Eva Moskowitz just received a gift of $15 million from billionaire Dan Loeb, chair of the board of Eva’s Success Academy. Just last year, Loeb received negative public attention for comments widely regarded as racist after he chastised the leading Democrat in the State Senate—who is African American, saying she did more damage to children of color than anyone who ever wore a hood because of her criticism of charter schools.
Many people denounced Loeb’s remarks and called on him to resign, but Eva stood by him. Her forbearance was rewarded with his $15 million to her high school, which just graduated 17 students (of a class that started in kindergarten as 100). Loeb said he hoped that Eva could make her model “scalable.”
How a school with a shedding/dropout/attrition rate of 83% becomes “scalable” is mysterious.
The charter chain plans to open eight new high schools by 2033.
Here is the curious math.
Only 17 students were members of Success Academy’s first graduating class. All 17 are going to college. These are the students that survived the original 100 that enrolled in kindergarten.
That is many many millions of dollars invested to produce 17 graduates who are college bound.
Of the 32 students who graduated from eighth grade at Success charters, nine attended other high schools before going to Success Academy’s High School of the Liberal Arts. Five left before graduating.
Honestly, I don’t understand the math. I can’t figure out how this adds up to 17 graduates, but maybe someone else will and can explain it in a comment.
PS:
Eliza Shapiro explained the math of SA graduation rate to me.
“Basically 32 kids started their 8th grade year together at Success
9 left after 8th grade to go to other high schools and never enrolled/matriculated/entered SA HS
5 other kids enrolled at SA HS and left between the start of their freshman year to the present
That’s all I know! :)”
17 graduated. One may have been held back. Unaccounted for.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If Loeb wants to pay for boutique high schools for a handful of talented minority students, he should use his own money for the project. Taxpayers should not be required to pay for such inefficient and expensive schools that have already been proven to be unscalable. They should not be given the right to automatically deduct from public school budgets without taxpayer approval.
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Loeb isn’t paying big money because someone opened a boutique high school for a handful of talented students.
Loeb is paying big money because the person who opened that boutique high school spends extraordinarily time and effort insisting that her charters prove that public schools should be able to have large class sizes, fewer resources, make do with far less space, and money should be taken from those schools to subsidize charters.
Loeb is paying Eva Moskowitz not for the kids she helps but for the kids she HURTS. If Moskowitz stopped using her bully pulpit to push the lie that she teaches the exact same kids as public schools do — but with far less money and minimally trained teachers — Loeb would ingore her just like he ignores other charters.
One of the reasons I despise Eva Moskowitz the most is not because she runs charters — many charter CEOs are perfectly happy to run their charters and are grateful that they have students with more motivated families and fewer severely at-risk families than public schools.
If Moskowitz did that, she would not be nearly as rich as she is. She long ago traded her moral and ethical compass — if she ever had one — in exchange for being the favorite pet of racist billionaires like Dan Loeb.
Many charter CEOs did not. You can identify the worst of them by the efforts they made to insure that Betsy DeVos was confirmed.
And the very worst was Eva Moskowitz. Because what are the lives of millions of school children when her own bank account and ability to have a seat at the billionaires’ tables are at stake?
Moskowitz claim to “help” at-risk kids is as truthful as Trump’s claim to “help” blue collar workers. Some tiny fraction of workers and kids may benefit, but ONLY if their benefitting helps Trump and Moskowitz. If it does not, then those immoral people could not care one whit about them. Moskowitz’ and Trump’s “what’s in it for me?” guiding principles are remarkably similar.
Every decision is made based on what helps Eva Moskowitz. Claim lots of African-American Kindergarten students are violent? check. Release the records of a young boy who she wanted out of her school? check. Offer over the top praise of Betsy DeVos to get her confirmed? check. Use the results of her “push out the low performers” charters to lobby for large class sizes and lower budgets for public schools because she insists her results are with the exact same students? check.
I don’t know if Moskowitz — or Trump — is so deluded that she convinces herself that doing what promotes and enriches her the most is all “for the kids” or “for the country”.
Are they deluded or just liars? I do know that giving power to people with no moral center is dangerous to our democracy.
