The privatized charter sector has spawned a mutual protection society.
Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy needs teachers. Despite the charter chain’s glorious test scores, the work environment is not good. Teachers drop like flies under the pressure of imposing rigid discipline on children of color.
So SA teamed up with The New Teachers Project, now known as TNTP, which was originally created by Michelle Rhee (although some say Wendy Kopp was the real brains behind the startup).
The two organizations need one another. SA needs teachers, TNTP has a desperate need for revenue.
A happy marriage.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Success Academy’s financial statements reveal that they pay over $1 million in teacher recruitment. Must be nice ….
Teachers quit so frequently that they must recruit continually.
A young friend in California got an e-mail inviting him to nyc all expenses paid to teach at SA
I am NOT speechless. Recruit constantly…holy cow. That is CRAZY. Wonder what the recruiters MAKE and how much bonuses, too?
Here’s the link to Mercedes’ article (the subject of this post):
https://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2018/06/16/ny-success-academies-is-relying-on-tfa-spinoff-tntp-to-fill-teaching-vacancies/
Oh and here’s Success Academy job posting (just posted last week on June 12) that prompted all this discussion:
https://jobs.chalkbeat.org/jobs/middle-school-math-science-teachers-2/
“we need candidates with a deep-seated belief that all children are capable of reaching the highest bars we set for them”
The posting left out the most important part:
“We need candidates willing to publicly humiliate all 5 year old children who do not meet the highest bars we set for them.”
“We need candidates willing to humiliate those 5 year olds who don’t meet those highest bars to such a degree that a shocking 18% of them will act out violently in that candidate’s Kindergarten class.”
“We need candidates willing to announce publicly that those 5 year old children are acting out violently ONLY because of their natural violent tendencies because the school itself is perfect. And don’t worry, the kindergarten students being suspended in such large numbers will only be in schools that have virtually no white students, so the Success Academy board and oversight agency will believe every nasty thing you say about the 5 year olds you suspend.”
There — finished!
Success Academy took another star turn in the US Congress again last week.
Shame that no one in the federal government can locate a single public school in the United States to talk about or support or contribute to in any positive or worthwhile fashion.
500-some representatives in Congress from all 50 states and the public schools who serve 90% of children can’t even get a mention, let alone any support.
We can do better. We can hire and pay people who value our children’s schools. These folks we’re now paying don’t.
Public school teachers all over the county walked off the job to protest the complete and utter disregard for public schools by lawmakers and what is the response from the federal government?
They held yet another charter forum.
Public schools need not apply. Our federal lawmakers could care less. Not welcome in DC. In fact, they’re rarely mentioned, unless it’s to denigrate the people who work in public schools and the students who attend public schools.
It’s outrageous. They don’t lift a finger on behalf of the schools who serve 90% of US kids, because they oppose our schools ideologically. They should all be replaced and as long as they aren’t public school will remain a disfavored sector in the federal government.
The entire state education apparatus in Ohio is now completely embroiled in the ECOT charter school scandal.
Another year where the public schools who serve 90% of kids in this state are ignored.
We cannot PAY lawmakers to work on public schools. They return absolutely no value to our schools. This has now been going on for almost 20 years, ever since ed reform captured our state legislature. We’re paying thousands of state employees who have zero interest in public school students and contribute nothing to public schools.
Thanks ed reformers! Good job. Great advocacy. Give yourselves another award.
I keep writing: O-SIGH-O. O-SIGH-O was never a great state and now it is just one huge “Mule Muffin.”
The aspect of this that jumps out is that the Success Academy job offering reflects the almost total de-professionalization of teaching.
They’re trying to hire Math and Science teachers for their middle and high schools — those educators who supposedly bill be preparing future Success Academy grads for the rigors of university Math and Science programs ….
… yet those prospective S.A. Math anc Science teachers ARE NOT REQUIRED TO HAVE EVEN ONE CREDIT HOUR OR ANY EXPERIENCE WORKING IN THE SCIENCE OR MATH.
Other than a Bachelor’s degree — which could be in Hospitality Management, for all we know — these teacher may as well be applying for a job at McDonald’s.
Indeed, there’s also no requirement of even one credit hour in education theory or classroom theory/ management, or child psychology, or any experience working with children in ANY capacity (i.e. camp counselor).
The training that Success Academy instead offers is dubious in the extreme:
When Success Academy training videos were posted on-line, veteran teachers and other education experts weighed in on them. They were aghast at the horrible things that were being promulgated on these videos.
Rather than defend this garbage, Eva quickly scrubbed them from the internet.
Veteran NYC Math Teacher (and ex-TFA btw) Gary Rubenstein covered the initial story — the discovery of, and people’s responses to the videos — here:
https://garyrubinstein.wordpress.com/2016/09/01/success-academy-reveals-some-of-their-secret-methods/
and here:
https://garyrubinstein.wordpress.com/2016/09/03/circle-time-at-success-academy/
and the scrubbing of the videos here:
https://garyrubinstein.wordpress.com/2016/09/05/success-academy-scrubs-their-public-video-page/
The top comment of Gary’s first piece read:
“Watching the videos made me nearly physically sick. The entire reform/charter/choice movement is built on teach-to-the-test tactics, which just so happen to be horrible ways to educate human people.”
