Gary Rubinstein was taken aback when he saw an article in Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid “The New York Post” claiming that the girls’ chess team at Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy had defeated the chess powerhouse at Stuyvesant High School, one of the city’s elite high schools. (Murdoch has personally donated millions of dollars to Success Academy.)
Gary checked the tournament report and found that no student from SA had defeated either of the Stuyvesant contestants at the tournament. The highly-ranked Stuy team sent two players to the tournament, whose combined score was less than the combined scores of the three-person SA team.
What was so disturbing was that SA twisted this narrative into a “glorious victory” for SA. Even Chalkbeat posted a link to the fake news.
Well, what’s the point of having a public relations team if they can’t turn every piece of news into a triumph over a public school with a daunting reputation? Nothing yet from the PR team about SA’s high school graduation rate of 17% (if you start with the 100 students who entered kindergarten at SA). Or, how the carefully culled 32 graduates of 8th grade turned into 17 high school graduates. That’s a graduation rate of 53%, below the grad rate of the city public schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
As I also wrote on Gary’s blog, there’s lies, damned lies, and Eva Moskowitz.
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fake news
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good one
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I have posted on this site several times that eva moskowitch is the pt barnum of our time
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As Rubinstein acknowledges, it’s a bit awkward to attack this Post story, because obviously these girls from Success did a great job and should be proud of themselves. But the story is grossly disrespectful to the Stuy players. The reality check Gary gives is important. I do not play competitive chess, and I don’t even play chess particularly well, but if Gary’s correct about the ratings of the Success players, I would absolutely mop the floor with them. And, in turn, the girls from Stuy would absolutely mop the floor with me. It wouldn’t be close.
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Well, Michelle Rhee would mop the floor with all of you.
And Obama would mop the floor in eleven dimensions.
So there.
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I agree 100% about how disrespectful this is to the Stuy players. “Upsets Juggernaut Stuyvesant High School” “Subdued Stuy” It’s like “The US hockey team beating the mighty Soviets at the 1980 Olympics” according to the NY Post based on information most likely provided by Success Academy.
My question, as always, is why Eva Moskowitz has the pathological need to turn almost every admirable achievement of the students at Success Academy into a triumph and victory to show their “superiority” over a public school. It seems an attempt to take the attention away from the students themselves to make it all about Success Academy’s superiority (which is, of course, Eva Moskowitz’ superiority since students owe all their “victories” over public schools to her.)
As with her over the top claims that her charter network’s test scores make her superior to almost every NY State public school, she is willing to twist any facts to prove her charters’ superiority.
Or maybe it isn’t pathological. I have yet to see a single news article based on a Success Academy press release touting “Success Academy proves superiority to every other charter network in NY”.
So perhaps these kind of fact-twisting press releases are all about undermining public schools and leaving charter schools alone. At least for now.
As much as I think the only thing that will stop this is Moskowitz getting a taste of her medicine, I am glad that NYC public schools don’t stoop to her level. There have been many public schools — from Murrow to IS 318 to PS 282 in Brooklyn who have had success in chess.
https://bklyner.com/take-that-kasparov-psms-282-students-take-home-national-chess-championship-parkslopestoop/
When they get press coverage, the only person getting dissed is Kasparov. Not the students from a charter so that this public school can prove its superiority. And that is how it should be. It’s just a shame that touting a charter school’s superiority over public schools — whether it is true or not — is so financially rewarding.
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The responsibility for this piece falls solely on the Post. Of course Eva and her minions are going to twist and spin and put out everything they can that to make SA look good – that’s their job. It’s up to the Post and its “reporters” to fact check claims and, well, actually report. But in this day of stenography “journalism”, media outlets simply report verbatim whatever powerful figures hand them to report. To be fair, this phenomenon is hardly confined to the Post.
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Dienne77: …”media outlets simply report verbatim whatever powerful figures hand them to report.”
I remember from a journalism class that I started, and then dropped while in the 9th grade, was to report ‘who, what, where, when and why’ before it can be put out to the public. We were warned about ‘yellow journalism’.
Looks like the New York Post is a floppy from Murdock, who revels in fake news. Makes ‘yellow journalism’ even look good. Might be some speck of truth in ‘yellow journalism’.
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Agre 100%. When will media outlets that print total crap be held responsible for the refuse they produce?
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What’s your evidence, Diane, that “SA twisted this narrative”? Have you, yourself looked at the team results for that championship? Below is the comment I left for Gary.
Yours generally seems a fair recounting of what happened, Gary, other than the plausible, but not proven, assumption that Success Academy P.R. was somehow responsible for distorting reality.