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What is odd is that Dan Loeb thinks SA is scalable. In what way is a school that enrolls 100and graduates 17 scalable?
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Diane, it’s scalable to the extent it can operate alongside a large public school system capable of absorbing the steady efflux of former SA students.
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If Dan Loeb thought Eva Moskowitz’ schools were “scalable” he would not have to subsidize her so much!!!
Is it $30, $40 or $50 million that he has already subsidized her? And how many tens of millions more from his billionaire pals? And how much from the feds? How many hundreds of millions of dollars in extra funding is needed for a charter to be “scaleable”?
Someone should challenge Loeb on the hypocrisy of insisting that he needed to heavily subsidize this “scalable” charter network that has already been heavily subsidized!
But since the education reporters act like stenographers instead of actually thinking about what they report without question, Loeb will never be asked about this hypocrisy.
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FLERP! says: “it’s scalable to the extent it can operate alongside a large public school system capable of absorbing the steady efflux of former SA students.”
FLERP!, thank you for explaining how you believe Success Academy is “scalable”.
As you point out, Success Academy has plenty of room to “scale” if it gets enough help from Loeb.
Is that a good thing or a bad thing, in your opinion, FLERP! ? Or do you have no opinion?
There is absolutely no need for you to have an opinion on this. But I wanted to clarify since I commented below that you never offer opinions when it comes to this subject and if I am wrong and you want to offer one, I would (rightly) retract it and apologize.
I also assume you have no real criticism of Loeb.
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“I also assume you have no real criticism of Loeb.”
Do you care to explain how you arrived at that conclusion, or will you retract it and admit you are once again putting words in people’s mouths?
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Another gratuitously nasty post from dienne77. Why?
I noticed that FLERP! posted at least twice in this discussion and both times were to tell critics of Daniel Loeb that they were incorrect on some rather irrelevant point.
I find it odd since as far as I can see, every other poster offered their opinion — generally negative — of Loeb, and FLERP! posted only to tell critics of Loeb that they were wrong about something.
As I made clear in my post, I wanted to apologize to FLERP! if I was wrong about her/his very odd and unusual unwillingness to say anything negative about Loeb which is surprising given FLERP!’s avid desire to jump in to correct Loeb’s critics on some minor point. I assumed FLERP! would reply and say “ha, you are so wrong, I believe Daniel Loeb is despicable and I believe allowing Eva Moskowitz to expand her charter network on the public dime is a terrible idea.” And as I said, I would have apologized for my error.
FLERP! did not. So perhaps I was correct.
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NYCPSP,
We are all on speaking terms here. Stop being offended. Pretend Dienne is your friend. We don’t have to agree all the time.
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Diane,
I sincerely apologize – I know I am wrong to get offended when dienne77 throws words like “unhinged” at me and I should just ignore it. I am sorry for not being kinder in my response to those insults.
I am truly mystified that FLERP! never has criticism of Daniel Loeb or Success Academy. I am wrong to speculate on why FLERP! never criticizes them – it is certainly none of my business why that is the case and I won’t speculate on the reasons in the future.
Sorry, FLERP!.
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NYCPSP,
I repeat. This is a place to find support and succor. We challenge one another, but civilly. Don’t attack others. I will say the same to them. We are fighting a huge battle. No circular firing squads
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Dienne,
Of course NYCPSP has to put words in other people’s mouths. And every time he/she does it, he/she is only putting his/her foot in his/her mouth.
FLERP does not at all believe Loeb is legitimate.
And NYCPSP, why not be careful what you say?
Stop accusing others of saying or thinking things and stop attributing motivations and actions that people here don’t have and then maybe they will stop being what you deem as “nasty” to them.
This is a forum for adults, not passive aggressive children. Please know the difference in this forum and within yourself . . . .
Our cause and movement are far too big and important for your constant attacks, constant molecular nit-picking, and constant attaching yourself like a remora to a shark in order to counter-producitvely feed off of people’s comments.
I would take Diane’s advice. The real focus for her, as blog host, is not to “mommy” everyone, but to involve intelligent, productive thinking and conversations about public education.
If you can’t cease and desist out your barrage of attacks against your very allies, then at the very least, seek professional help . . .
