The senior class at Success Academy’s Liberal Arts High School has 17 members.
When they started in kindergarten, there were 73 students.
By the end of eighth grade, there were 32 students.
Four years later, there were 17, all of whom were admitted to college.
Gary Rubinstein wrote recently that we can’t be sure of the real attrition rate because some of the original 73 might have been excluded and replaced; unlike real public schools, Success Academy does not admit new students after third grade.
So impressed was SA’s board chairman, billionaire Dan Loeb, by the “success” of the high school with 17 graduating seniors that he gave Eva Moskowitz $15 million to add more high schools.
But one of our regular readers, who signs in as New York City Public School Parent, says the media should look to the public schools to find schools that consistently achieve success for far greater numbers of students who are poor, African American and/or Hispanic:
| 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. |
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Excellent! Thanks, Diane, for highlight this comment.
How many of us here graduated high school from the same school that we started in kindergarten? Not me.
What’s typical attrition in NYC district schools? Let’s say 14%, though quite likely a bit more than that. Rounding off:
k – 73
1 – 63
2 – 54
3 – 46
4 – 40
5 – 34
6 – 30
7 – 25
8 – 22
9 – 19
10 – 16
11 – 14
12 – 12
Stephen,
Can you name a public school that closes enrollment after third grade? I can’t.
Diane: “Can you name a public school that closes enrollment after third grade?”
Does this qualify… or is closing enrollment after kindergarten too early to fit the bill?
“Hunter College Elementary is a K-6 school that is publicly funded and serves intellectually gifted students. It is administered by Hunter College, a college of the City University of New York.
“The only entry point for Hunter is kindergarten. This means that if you get rejected the first time, you can’t apply to the elementary school again.”
http://www.businessinsider.com/hunter-elementary-school-is-insanely-hard-to-get-into-2015-6
You got me there, Stephen. Hunter College Elementary School is an elite public school for the intellectually gifted.
It does not pretend to be a model for all public schools. Success Academy does. Are you suggesting that SA is a model for high attrition? Or what?
It is certainly not a model for public education, where the vast majority of schools accept every student who walks in the door, no matter when.
Diane: “Are you suggesting that SA is a model for high attrition?”
No, SA’s attrition seems quite mediocre, at least relative to other charter schools. Sure, its rate would need to increase by quite a bit to match local traditional public schools, but that doesn’t make it a model for low attrition either…
What exactly is best for students in respect to backfill doesn’t have a simple answer.
How far behind academically is so far behind academically that it would do a disservice to the student to put him or her together with students who are considerably more skilled in reading, writing, arithmetic? Do you have an answer?
Reminds me of the fine chapter on grade level retention in Meira Levinson/Jacob Fay’s fine book “Dilemmas of Educational Ethics.”
From a class of 73 to a class of 17 is high attrition. Why would any student leave these wonderful schools? Why would most students leave? Would it have to be a class of 1 for you to acknowledge that attrition is very high?
Diane: “From a class of 73 to a class of 17 is high attrition.”
73 starting in kindergarten and 17 graduating at the end of 12 grade? What’d that be… about an 11% annual attrition if there were no backfill at all? What would you define as a moderate attrition rate? And roughly what percentage of NYC public district schools would you guess would be above and below that rate that you would consider moderate?
Stephen,
You are unable to comprehend that typical public schools accept new students whenever they show up. I assume you are admitting that SA is a highly selective school that excludes the students it doesn’t want and has no students with disabilities in high school.
Don’t bother commenting any more. You say the same thing every time and, as usual, you have nothing new to say.
It is ironic that the defenders of Success Academy always turn to schools that EXCLUDE students when they want to justify their practices.
Stephen Ronan — you are absolutely right. There are schools that exclude students in NYC.
Not one of them has ever compared their results to public schools that don’t exclude and claimed that their superior results should be able to be achieved by those schools if only they used their superior teachers and curriculum (for purchase!)