If the reporter was simply informed that the Success team finished first in that contest and then looked here http://rknights.org/registration/tournaments/all-girls-nationals/standings/ at the Under-18 team results of that Kasparov Chess Foundation National Championship I could imagine him coming up with the story he wrote without any need for external prompting to especially focus on any of the runners up, and he might not have even noticed that one of those had less than a full complement of team members.
FWIW, it seems to me that it was the Under-12 age group where Success Academy shined the brightest… not only a team member finishing first out of 100+ participants and one S.A. middle school finishing tied for first, but additionally other S.A. middle school teams finishing 4th and 6th. Not to mention Success Academy Bed-Stuy capturing second place in the Under 16s.
In any event thanks for bringing attention to the brilliant success of both S.A. and Stuyvesant participants.
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yes, Stephen, I examined Gary’s evidence.
There is not a single SA chess player who beat a single Stuy chess player, so why a story proclaiming that SA “beat” Stuy?
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“There is not a single SA chess player who beat a single Stuy chess player, so why a story proclaiming that SA ‘beat’ Stuy?”
Why not ask the person who wrote the story rather than jump to conclusions? So far as I can tell there were only two (very accomplished) Stuyvesant students in the entire tournament, both competing in the relatively little populated under-18 section and only one of whom ever played anyone from S.A. (winning twice).
The depth, and breadth and great success of their under 12 year olds might be the most appropriate area for celebration from an S.A. perspective. Stuyvesant wasn’t the only short-staffed team in the older group… so far as I can tell virtually all of them were.
I’d be willing to wager on the success of S.A.’s under 12 year old top lass even against the redoubtable FLERP! You or he or anyone else willing to take the opposite side of that bet? Be forewarned:
“This past weekend, Nura Baalla, a Success Academy sixth-grader who is half Puerto Rican and half Moroccan, took home the ninth-place trophy in the state’s elementary championship. Baalla’s win broke gender barriers in a boy-dominated sport: she was the only girl to place among the top ten in this competitive division.”
http://thebronxchronicle.com/2018/03/24/success-academy-students-win-big-at-ny-state-chess-championship-bringing-a-new-level-of-diversity-to-the-sport/
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Stephen,
I suggest you go back to writing on other blogs. I find it tedious to listen to your daily, hourly, braying about the miracles accomplished by privatizing public schools.
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“I’d be willing to wager on the success of S.A.’s under 12 year old top lass even against the redoubtable FLERP!”
Bring it on!
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I would wager on you, FLERP!, but then Ronan would keep posting his charter-celebrating comments here indefinitely.
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Later this year I’ll be launching my Andy Kaufman-esque national tour in which I play chess against 12-year-old girls from local charter schools.
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Ah, FLERP! I can picture you now at the chess hall letting a succession of 1962-rated teenagers “mop the floor” with you and then when a fresh-faced child with an 1800 rating approaches your table adjusting your bi-focal shades and trying to concentrate.
Maybe we can work something out… take note of the elegant lady nearby in the shadows… An easy mark? Perhaps we can persuade her to pause her vilification of a PR release that she hasn’t yet seen and that may not exist, and get some of those chips off her shoulder and onto the table….
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Thanks for this, the details are important. To be clear, I will only play 12-year-old girls rated at or below 1168 (the highest rating of the competitors from Success).
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FLERP! “at or below 1168 (the highest rating of the competitors from Success)”
Rubinstein’s piece only alluded to ratings for the under-18 S.A. team members. He spared us the understanding (absent independent follow up research) that S.A. had quite a few younger kids in the tournament rated over 1200, including a 1505 and 1615 at Bed Stuy in the Under 16 age group and an 1800 in the under 12 age group. The last of those being the one I was trying to match your skills with.
Diane had said: “I would wager on you, FLERP!, but then Ronan would keep posting his charter-celebrating comments here indefinitely.”
Now, unfortunately, you’ve revealed to her that if she were indeed to wager on you in that contest, I might well be able to fund a new handball wall at my alma mater H.S., prior to departing on a cruise far from the blogosphere.
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Stephen,
I would invest a small amount in any venture that would get you away from the blogosphere.
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Bon voyage!
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I’m betting FLERP! just likes to pound his chess.
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I can see the headline
“Chess match of the century: FLERP! Vs ‘Deep Green’ (12 year old Girl Scout)”
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I wanted to address something Stephen Ronan said in which he accused Diane of “jumping to conclusions” as if it was the reporter’s fault. But it is Success Academy churning out these constant self-promoting press releases.