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Norwegian Filmmaker,
I very kindly suggest you take your own advice. Or please do continue to pile on and attack me if you prefer.
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^^^^”FLERP does not at all believe Loeb is legitimate…”
Why would you put words in FLERP’s mouth after accusing me of doing so myself?
FLERP! said no such thing
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The school’s clearly are not scalable, but the control and acquisition of real estate is.
Moskowitz, Loeb and their ilk don’t care very much about students – you just need see how they treat them to know that – but they care quite a bit about sinking their claws into public school buildings, in the hope that they will eventually acquire long term control, if not title, to them.
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Here is a fascinating article about the classroom of the future:
http://inservice.ascd.org/the-classrooms-of-the-future/
Higher education has been incorporating new technology into their instructional “suite” for some time. It is only a matter of time, before K-12 picks up on some of these techniques.
Instead of fighting against these new technologies, professional educators should be moving to embrace them.
“Technucation” is the wave of the present!
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Welcome to the twentieth century, Charles.
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I am looking at a photocopy of an article from the December 1931 Wisconsin Journal of Education with a photo of a teacher’s desk with a radio on the desk at the front of the room. The caption asks “Is this the teacher of 1950?” The title of the article “Can the Radio Supplant the Classroom Teacher?”
I think we know the answer to that question.
I doubt that “technucation” is the panacea of the present. The scourge of present education is “testucation” which reaches its height with daily computerized testing. Technucation = testucation = mindless Pavlovian training.
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Oh no! That “technucation” website has the same name as my new username. I will have to change it again soon. Oy vey. Maybe I will just go back to my old username.
The pen is mightier than the Google.
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If you are looking for a new username, might I suggest “SomeDAM Teacher?
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The crap continues to go on with this creep who somehow has all this money giving it to the fake success school of all 17 kids…..When will the sht end. And…how is it that we have to pay for success schools rent?? This sht is so disturbing and upside down that it literally can make someone get really angry.
Moskowitch is the pt Barnum of our time and this is unbelievable that this goon would give all this money while the tax payers pay for their room and board…we are living in a communist country under the guise of political correctness.
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“we are living in a communist country under the guise of political correctness”
Using the SA model of training as an example of that statement is ludicrous and risible. If anything, it-SA shows how bastardized the capitalist system becomes when the few have so much and can buy political influence to help their cronies with whatever moneymaking scheme, and that is what Moskwitz is doing, making a lot of money for herself using the false pretense of “helping those poor black and brown kids”.
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It’s sad when people who post on an education website don’t even know what communism is, innit?
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“… we are living in a communist country in the guiuse of political correctness.”
Yes indeed, and those Commies and Political Correctniks are succeeding in poisoning our Precious Bodily Fluids.
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Imagine if 15,000 teachers in underserved schools were given $1,000 each to use toward the benefit of their students’ instruction like for supplies, field trips, etc. Now that would be money well spent!
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Teachers can get SO much mileage from a measly $1000. Plus, they’d likely match that amount with money from their own pockets.
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Eva Moskowitz didn’t just stand by Dan Loeb.
Moskowitz made it her personal mission to lobby for the Senate to confirm Betsy DeVos when DeVos’ confirmation was in doubt. Moskowitz wrote op eds, sat for media interviews and spent an extraordinary effort to make sure the Senators knew that a self-described “Democrat” was insisting that Betsy DeVos was a terrific pick. No wonder pro-privatizer Dan Loeb wants to reward her for her hard work!
It is shocking to compare Moskowitz’ over the top praise of DeVos and Dan Loeb with the nasty innuendoes Moskowitz makes about some of the Kindergarten and first graders in her schools that have virtually NO white students.
Moskowitz can praise Dan Loeb through the roof and then turn around and explain that she has no choice but to give out of school suspensions to 18% of the (non-white) 5 and 6 year olds because so many of them act out so violently due to their violent natures. Moskowitz insists that her teachers and schools are blameless in the face of having so many violent non-white students winning her Kindergarten lotteries, and that out of school suspensions are absolutely justified due to their violent natures.
No doubt Dan Loeb is delighted to reward the woman who reflects his view about how violent those African-American Kindergarten children really are.