When the principal of Hunter College Elementary school starts testifying that their students’ results prove that public schools don’t need money and should be able to get similar results with their students in large classes, then I will be just as critical of that principal.
Fortunately, I have yet to see a leader of a NYC school that excludes who has the same lack of any ethical core as Eva Moskowitz has.
I have yet to see a leader of a NYC school that excludes who insists that their school deserves more and those public schools that don’t exclude deserve less because her 99% passing rates prove her excellence.
Do you know why Eva Moskowitz pretends her schools don’t exclude like the public schools who are up front about it?
Because EVERY public school that excludes does well. Her justification for expanding her “brand” would fall apart.
Instead, we need to believe she is working the miracles she and her PR team keep boasting that she does. Because she teaches the exact same kids as failing public schools do but achieves miracles with all the same kids. And never excludes. SA is the model for how to save public education. And the many tens of millions in donations and federal grants are the very least that SA deserves for performing this miracle.
Stephen Ronan says,
“How far behind academically is so far behind academically that it would do a disservice to the student to put him or her together with students who are considerably more skilled in reading, writing, arithmetic? Do you have an answer?”
I am shocked that the defenders of Success Academy are now making the argument that “public” schools — like they claim Success Academy is — should no longer accept students who are “so find behind academically that it would do a disservice to the student to put him or her together with students who are considerably more skilled….”
Since Stephen Ronan thinks charters are doing a great service to such students by refusing to teach them, and Stephen Ronan insists that Success Academy is a wonderful model for public schools, I can’t help wondering what happens to all those students that Stephen Ronan believes are better served by not being in any school!
That’s basically what Ronan is justifying — that no school should teach those kids because it would be a “disservice” to put them in their school.
Given that Success Academy is now larger than most small cities, it is truly appalling to hear their defenders explaining that kids who are not up to snuff should not get an education because it would be a “disservice” to them to receive one.
What is truly appalling is what Stephen Ronan is implying: if a student isn’t up to snuff, why should a school teach him if he will bring down his classmates?
But it has been clear to me from early on that is the guiding philosophy of Success Academy.
^^And remember, everything that Stephen Ronan uses to justify why Success Academy shouldn’t backfill explains the reason that Success Academy would drum out low-performing students!
As Stephen Ronan makes clear, SA believes it is a disservice to children to be in a class where they just aren’t up to snuff.
And I agree with Ronan that is the guiding philosophy of Success Academy and it begins with the kids who win their original Kindergarten lottery.
It is exactly the philosophy that justifies suspending them, humiliating them, punishing them, holding them back year after year until those children leave.
If that is what a charter network believes — that children who are at a lower place academically aren’t served by being in classes with better performing students — they would of course drum out all children like that.
Thank you, Stephen Ronan, for making clear exactly the philosophy of SA and applies to ALL students from Kindergarten on.
Steven Ronen, your question is pure, unadulterated misdirection.
You know, or should know, full well that the issue is not attrition alone, but the replacement of those students who leave.
Public school students who leave are regularly replaced by others. It’s impossible for Success Academy to do this, because only a small cohort of children (as demonstrated by the size of the current graduating class, and with all due respect to their efforts) can withstand the SA model, which is based on aggressive social engineering and behavior modification.. A few kids can take it, and some even may thrive, but it’s wildly inappropriate for most children.
Not that she ever would consider it, but if Moskowitz had to replace the students who leave/are forced out, the discipline and suspension rates would be more astronomical than the already are.
For Moskowitz, Loeb and their ilk, most children, and most of humanity for that matter, is on their “got to go” list. They have no use for them, except as revenue sources or as tokens of their own financial and political interests.
Does anyone know if the qualified admission high schools in NYC like Stuyvesant backfill? I looked around a bit, and could only find the admissions requirements for students to enter in ninth grade, nothing about later years.
How about closing admissions at the end of third grade? Please find a public school that does that.