These oddly familiar quotes are from the link to a different news story that Stephen Ronan posted above. This story ran a month earlier and was about a completely different tournament, but the self-promoting quotes giving the SA charter network all the credit are the same.
http://thebronxchronicle.com/2018/03/24/success-academy-students-win-big-at-ny-state-chess-championship-bringing-a-new-level-of-diversity-to-the-sport/
“The program has a record of developing top chess players from groups that tend to be underrepresented in the sport, including girls, Hispanics, and African-Americans.”
“Like so many of Success Academy’s chess players, Baalla probably wouldn’t have played competitive chess if she hadn’t been recruited to the team in third grade. Her mother Ketty Baalla, a single mom, says that even if it had occurred to her to give Nura chess lessons, she probably wouldn’t have been able to afford them. “Nura discovered her passion thanks to this program,” says Ms. Baalla.”
And here are the quotes from the NY Post “Success Academy defeats Stuy” story about a completely different chess tournament from a month later:
https://nypost.com/2018/04/23/charter-school-upsets-juggernaut-stuyvesant-hs-on-way-to-chess-crown/
“Success Academy . . . has a record of developing top players from groups that tend to be underrepresented in chess, including girls, Hispanics, and African-Americans,” the network said.”
“The charter network also crowned its first ever individual national champion as Nura Baalla, a sixth-grader at Success’ Hudson Yards location, won the under-12 division.
…..Baalla’s mom credited Success with sparking her daughter’s love of chess.
“This is a dream come true for Nura,” Ketty Baalla said, noting she likely would not have thought to introduce the game to her daughter. “She has discovered her passion, thanks to Success Academy.”
Network officials said Baalla began showing promise early.
“Nura, who is Hispanic, might never have played competitive chess if she hadn’t been encouraged by her Success Academy coach to join a team in third grade,” the school said in a statement.
The first is obviously plagiarism as the “reporters” used the Success Academy press release word for word.
And the second is the rather embarrassing attempt of Success Academy to claim all the credit for Nura’s success.
You won’t find that kind of self-promotion in the stories about IS 318, which is more interested in recognizing the accomplishments of its chess-playing students and not taking credit for them. Nor using the results of those students to crow about their superiority over the charter schools who they regularly defeat.
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Stephen Ronan,
There are NYC public elementary and public middle schools who have also won championships many times in the past. There was even a documentary about one of them. “Brooklyn Castle”.
The articles about these victories were not focused on the charter schools over whom these public schools showed their superiority.
Every time a public school does better than one of the Success Academy Charter schools in a chess tournament — which does happen — there might be an article about the public school’s win. I have NEVER read an article in which the main focus was not the fact that the school won, but about their superiority over a charter school.
And I think that deep down you know that is wrong. Just like deep down you know that the entire NY Post article was incredibly misleading. I suspect you don’t want public schools to issue a press release every time they “defeat” Success Academy because the most important thing about their victory is the defeat of a charter school.
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The spin machine” is even worse than this.
Not only did the NY Post write that fawning “news” article about the crushing defeat Stuy students suffered at the hands of the Success Academy students at that tournament.
The NY Post ALSO felt it necessary to write a separate editorial about the achievement:
https://nypost.com/2018/04/24/kudos-to-the-success-academy-chess-queens/
“They not only won, they beat out the young women of another city public school — Stuyvesant HS, traditionally a juggernaut.”
And then the editors chided Mayor de Blasio because he tweeted the Edward R. Murrow High School chess team good luck (in going to what presumably is the REAL national tournament) and failed to say anything about SA’s stunning victory over Stuy.
Apparently later — in response to the NY Post taking it upon themselves to ask the Mayor if planned to note Success Academy’s achievement — the Mayor did tweet to congratulate both SA AND Stuyvesant.
As the NY Post notes: “We believe that’s the first nice thing he’s had to say about a network of schools whose mainly minority scholars regularly rack up the best test scores in the entire state.”
That’s right! The best test scores in the entire state. And the very best chess team in the country. Better than Stuy. Because Eva Moskowitz says it is so.
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Gary Rubinstein is just a treasure.
When he explains these things he is…a good teacher 🙂
I don’t know the first thing about chess but I now understand how the contests work.
It IS deceptive to say the 3 girls beat the 2 girls. I bet the newspaper had no idea how the contests work and just reprinted whatever Success submitted. Someone there isn’t doing their job. I don’t think people will pay to read PR from companies. They could get it for free off the Success website.
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I’m just glad Gary reads the NY Piss.. I mean Post so the rest of us don’t have to.