Loeb could not find a better “educator” to help promote his racist views to the public than Eva Moskowitz. Who is always happy to tell the public how violent so many of those African-American 5 year olds really are. And to attack any politician who doesn’t agree with her about the violent nature of those children. And to praise DeVos and Dan Loeb as the kind of truly caring white people that Moskowitz adores.
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It’s “PAY BACK” time.
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You mean the same Dan Loeb that has a habit of sending poison pen letters to other hedge fund managers, is hated by his peers, is friends with Anthony Scaramucci, and hit a kid with his car in Cuba and was detained by Cuban authorities for a week in his hotel room? That Dan Loeb?
He seems nice.
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lol!
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^^to be clear, I’m not laughing at the truly appalling things that Loeb has done which are far from funny.
I’m laughing at your deadpan comment “He seems nice.” It reminds me of the stand-up comedian of an earlier era, Stephen Wright. I was hearing it in his voice.
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You mean the Dan Loeb who went to a charter high school in California, and was such a jerk in middle school he had to hire a “bodyguard” for 25 cents per day to protect him from the kids he bullied? And that kid now works for him at his hedge fund?
The Dan Loeb who came from a wealthy family, and never went to business school but still felt prepared to open a hedge fund? And we wonder why he sees no problem with teachers who never studied education, or with bankers and hedge fund kids running charter schools…
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Correction: Palisades High School was not a charter school when he graduated in 1979. I know. I went to school with him since the 1st grade. He went to real public schools with union teachers. He seems to have forgotten how much he loved them.
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Wondered about that. No charter high school graduates until recently
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Isn’t it wonderful that Mr. Loeb can enjoy all the former liberal and now current and completely loose tax laws that afford him all sorts of savings in which he does not pay his fair share of taxes but now has enough disposable income to donate to – ah-hem – privatizing charter schools?
Is there any connection between his tax status and advantages and the privatization of public schooling?
A few dots here that are dying to be connected?
H-m-m-m-m-m!
Intentional design?
A-h-h-h-h-h . . .
O-o-o-o-o-o-h . . . .
U-u-u-u-u-u-u-h . . . . .
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Dan Loeb forgot how much he loved his teachers? I wasn’t there and you were, but I have trouble believing he loved anyone. Maybe he did and the money corrupted him. Or maybe he was always corrupt and the money enabled him. Regardless, you’re right, he failed to appreciate the people who helped him and is now stepping on everyone’s backs in self indulgence.
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Just going off of his Wiki bio…thanks for the correction:
“Loeb is the son [4] of Ronald and Clare (née Spark) Loeb.[6] He was raised in Santa Monica, California where he attended Palisades Charter High School.[4][7][8]”
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Revisionist history. Now all the “good” schools have always been charters. 😉
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Eliza Shapiro explained the math to me about the graduation numbers at SA:
“Eliza Shapiro explained the math of SA graduation rate to me.
“Basically 32 kids started their 8th grade year together at Success
9 left after 8th grade to go to other high schools and never enrolled/matriculated/entered SA HS
5 other kids enrolled at SA HS and left between the start of their freshman year to the present
That’s all I know! :)”
17 graduated. One may have been held back. Unaccounted for.
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Diane,
If you look at the enrollment data at the data.NYSED.gov it doesn’t quite match up to Eliza Shapiro’s numbers but it is very close.
The NYSED website does show 32 students in 8th grade at SA. But the next year the first SA 9th grade class had 26 students as of BEDS day (which is typically the first Wednesday in October). 19 of the 26 were economically disadvantaged.
The next year the SA 10th grade class had only 20 students as of BEDS day. Only 10 of the 20 were “economically disadvantaged.
The next year the SA 11th grade class also had 20 students as of BEDS day.
This year’s data isn’t published, but another 3 students must have left the cohort sometime after 11th grade BEDS day.
So from BEDS day in 9th grade to now, that cohort went from 26 students to 17 students. Losing 9 of their 26 students would be losing just under 35% of their starting 9th grade cohort.