You can’t compare SA—which claims to enroll by lottery—to Stuyvesant, which has a very rigorous entry exam and is admittedly a very elite school. It does not pretend to accept everyone.
M.F.: “You know, or should know, full well that the issue is not attrition alone, but the replacement of those students who leave.”
While backfill or lack thereof is certainly an issue worth serious attention, it’s not clear to me that that is the issue that NYCPSP and Diane are attempting to raise in this particular instance.
After all, in respect to the celebrated Medgar Evers College Prep High School, I see here the Grade Six Application, which I encourage reviewing till the last page:
http://www.mecps.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=283076&type=d
I’m having trouble finding the Grades 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 applications? Could you kindly direct me to those?
In respect to Bronx Center for Science and Mathematics, I see reference to applying in 8th or 9th grade, not in respect to 10, 11 or 12
Click to access HighSchoolAdmissions_OnePager.pdf
Stephen, my graduating class at San Jacinto High School in Houston had more students than the freshman class. How is this even possible?
teachingeconomist,
Public schools that exclude have great results! No one is denying that.
Charter schools that exclude have great results, too! The more they exclude, the better their results!
The only difference is the public schools are up front about the fact that they exclude and don’t make claims that they teach the same kids who are in failing schools but achieve miracles with them.
Success Academy COULD do that. But that would stop their gravy train in donations from billionaires who want them to claim that public schools should be able to match their results – which they claim is achievable using less money — and the only reason public schools don’t match those results is lousy teaching.
NYC PSP,
Are schools that administer admission tests, do not backfill, and whose student demographics are wildly different from the school district in which they are located really “public schools”? I am fairly comfortable saying they are, but that leads me to the position that charter schools too can be properly called “public schools”.
Charter schools are not public schools for other reasons. They do not have democratic governance. Their boards are private, neither elected nor chosen by an elected official. They are not required to adhere to the same federal and state laws re civil rights, accountability, transparency, or teacher qualifications. They are private schools that have a contract with the state. When sued in federal or state courts, their defense is always that they are “not state actors.” Like Boeing or Lockheed, they are private contractors.
teachingeconomist says:
“Are schools that administer admission tests, do not backfill, and whose student demographics are wildly different from the school district in which they are located really “public schools”?”
They are HONEST public schools. They are up front about who they are for.
They are also public schools because the very same board of education oversees them. That means that those schools are part of a SYSTEM that cannot exclude kids.
Imagine this: There is a huge public high school in Pittsburgh called Taylor-Allderdice. That huge public high school has an “honors” track — quite large — which EXCLUDES the lowest performing students.
The students in the honors track do quite well. The students who aren’t in the honors track don’t do as well. The public school — and in fact the entire public school system in Pittsburgh — is responsible for ALL the students.
Taylor-Allerdice’s principal cannot simply pretend that the students who are not in the honors track don’t exist and crow that he has discovered the solution of how to achieve 100% graduation rates in all public high schools.
Charter schools do exactly this. It would be funny if so many of the most gullible reporters and politicians did not believe that they had truly discovered the solution because the excluded students do not exist for them.
Public schools have ALWAYS excelled at teaching the most motivated learners!
Charters were supposed to demonstrate ways to teach the least motivated learners. Instead, they specifically exclude them and have announced that they have performed miracles and shouldn’t that be rewarded with tens of millions of dollars the public schools who “fail” to match these miracles just don’t deserve.
NYCPSP
Let me remind you of our earlier discussion where we eventually agreed that there are many charter schools in the country overseen by locally elected boards of education. Arguably there is more democratic control of those charter schools than there is of schools in districts like NYC Public that do not have an elected school board.
You are right that schools are not school systems, so comparing charter schools like The Community Roots Charter School in New York to the NYC Public school system is unreasonable.