Here’s a comment from the second video:
“I have a neighbor who trains hunting dogs. What he does with his Labradors looks a lot like what this teacher is doing with these kids. I’m not sure what the objective of the lesson was, but if it was training animals to follow strict directions from their master without fail, the teacher was doing it right”
The rest of comments continue in this vein.
The Success Academy / TNTP job posting is its first since the notorious legislation that was past allowing charter authorizers such as SUNY to self-certify its teachers — requiring new teachers almost ZERO requirements or training before being put into a classroom.
Thanks to that notorious legislation, BELOW is Success Academy’s new, revised job offering — in cooperation with TNTP — that’s now on-line (as of June 12th, when it was posted).
Success Academy teachers now have to meet a mere 4 requirements prior to hiring:
” – Bachelor’s degree, with an outstanding record of academic achievement and leadership;
” – Flexibility and openness to feedback;
” – Grit and perseverance;
and
” – Interest in working in a collaborative environment.”
As Porky Pig used to say …
“Thuh- thuh- thuh- THAT’S all folks!”
No certification or credential of any kind required, nor even one hour of college credit in education, nor any credits in “Science” or “Math” (the postings are for new middle school “Science” and “Math” teachers) nor any training in education, nor one day working in education, or any prior experience working with children in any capacity.
Apart from the Bachelor’s Degree, Eva’s new teacher-disruptor Math and Science teachers may as well be applying to work at McDonald’s.
Thank you, Joe Belluck & the rest of the charter-authorizing folks folks at SUNY!!!
(NOTE the posting’s cliches about how these new, untrained teachers whom Eva hires will be “disrupting the status quo” as they work in “a revolutionary K-12 school model that is nationally recognized for achieving outstanding academic results for students,”
You mean that “Got-to-go List” model where 80% of S.A. students get kicked out or get (COUGH! COUGH!) “counseled out” prior to graduation?
https://garyrubinstein.wordpress.com/2018/06/07/the-case-of-the-missing-scholar/ )
Again, here’s Eva’s job posting:
https://jobs.chalkbeat.org/jobs/middle-school-math-science-teachers-2/
Another thing in the Success Academy job posting here …
https://jobs.chalkbeat.org/jobs/middle-school-math-science-teachers-2/
… are the two references to Success Academy teachers, as part of their job, will also be working as soldiers in the “education reform” movement:
“Joining a highly motivated team committed to education reform, parent choice, and the building of exemplary schools.”
AND
“-Joining a highly motivated team committed to education reform,”
Since “education reform” is code for privatization — turning over public institutions to private management, for the enrichment of those in charge — and also code for concurrent, necessary “union busting” to achieve this, these teachers are de-facto scabs.
Just as with scabs, the bosses treat you like sh*# …. read HERE:
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2014/08/citizen-jacks-compendium-of-teacher.html
… and they pay you like sh*# … read HERE:
https://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2016/06/23/what-it-takes-to-get-very-high-test-scores/
What does this inevitably lead to?
50% turnover … yeah, that’s right … 50% turnover of teachers at these schools
“There have also been high turnover rates reported at many Success schools, as high as 50% at several.”
http://debsedstudies.org/new-yorks-success-academy-charter-schools-a-tentative-success/
Putting aside the tax dollars that SA extorts from NY & NYC, this is an example of how much money and effort the deformers are willing to commit to propping up one of their failed education models. Teachers from TNTP are simply not going to get it done any better than any others in the highly scripted SA schools. It’s no small irony that SA & TNTP are putting together what will doubtlessly be a fine example of the failure of their ideas in their ideal setting, of how the reformy ideal of what “teachers” are, “teachers” who in reality will be nothing more than proctors in the SA factory schools will do even worse than those they replace. I hope we can find out what the attrition rates are for these newbies, and I await the propaganda declaring victory that I bet is being built as we speak.
It’s always good to read the stories of former Success Academy teachers who — risking Eva’s threats of lawsuits — speak out against what they’ve witnessed at Eva’s schools.
Here’s one such story:
https://dianeravitch.net/2015/12/01/former-success-academy-teacher-why-i-resigned/
And here’s the first 24 posts on Glassdoor
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2014/08/citizen-jacks-compendium-of-teacher.html
(NOTE: I first discovered this Glassdoor site, then immediately cut-‘n-pasted the first 24 entries from former teachers — in the ABOVE link — Glassdoor withstood intense pressure from Success Academy to remove these.
However, Glassdoor’s mission was and is to allow any and all opinions of workplaces to remain on their site permanently — good, bad, whatever.
Thus, you have in Glassdoor at least one unbiased source is beyond the reach of Eva’s multi-million-dollar, Madison Avenue P.R. leviathan.
What happened next was predictable. After this was posted, Glassdoor was then inundated with bogus entries — some of them with the same verbatim pro-Success-Academy talking points — allegedly from teachers gushing about how they just LUUUUUVE working at Success Academy. It was almost comical how phony these were and are. )
Guess what…there is no secret sauce…there is nothing that any charter is doing that we need to do in public school…in fact it is quite the opposite…their policies are unfair and unequal.