I wonder where Eliza Shapiro got her information that 9 of the 32 8th grade students “never enrolled/matriculated” in the high school since there seems to be only 6 fewer students fewer in that cohort at the start of 9th grade (as per October BEDS day reporting). Maybe 3 more left suddenly after October of 9th grade, or the numbers on the NYSED data website are wrong.
(I apologize for all this data if it is boring).
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I don’t mean to quibble, but I don’t think most people who start hedge funds have gone to business school. A typical hedge fund career path is (1) go to a top-flight university, preferably Ivy (Stanford also acceptable), (2) get a job as a trader at one of the big Wall Street banks (Goldman or JPMorgan, preferably), and (3) leave to start a hedge fund.
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All these comments by people concerned about this issue.
And then this comment by FLERP! – who reads Diane’s original post, reads all the interesting comments, and feels the need to put in his/her 2 cents about whether Hedge Fund people have MBAs or not and chiding someone for being wrong about that.
But of course! It’s about your beloved Eva Moskowitz and her very favorite underwriter and enabler, Dan Loeb, so why would you have an opinion? Other than an astonishingly strong opinion about whether hedge funders have MBAs or just undergrad degrees from Harvard, Stanford and suitably prestigious universities.
You obviously mean very much to quibble. Because I doubt very much if you believed the main point of mrobmsu’s comment depended on whether hedge funders have MBAs or not.
When it comes to correcting incorrect statements by anyone critical of Success Academy or the billionaires whose largesse pays for their administrators’ high salaries, we can count on you to “quibble”.
But when it comes to the outrageously incorrect statements that Eva Moskowitz or Dan Loeb make, no quibbling is allowed.
To me, you are quite transparent. My latest suspicion is that you are someone like Emily Kim, Success Academy’s former vice president of policy and legal affairs, who left to start her own charter school network for affluent and middle class kids (and a few at-risk kids to justify the public money).
Who knows? I could be off base. But it’s really weird to watch you ONLY comment to undermine some irrelevant point that anyone makes that is critical of Dan Loeb. While being sure not to say anything at all critical of Loeb, Moskowitz or any of their “team”.
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Holy snot, you got all that from a simple – and accurate – correction??? One that was even mentioned as a “quibble”???
Diane, you know you’d never let someone like Charles get away with these kinds of unhinged rants at other commenters.
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Dienne — several months ago, based on a lot of experience, I made the resolution not to engage NYCPSP anymore. It’s worked out well — I don’t waste my time reading her harangues or, worse, responding to them. It’s best for the blog, too, because every reply to NYCPP results in at least two responses from her, causing every comment thread to devolve into a brawl of text. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know.
I must go now . . . I’ve said too much!
[Disappears down darkened alleyway]
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Thank you. Don’t take the bait.
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NYC public school parent –
What’s up with this tone of derision? I’m happy to learn about how hedge funders come to be from FLERP!. This blog’s intent is to spread around knowledge, crowd-sourcing of the most organic sort.
A few days ago, it was Dienne you were using for target practice, and I’ve had your sting directed at me occasionally, too.
Try some ujjayi breathing. This is Diane’s living room, not a tae kwon do studio.
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NYCPSP,
Listen to Christine Langhoff. She’s RIGHT!
If you do this too often, you will lose all credibility. We’re you’re allies. Unless you are a troll or spy for the reformers . . . . I am choosing NOT to think that.
Can you please do better, or are you going to self destruct here?
Stay on your path, and you will have no engagment here in the long run. Your only audience will be yourself . . . .
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If this persists, I say EVERY reader here ignores NYCPSP, and if it still persists, maybe the host will consider an invitation for NYCPSP to exit her Diane’s living room.
Make sense?
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NYCPSP will be civil. He/she understands that we are all on the same side.
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Great!
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Diane and Christine,
I hope you will both accept my sincere apology. I did not intend offense which is why I would never direct offensive words like “unhinged” toward other posters even when I vehemently disagree with them. I thought that was enough, but obviously my passion and concern about public education seems to infect my tone. Once again, I am sorry that my tone is so off-putting as that is the last thing I was trying to be. As a parent, I am dismayed at how many facts seem to get lost in the propaganda, but I should not let it get to me as much as it does. I am sorry.