We disagree about traditional public schools excelling at teaching the most motivated students. Certainly NYC Public does, as do some other districts around the country. Thomas Jefferson High School in Northern Virginia, for example, offers an extensive mathematics curriculum that includes multivariate calculus, differential equations, matrix algebra, complex analysis, and probability theory, all of which require calculus as a prerequisite (for a full listing of courses offered, see https://insys.fcps.edu/CourseCatOnline/#/reportPanel/503/10/0/0/0/1 ) Almost all district high schools only offer a math curriculum that ends with BC Calculus.
Finally, I not that you are very concerned about what people say about their schools. Do you find charter schools that stick to their knitting less objectionable?
teachingeconomist says:
“Finally, I note that you are very concerned about what people say about their schools.”
Guilty as charged. I am very concerned about whether charters lie and mislead about what they do. I am very concerned about whether Presidents lie and mislead about what they do.
Let me ask you why you are NOT concerned when people lie and mislead in order to gain an advantage?
NYC PSP,
Indeed I am concerned when people misstate the truth or leap to generalized conclusions based on relatively small numbers.
Do you have objections to charter schools in principle or just objections to what some people say about charter schools? If it is the former, the boasting of some charter advocates is largely irrelevant to your argument. If it is the latter, there are likely thousands of charter schools that you could comfortably endorse.
teachingeconomist says:
“I am concerned when people misstate the truth or leap to generalized conclusions based on relatively small numbers”
That’s odd because I don’t recall you ever criticizing Eva Moskowitz.
“…there are likely thousands of charter schools that you could comfortably endorse….”
In fact, there was a time very recently when I supported some good charters. Their results were no better than public schools and often worse, but they ran their charters trying to do the best for the students who randomly won the lottery, giving priority to at-risk students who needed good schools.
But times have changed.
I now think of the charter movement as I do the Republican Party. The leaders of the Republican Party — Trump and his people — use lies to enact toxic policies dangerous to so many Americans and beneficial to a very few.
A few Republicans like Susan Collins give mild lip service to opposing it while completely enabling it. Most remain silent because they would never endanger their own position by speaking out.
In other words, no, I won’t vote for a Susan Collins or any Republican anymore. They have not lifted one finger to limit the harm done by those toxic lies of Trump. Those toxic lies have done so much harm and will continue to do so. But you could certainly argue that a few people are benefitting from Trump’s toxic lies so it is okay. It is not.
And the charter movement is the same way. Not one person will speak out against the toxic lies of Eva Moskowitz. They know she is not honest and yet they enable it with silence. Because they know that speaking out will endanger their own position.
Eva Moskowitz terrifies the charter movement the way Trump terrifies the Republicans. The most you hear is “tut tut” as they completely enable every power grab and terrible policy that is done.
So my support of “good” charters (and by “good” I don’t mean “we dump kids and get 99% passing rates) has waned.
Just like my support of “good” Republicans who tut tut or remain quiet has waned.
They are enablers.
NYC PSP,
I have not criticized Eva Moskowitz for the same reason that I have not taken a position on which Ray’s Pizza is actually the original Ray’s Pizze: outside of NYC no one much cares.
Success Academy, with its 46 schools, comprises about .6% of the charter schools in the country. There are more Montessori charter schools in the country than there are Success Academy charter schools. There are far more school board controlled charter schools than Moskowitz controlled charter schools. I don’t think Success Academy represents charter schools any more than the East Ramapo represents traditional public school boards.
The only Republican I have ever voted for was a pro-choice Republican running against a pro-life Democrat, so I am also not a fan of the Republican party, but I am not sure why that is relevant to the current discussion.
teachingeconomist,
Really? That’s your analogy? Ray’s Pizza?
I think you are smart enough to understand the impact of those false statements being believed on what happens nationally and how scarce resources are allocated. Right now, it is only affecting public schools and many other charters benefit when politicians believe they work miracles. As long as Eva Moskowitz’ results justify more money for charters, why speak out?