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Chiara: your comments, like most of those on this thread, are excellent.
IMHO, even when it comes to the “truthful hyperbole” of the corporate education reform crowd this bit on SA’s chess champions is one of the most shallow, egregiously self-serving and shamelessly deliberate lies I have yet seen. It ranks right up there with the “100% graduation rate” nonsense.
It even puts the SA chess players in a bad light. It makes it appear that the only success they can claim has to be built out of selected data tortured into giving the “right” answer.
Thankfully, this propaganda is obviously both artless and inane.
Again, a tip of the hat to those that are keeping it real…
Not rheeal.
😎
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The worst part to me about Moskowitz is not the NYC element, but the fact that she is regularly invited to DC, where lawmakers listen to her opinions with near-worshipful deference.
They can never be bothered to invite anyone from public schools in their own states, but one NYC charter operator gets a prime seat at the table with multiple invitations and red carpet treatment.
It’s ridiculous. They’re supposed to be representing states and districts. They just have no clue what is going on in the public schools they speed past on their way to the airport.
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I agree.
And the worst part of that is what Eva Moskowitz tells those lawmakers.
She tells them not to listen to all those people who are worried about high suspension rates of non-white students. Why her charters with virtually no white kids sometimes suspend 18% of their Kindergarten first graders because it is absolutely necessary to control their violent tendencies.
She tells them not to listen to all those people who want smaller class sizes. Why her charters prove that class sizes can be large as long as you have the patented Success Academy curriculum and Eva Moskowitz-trained teachers.
She tells them how important a school’s test scores are. Why, her charters have 99% passing rates and she gets them with the exact same kids that are in those failing public schools. Exactly the same. And never pushes any child out. Never.
She tells them public schools don’t need more money because they will just waste it! Just open more Success Academy charters and those miracles will occur.
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Here is more evidence of how pernicious and unsportsmanlike Eva Moskowitz’ touting of her teams’ superiority is and how public schools are run by people whose goal is not to turn their students’ accomplishments to undermine other schools — not even charters.
http://www.uschess.org/results/2018/jhs/?page=TEAM&xsection=K9
This is the link to the 2018 National Junior High Championship Tournament results — held April 6 – 8, 2018 in Atlanta, Georgia. Success Academy sent 3 teams — 16 “scholars” — to the tournament.
In the K-9 Championship competition, the winning team was IS 318 (from Brooklyn). Hunter College High School was 3rd and the only team from Success Academy in the K-9 Championship competition was Success Academy Bronx 1 which finished 7th of 13 teams.
In the K-8 Championship competition, the winning team was from Princeton Day School. The top NYC team was from Speyer Legacy, a private school for “gifted” students.
The top NYC team NOT from a private school was — once again! — IS 318 in Brooklyn, which finished 11th.
Close behind were two Success Academy teams — SA Bed Stuy Middle finished 13th and Success Academy Harlem East finished 17th.
IS 318 also won the Girls’ National Championship in 2018! And no stories about how they defeated the charter “goliath” Success Academy who can raise $15 million dollars in one night.
Demographics of IS 318: 79% of the students are African-American and Latino. 55% are economically disadvantaged. 19% of them are disabled. Their test scores are not particularly high.
And they don’t spend their money to hire PR firms to push the narrative that they are superior.
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“Spin Cycle”
Maytag ain’t got nothin’
On Eva and Success
For spinnin’ and for fluffin’
The Moskowitz is best
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MayTAGO, SDP!
(With apologies to Senor Swacker.)
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MayTAGO?
WayTAGO!
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If Eva had a better record of telling the full truth, this story might be more palatable. But as we all know, she really avoids answering hard questions, like why her schools don’t meet the mandated number of kids with special needs, English language issues, etc., even with supposedly long wait lists, like why her cohorts decrease dramatically over the years, like why it took years for any of her super achievers to achieve equally on the NY test for elite high schools (ahhh… maybe that’s why she needs to “succeed” over Stuyvesant….). So who exaggerated? The reporter or Eva? In my opinion, Eva’s track record sure indicates that it’s her.
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Given that it is the NY Post we are talking about here, it’s probably both.
That newspaper is about as reliable as the National Enquirer – probably even less reliable when it comes to some things (Big Foot, for example, since the Enquirer has reporters who are knowledgeable about that)
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SA had 4 players in the tournament and got to count the top 3 scores among them. Stuy had 2 players in the tournament and had to count both of their scores.
Also notable that this was A national tournament, but not THE national tournament.
Selim Algar, the Post writer, doesn’t have clear contact info, but appears to be @Selimalgar on twitter.
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