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NYCPSP,
Apology accepted. My advice to you and others: when you see a comment that is offensive, for whatever reason, ignore it unless it is a point of fact. Don’t take umbrage.
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Of course, NYC parent!
What swirls around us tends to suck us into its vortex. Resist!
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Thank you both for so graciously accepting my apology! I am determined to do better!
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By your latest comment, you got the message. You went right to the point and you didn’t disparage any other commenter. Thank you.
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The Dan Loeb who was a classmate of Obama’s at Columbia, and supported him early on, then changed his mind when Obama had the nerve to suggest that the wealthiest among us should contribute their fair share to society. And who owns several houses, a yacht, and surfs around the world? And pretends to care about poor children so he supports charter schools? Charter schools like Success Academy that treat those poor children horribly and only graduate 17% of them?
That Dan Loeb?
Never heard of him.
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Success Academy shows no signs of being ‘scalable’. As some point out, there is political back-scratching going on, of course. But Loeb is a hedge-funder, & hedge-funds make money off charter schools via the lucrative New Market Tax Credit, which was extended thro 2019 in the tax reform bill (& lobbyists still pushing to make it a permanent part of the tax code). Loeb may just see it as a good move to keep pumping money into a chain that purportedly models the ‘reinvigorating poor urban centers’ premise of the NMTC, in the interests of keping the gravy train rolling.
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First Loeb to my knowledge only donated 9,450,000 . Last year that would have been 9,060,000. And if I had my way, he would he would only have given 1,050,000.
If that were the case . I suspect that he would be donating a lot less and Public schools would have a lot more money.
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Anyone know how those 17 did on their SATs or ACTs? Unbiased data for comparison. Just asking.
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“. . . SATs or ACTs. Unbiased data for comparison. Just KIDDING.”
There, corrected your mistake.
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&…I dunno…I find FLERP’s! comments on this post delightfully acerbic.
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Assume that is addressed to me!
acerbic: “sharply or bitingly critical, sarcastic, or ironic in temper, mood, or tone”
This is true. But notice how that tone is directed toward people who comment here and never directed toward Daniel Loeb or Eva Moskowitz.
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Thanks!
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Well, it is “scaleable”- in a way. There can be X number of choice schools as long as there are also X number of public schools to take the students choice schools reject.
Eva couldn’t run a chain of public schools that keep 17 out of 100 students WITHOUT public schools backing her up. Where would the rejected students go?
Public schools are actually essential to the choice model. They’re the default schools, the unfashionable schools, the schools that are designated as back ups. That’s how ed reform sees your kids school- as a building that exists to serve the model.
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If my son’s public high school graduated 17 out of 100 students they would be put on the emergency intervention list by the state of Ohio.
But of course we can’t reject 84% of students and call ourselves “public”, either.
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The story according to Bloomberg news: Loeb Donates $15 Million to Success Academy for High Schools
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Gary Rubenstein has just posted more myth making from Queen Eva:
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That NY Post article epitomizes everything that is wrong with Success Academy and Eva Moskowitz. Gary Rubenstein’s article is so useful in understanding how it works, but it’s near impossible to keep up with all the self-serving articles put out by the SA public relations machine and their media enablers.
As Gary explains, it is never enough for Moskowitz to simply honor the achievements of her students. The achievements have no value unless they can be used to undermine a public school. Her students can’t just be excellent. They must be SUPERIOR and those public schools must be shown to be inferior. It’s not the journey, it’s the win.
Eva Moskowitz views education as a zero sum game. It isn’t simply being good – it is that public schools must be shown to be bad by your accomplishments.
And that means distortions of the truth are necessary.
In the case of the NY Post article, it isn’t just that some students from SA performed admirably and excellently in a chess tournament. It’s that they “notched a victory” over Stuy. Success Academy “upset” Stuy. Success Academy “subdued” Stuy. (Yes, all those words about defeating Stuy were in a single news article). The article even compared Success Academy’s “victory” to the US hockey team defeating Russia in 1980!
But as Gary explains in the link, those claims of Success Academy’s superiority to Stuy are greatly — and no doubt intentionally — misleading.
It is very similar to Success Academy’s misleading claims about their 99% passing rates demonstrating their superiority to every public school in NY State.