There is a reason that — so far — Eva Moskowitz and the pro-charter advocacy organizations who promote her have made it a point never to compare her network’s results directly to other charters. She can count on charters to remain quiet for the crumbs tossed their way as long as she doesn’t use her test scores to undermine and insult those “underperforming charter schools” and their sub-par teaching.
I suspect that if Moskowitz started comparing herself with those Montessori charter schools that aren’t getting 100% passing rates on state tests and pointing out how superior her charter network is to theirs, you might not be so blasé about whether what she is claiming about her results is true.
Moskowitz is very influential because those misleading statements are believed. When she endorsed Betsy DeVos and demanded that Senators approve her, that gave a lot of cover to the Senators that might have been wavering. After all, if the charter CEO most concerned with what happens to at-risk students thinks Betsy DeVos is so great, she must be. And we know Moskowitz is better than any other educator at teaching at-risk kids, so her word on what is good for them should be believed. After all, the only people who don’t believe her are those public school advocates who are just trying to protect union teachers.
Got it?
Maybe you can explain to me how whether or not people know which Ray’s is the original pizza place would affect children?
NYC PSP,
May I respectfully suggest that you get out of NYC more.
The idea that Eva Moskowitz endorsing Betsy DeVos caused Republic senators from Wyoming, Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas, Iowa, Oklahoma, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wisconsin, etc. to vote for Betsy Devos’ confirmation is preposterous.
The only person who might have a higher opinion of Eva Moskowitz than you is Eva herself, but she might not even think she is as important as you think she is.
teachingeconomist,
“The only person who might have a higher opinion of Eva Moskowitz than you is Eva herself, but she might not even think she is as important as you think she is.”
Let’s see if I understand you, teachingeconomist.
You saw a post about Success Academy, which is so “unimportant” to you that you decided to waste what is now an extraordinarily amount of time to try to convince me that Eva Moskowitz is not important at all!
Because convincing me that this unimportant woman is very unimportant seems to be awfully important to YOU. Why?
Instead of placing so much effort to convince ME how unimportant Eva Moskowitz is — presumably because you think I should let her outrageously misleading claims remain unchallenged due to her “unimportance” — why don’t you tell it to the media?
Why don’t you tell me which charter school leaders’ opinion are more “important”? Surely there must be many more important charter leaders getting millions in donations and writing autobiographies that are covered in major media all over the country. All those “unimportant” ones.
It’s also odd that Eva Moskowitz lobbied so hard for Betsy DeVos, since, as you insist, no one cares. Why would she waste her time writing op eds and making speeches and giving interviews praising DeVos — and why would the media even bother to print that nonsense — since, as you say, no one cares.
Or maybe the media is like you, professing not to care while every action they make demonstrates that they do.
I think your unwillingness to criticize Eva Moskowitz might speak much louder than your very hard work trying to convince me that she is so very unimportant you decided to devote a lot of time insisting that critics should just let her promote her schools with whatever dishonesty she wants because honesty just isn’t “important”.
If I understand you correctly, teachingeconomist, you are trying to tell me that you find it very important to convince me how unimportant Moskowitz’ dishonest claims are.
No doubt you represent exactly how the charter industry rationalizes their complicity.
It doesn’t work that way Stephen. Yes, students do come and go in public schools. Generally, the student population stays about the same number wise or if one is in an area like my rural expanding population area the school population grows. A cohort may lose an average of say 5% a year but at the same time it is gaining that 5% back in other students and sometimes another 2-3% for a net gain.
Supposed Success Academy has only lost students from the 3rd grade on, no new students. Yes, it’s that simple.
Duane: “Supposed Success Academy has only lost students from the 3rd grade on, no new students. Yes, it’s that simple.”
Indeed, so can folks here cease the endless implications that Success Academy’s attrition rate is dramatically high and move on to a more rational, evidence-based discussion of the implication of lack of backfill? Peer effects and all that?
