please pass the word along to all these teachers and principals!
Funny, I have heard exactly the same story from principals all over the country. The money is allotted at the end of Ictober, the kids are kicked out of the charter, the public school they return to gets no money
I can’t speak to what happens in the rest of the country, but the Harlem principal you spoke with has it dead wrong with respect to New York City, and his distress over having to compete with charters does not entitle him to his own facts.
Another widespread myth that’s popular among the vested interests that perceive charters as a threat to their bottom line is that NYC DOE schools do not receive any additional funding for students who enter after the school year has started. This is also factually incorrect (see page 40)!
Click to access FSF_Guide.pdf
Perhaps it would be a more productive use of time for these administrators to wonder what it is that might make a family choose a charter over the school that they run.
Tim,
Who employs you?
Tim is correct that Moskowitz will happily get rid of kids early enough that they never show up on her books at all and she doesn’t worry about the money she would lose (thanks to the tens of millions from rich right wing Republicans who adore her). Tim knows that the NAACP report showed testimony from parents about how Moskowitz identifies unwanted students in the first few days of school and so ruthlessly gets their parents to “voluntarily” pull them before they would be counted in attrition numbers. Thanks, Tim!
But Tim is wrong to claim that the principal is NOT receiving students from Success Academy. Any comparison to the enrollment numbers and the numbers of students who take the tests later that year shows missing students. And since Success Academy does not condone opting out, at least some of those missing students are likely at neighboring schools.
^^^Perhaps it would be a more productive use of time for Tim to wonder what it is that might make a family choose a subpar underfunded public school when their child ALREADY has a seat in the highest performing charter network in the state. The very BEST!!!
Especially when families are NOT choosing underfunded public schools when they have a seat in most mediocre performing charter networks nearly as often as they do when they have a seat at Success Academy.
Now THAT is weird. Tim, how about if you productively use your time to explain why that would be?
Why do Success Academy families LEAVE Success Academy for those failing schools far more frequently than they leave the most similar schools to them — charter networks like Achievement First and KIPP?
What is KIPP doing right to hold on to so many MORE students than Success Academy despite having such mediocre test scores?
What is Achievement First doing right to hold on to so many MORE students than Success Academy despite having such mediocre test scores?
Is Eva Moskowitz asking that question? LOL! Or is she celebrating because the goal of suspending and punishing and humiliating and got to go lists has been achieved and no other charter CEO is quite as ruthless and greedy as she is to make sure the unworthy kids leave her school stat.
Do you think KIPP and Achievement First CEOs are getting Eva’s advice as to how to make more kids WANT to leave when you can’t “legally” kick them out? I’d like to see THAT lesson taught by her model teachers like the one at SA Cobble Hill who was praised and critics were told to shut up because her actions were MODELS that every teacher should follow to make sure the unworthy kids felt their unworthiness the way Eva wants them to feel it . Would those KIPP and Achievement First CEOs learn the right techniques for how to throw your model teachers and model principals under the bus for doing exactly what you want them to do but making the fatal error of GETTING CAUGHT?
Funny how they got caught but the ONLY teachers who lose their jobs are the ones who reported them. Success Academy at its finest! Tim, you should be so very proud of your charter. No need for Eva to get KIPP to teach her how to keep the children she has no desire to keep. Better for her to teach KIPP how to get rid of them faster and more ruthlessly. Right?
“So we know for sure that at least 56 out of the initial 73 students, which is 77%, have left Success Academy before graduating. ”
In other words, one in five students graduates. Actually, I am surprised how high this rate is. I mean, how many kids can survive this kind of teaching and teachers
[video src="http://wd369.csi.hu/apu/sa_math.mp4" /]
http://wd369.csi.hu/apu/sa_math.mp4
Success also hasn’t made public how many high school students took Regents exams and how they fared. This is info required of all schools. But the biggest violation of the law to me seems to be the cherrypicking. SUNY as the charter authorizer, issues target rates of ELL and SWD populations that Success never meets.
I don’t think it’s even proper for SUNY to issue these targets, which match nearby district totals, because the law says charters need “special emphasis” on at risk students, not “comparable emphasis”.
“the law says charters need “special emphasis” on at risk students, not “comparable emphasis”.
That’s how we know that the SUNY Charter Institute is in the tank for Eva Moskowitz. Because they aren’t following that law.
There is nothing as incriminating as the SUNY Charter Institute approving its THIRD Success Academy elementary school for affluent District 2 in Manhattan where neither of their first 2 schools served even close to the number of economically disadvantaged students as they should have been teaching.
It is an astonishing act of hubris for the SUNY Charter Institute to look at the two schools in Manhattan District 2 — Hell’s Kitchen with only 40% economically disadvantaged students and Union Square with only 24% economically disadvantaged students — and say “Eva wants to open a third charter school that gives priority to students in District 2 where her previous schools are not serving even close to their share of at-risk kids — let’s grant her wish!” Why aren’t they questioning why she isn’t trying to open a first or second charter that gives priority to all the at-risk kids in the Bronx instead of opening her third charter that serves more affluent kids than at-risk ones?
It is an astonishing act of hubris for the SUNY Charter Institute to ignore the fact that in Bronx District 9, where 90% of the students are economically disadvantaged – there is a single Success Academy elementary school – and instead enable Eva Moskowitz to open yet another school for mostly affluent students in District 2 instead.
Three Success Academy elementary schools in the richest Manhattan district. One elementary school in the poorest Bronx district.
That’s not serving at-risk kids. That is serving Eva Moskowitz. And that is what SUNY has been doing for many years. Moskowitz’ needs ALWAYS come first and if that means that at-risk kids don’t get schools, why those kids don’t matter as much as Eva Moskowitz does.