There is something incredibly pitiful about watching a grown woman so insecure that every accomplishment needs to be exaggerated and distorted in order to claim superiority and undermine public schools. And I would feel pity for her if those exaggerations and distortions were not so harmful to all the public schools undermined by them.
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I’m puzzled why the Puerto Rican community is not more vocal about Dan Loeb’s investment in predatory debt obligations on the storm-ravaged island. I have a feeling the families in the area of Success Academy schools simply don’t know how Loeb and the other “philanthropists” on the Success Board have bought Puerto Rican debt at deep discounts and made it more valuable by lobbying against Congressional aid packages shortly before Hurricane Maria hit.
It seems like a messaging problem – if these families knew the extent of the exploitation and colonization of Puerto Rico by the Success Academy billionaire donors, they might petition the schools to demand “vulture-free” funding.
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Massachusetts billionaire Seth Klarman holds $92 million of Puerto Rico’s debt. He’s another privatizer / charter shill. He made illegal contributions of nearly $3 million to raise the charter cap in MA in 2016. With friends like theses, it’s not surprising that Puerto Rico is on the brink of losing its public schools.
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It may be that the people who have their kids enrolled at SA dont know where the money comes from.
But it may also be that they simply do not care where the money comes from as long as their kid gets it.
The SA program seems inimical to the idea of community and the common good.
It’s great that SA benefits a few kids.
But at what expense, not only in dollars but to the community at large?
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You have to wonder: how many of the 17 who graduated and are going to college would have done so had they stayed in public schools?
It’s possible that none of them would have, of course, but it’s more likely that at least some of them would have — due to True Grit (TM)
“Success without Success?”
If grit’s what really matters
Success was near assured
When climbing up the ladders
The grit is what endured
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Also, how many of the 83 who left SA graduated and got into a college?
The other thing that I would want to know is how many of those 17 got special scholarships for college available only to SA students? (Ie, that would not have been available to the students had they not gone to SA)
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Some DAM Poet, you are absolutely right to ask that question. It’s a shame the press never does when it presents these accomplishments as a miracle that public schools could never attain.
Seventeen students? Success Academy has been careful to expand only within NYC, where there are 1.1 million students in public schools. I looked up the most recent data and 5,400 African-American and Latino students in NYC graduated with ADVANCED Regents diplomas. Another 26,000 African-American and Latino students graduated with Regents diplomas. Seventeen students is 1/3 of 1% of the African-American and Latino students who graduate from NYC public schools with the ADVANCED Regents diploma. And when Success Academy graduates 10x as many students, it will still be only 3% of the total number of African-American and Latino Students who graduate with the most advanced diplomas in public schools.
There is an underlying assumption to many of the fawning profiles of Moskowitz in which (white) reporters continue under the (racist) assumption that finding an African-American or Latino student who can perform at grade level — let alone above — is such a rare and unusual occurrence that this charter sending 17 of those students to college is working miracles. All of the public school bashing news articles focus only on the 10% or 20% of the lowest performing schools and pretend that the other 80 or 90% of schools where students do graduate and do perform well do not exist! They focus on the 50% of students who struggle and ignore the fact that in a school system that is larger than many states, there are many tens of thousands who do well.
The press wrongly believes that because there is a relative dearth of African-American and Latino students in the big specialized high schools,that means they are only in failing schools. That is far from true. Those students are thriving in public high schools all over NYC — from Townsend Harris to Bard to Beacon to Medgar Evers and many, many more. I have no idea how many dozens more but the number of high schools that graduate African-American and Latino students who go on to excellent colleges is not small.
It’s a shame that Medgar Evers College Prep High School — where 100 African-American and Latino students graduated with Advanced Regents diplomas in 2017 (and even more with regular Regents diplomas) — is invisible to reporters in their rush to promote the “miracle” of 17 students graduating from a charter and going to college.
It’s a shame that Bronx Center for Science and Mathematics – whose students are significantly more economically disadvantaged than at Success Academy — is invisible to reporters who marvel at 17 Success Academy students graduating and going to college and ignore public high schools with far fewer resources where 100 students are graduating with almost all of them going to college.
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