Stephen,
Success Academy has a sky-high attrition rate, pretends it doesn’t, pretends it is a model for all public schools, including those that take the kids that SA excludes or pushes out.
dianeravitch: these two succinct comments by you and Señor Swacker make it clear that the $ucce$$ Academy ‘splainer is responding here and elsewhere to [unstated] completely different comments on threads of other blogs.
Brings to mind that riff off an old adage: “if at first you don’t mislead, try try again…”
😎
Thanks.
Haven’t seen him since the charteristas got beat in Mass.
If Success Academy’s attrition rate wasn’t sky high, they would be crowing about how low their attrition rate was. Not doing everything they can to keep it hidden. And their enablers at the SUNY Charter Institute would do everything they could to keep it hidden.
Click to access school-indicators-for-new-york-city-charter-schools-2013-2014-school-year-july-2015.pdf
I encourage readers to see the only study that included LONGITUDINAL attrition rates of NYC charter schools and not simply 9 month data. It is this longitudinal data which really tells you whether students who win the original lottery for Kindergarten are pushed out over the years.
Page 9 shows longitudinal attrition rates of a group of NYC charters that include a number of Success Academy schools.
Overall — a shockingly high 49.5% of the original Kindergarten class is missing by the start of 5th grade in those charters.
This report is careful not break down that attrition by charter. But given that Success Academy has generally shown to have a higher than average attrition rate, that would suggest that significantly more than half the entering Kindergarten class goes missing.
No top performing school would have half or even more of the parents pulling out their children unless there was something else going on.
It doesn’t happen in public schools – period.
There is absolutely no reason why we do not have the data on how many of the students who win the original K lottery for Success Academy are with their class for 3rd grade testing.
There is absolutely no reason why we do not have the data on how many of the AT-RISK students who win the original K lottery for Success Academy are with their class for 3rd grade testing.
But those are the kinds of studies that the billionaires never fund. Even if it would be the most obvious question as to whether Success Academy’s superiority over every other charter network in NYC had anything to do with their attrition.
And Success Academy is “superior” to every other charter network in NYC. But somehow the bragging and claims of superiority stop at public schools. I suspect that if SA claimed superiority over all those “inferior” charter schools the way they claim superiority over public schools, some of the embarrassingly co-opted charter CEOs whose charters just got insulted might speak out.
Thanks for that info NYCpsp.
Stephen Ronan – like many reporters who don’t recognize their own implicit racist assumptions — leaves out something very important in his efforts to mislead.
Comparing Success Academy to district schools is rather absurd. Why would Ronan go out of his way to compare to public schools that take every student – no matter how transient – and which include public schools who have the kind of very poor test results that would understandably lead parents to leave and seek out a better — and more well-funded school.
The proper comparison — which neither Success Academy nor their enablers at the SUNY Charter Institute will ever allow — is to see whether this “highest performing charter network in the state” loses a lot more students that other charter networks.
Not surprisingly, this data remains top secret. The only rather unscientific study we have is one done by WNYC and reporter (and Success Academy fan) Beth Fertig. Her study is often used by Stephen Ronan to compare SA’s attrition to public schools, and the part of the study that is so damaging to the myth — the single year school-wide attrition rate of Success Academy when compared to other CHARTER networks — is ignored.
Somehow, every other charter network but one managed to have a far better retention rate than Success Academy.
The red flag here is that those other charter networks’ test scores were mediocre compared to Success Academy’s test scores. So we are supposed to accept without question that among the population of parents who are most motivated to seek out the best charter schools for their kids, that population of parents pulls their kids from the top performing charter network far more frequently than they do the charters where half or more of the students fail to pass state tests.
Does anyone believe that? It’s part of the same racist assumption that because many of these parents are poor and African-American or Latino, they just don’t value this rare opportunity to give their child the best education money can buy when their child is one of the very lucky ones to win a coveted spot.
But we are supposed to believe that they are much more likely to be satisfied in a charter whose results aren’t particularly good.
If you look at public schools and compare apples to apples, the top performing publics have lower attrition rates than schools that are failing. That’s not surprising to anyone.
But if you look at charters, that doesn’t hold true. The top performing charter does not have one of the lowest attrition rates when compared to other charters. It has one of the highest. And that IS surprising. And in my opinion, the only reason more reporters and the SUNY Charter Institute don’t find that very odd and worth examining closely is casual racism.
The same is true with out of school suspension rates. It shocks me that Success Academy Springfield Gardens — which has virtually no white students and many low-income ones — gave 18% of their students out of school suspensions — when the entire charter school consisted of only Kindergarten and first graders!
Can you imagine any public school insisting that 18% of their Kindergarten and first grade students were acting out so violently that they needed to be suspended and the press not questioning it?
Does the fact that those children being suspended were primarily low-income African-American and Latino Kindergarten and first grade students have anything to do with the fact that the media accepts without question a charter CEOs explanation that she has no choice but to suspend so many very young kids? That it’s all the fault of the children, even if they are only in Kindergarten and first grade.
Does the fact that those children being suspended were primarily low-income African-American and Latino Kindergarten and First grade students have anything to do with the SUNY Charter Institute’s certainty that they must have all been violent so no need to look further?
HUNTER IS NOT A DOE SCHOOL. Not only does that school not have a high rate of attrition, but also there is a wait list from which children are selected if there is attrition (up to the 2nd grade, I think). Stop comparing apples to oranges, while claiming that you have a real argument. Sorry for the all caps, but I’m tired of the charter sympathizers and their “arguments.”
btw There is a transfer process during the freshman year of high school whereby students can apply to enter Stuyvesant in the tenth grade.
Beth,
Thanks for answering my original question.
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
Why are the traditional public schools in New York City invisible to them media?
Success Academy (SA) and the media blasted the News about the 17 students (out of 73 or more who started out in this group) that graduated from SA’s first high school graduating class but do not mention the 31,400 African Americans that graduated with advanced regents and regents diplomas from New York City’s traditional public schools.
Public schools do not have a PR team to blast their democratic message everywhere. As such, public schools are largely taken for granted. They are operated by professionals, not spin doctors or privateers. They have no marketing team to extol their virtues or successes.
I remember when Eva opened the very first Harlem Success Academy. She had a marketing budget of $325,000. The local public school had a budget of $500 to compete for students in the neighborhood.
The lottery was a marketing tool.
Who wins?
TRUE. And maybe this is where change should occur. Public schools don’t need spin doctors, but they do need a way to repeatedly get the message out about how many wonderful things occur — day after day, school after school. It is a hard fight to win, but perhaps the essential fight.
“31,400 African Americans that graduated with advanced regents and regents diplomas from New York City’s traditional public schools.” Think about how the public perception about our nation’s schools could be radically changed simply by spending money on the non-stop buying up of media space to recognize and promote amazing pubic school successes.
I would love to see how much it cost to educate these 17 students in high school. It would be instructive to compare it to the per pupil expenditure in the NYC public high schools.
It would be equally interesting to compare the cost of these 17 students at Success Academy, which is swimming in outside money donated by billionaires who think it is a model for public schools.
You will never hear it because the only reason Moskowitz gets those donations is her willingness to undermine public education and provide “evidence” for why public schools don’t need money and class size doesn’t matter.
Thank you very much for highlighting this.
Maybe it’s just me, Stephen, but my graduating class at San Jacinto High School in Houston was even larger than the freshman class.
Also of note of the success academy graduating class of 17. How many of these students were admitted to a specialized NYC high school such as Bronx Science or HS of American Studies? Not one. Not one kid from Success was able to “slam the exam” to get into a NYC specialized HS. Moskowitch suddenly became a mouse in the corner hiding from the cat.