Chalkbeat reports that Eva Moskowitz wrote a letter to parents of students in her high school, explaining why 70% of the teachers left in one year.
High expectations are hard on everyone, she says. Draconian punishment is not easy.
But in the end, her methods pay off, she says. Only 33% of KIPP graduates persist to finish college. Of course, we have no idea how many of Eva’s 16 high school graduates will finish college because they graduated only a month ago.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane – hope all well – this is not posted in the proper area but I thought it important to see what France has done and soon other European countries:
https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/smartphones-now-banned-in-schools-in-France-after-final-Assembly-vote
Thanks for this. NO way this could happen in our Plutocracy.
Twenty five million adolescents, the vast majority using their phones endlessly throughout the course of the school day is no small chunk of change for the providers.
The level of social distraction that smart phone use in schools is producing, is absolutely unimaginable – unless you teach middle or high school. Unsupervised and nearly unlimited and mostly unfiltered access to the internet, snap-chating, sexting, etc, is raising the level of adolescent drama (and ensuing distraction) to levels that make academic demands of teachers just an outside nuisance. Young teens are being exposed to language, ideas, photographs, and videos that would shock their parents – and often on school grounds!
Yes – agree. What will be needed in out dear country is a People over Profit revolution. People-centeredness in ALL decisions.
Very well-said. The notorious old red light districts are now inside our classrooms!
Any school that fails to lick this hasn’t tackled the first thing on its to do list.
You’d get a billion complaints about how smartphones enable all kinds of innovative teaching.
Sorry FLERP, classrooms have been flooded with Chromebooks. Smart phones ate not used as you suggest.
I’ve seen the argument made before, back when the Bloomberg DOE instituted a policy of barring cell phones in the classroom.
Barring cell phones is not a workable solution. Barring cell phone use in classrooms is a policy that works.
According to the comments by SAHS teachers that follow the article, it turns out that Moskowitz’ letter to parents is filled with as many untruths as one of Trump’s tweets.
The notion that one must tell the truth if a lie helps get them what they want does not occur to either Moskowitz nor Trump.
I thought the most telling comment was when Moskowitz said “those standards must be high to ensure that our scholars not only get into good colleges but succeed there.”
In other words, if you aren’t going to get into a “good” college, Success Academy does not want to teach you. And, according to the teachers’ comments, they will flunk you as long as it takes for you to understand that you aren’t one of the students who will get into a “good” college.
The irony, of course, is that there are thousands — THOUSANDS! — of at-risk students in NYC public schools who do well. Chalkbeat NY had a first person article in which a young girl told how she did not score high enough on the SHSAT to get into any specialized high school and ended up in her local high school — Fort Hamilton High School. However, she thrived there and is going to Columbia.
There is something repellent about Eva Moskowitz holding herself out as the person who knows best how to teach at-risk kids when she drums out all of them who “won’t get into a good college and succeed there.”
It is absolutely clear from that self-serving letter that Moskowitz’ interest is in having the students do well so SHE can brag that she is responsible. It’s all about her and it always was.
I read the comments too. This suggests more trouble is on the way. The comment follows:
“One additional note: Since the WSJ article was published, an additional 5 teachers have resigned and additional resignations are probably likely as the school year gets closer. A lot of people are hanging on until they collect their last summer paycheck before giving notice because they don’t trust that SA will continue to pay them through summer if they resign.”
Well, that contradicts what Eva says in this letter:
EVA letter:
“But most of our faculty will be returning next year … ”
Since when does 30% (or less, per the above post) = “most” or over 50%?
That’s Common Core math!
TAGO, Diane.
I agree that there are many paths that students can follow to find their way and achieve their goals. There are many students that will find their way through academics, and others that will work with their hands. Some will go into the arts or even the military. The important thing is that we offer students exposure and opportunities. Eva has a very narrow view of “achievement.”
“In other words, if you aren’t going to get into a “good” college, Success Academy does not want to teach you.” – what is wrong with that? There is no point teaching calc to someone who is going to work at a burger place.
What’s wrong with a private organization getting federal money for doing what public schools do best? Teach the most motivated and achieving students?
Um, nothing. Just like there is nothing wrong with the US government giving Medicare dollars to private insurance companies willing to offer insurance to the very healthiest senior citizens which will kick out all unhealthy seniors who cut into their profits. What’s wrong with that?
What’s wrong with a private police force getting public money for patrolling the gated affluent community and refusing to patrol any high crime areas because it cuts into their profits?
What a terrific use of our public tax dollars!
NYC: great analogy!
Sadly, the Trump administration is now going to offer some of those non-insurance health insurance policies.
The ones where healthy customers can pay a lower rate for basically nothing and feel good “saving” money — as long as they and their family remain healthy. If not, then they suddenly remember what “insurance” really means.
Yes it’s always been about her results not the students’.
My youngest loves that some of his teachers had his older siblings. I can tell he loves it by how he speaks about it. I think continuity is really important to kids, the sense someone knows them and they belong there. Everyone likes that, not just kids, really.
This coming year he will have a (new) teacher who went to high school with his oldest brother – she has already told him. I get kind of a kick out of it because I remember her as a 4th grader.
Eva should treat her employees better. Maybe they’d stick around.
I think the teachers are not sticking around because Moskowitz treats the STUDENTS terribly.
It is to their credit that those teachers are finally refusing to be complicit in the targeting of children whose parents are not college educated professionals. It’s long past time.
The teachers who are happy to look the other way get promoted to principal in a few years.
congratulations, you are now out of moderation. You have not insulted fellow readers, please try not to do so again
ok thanks.
It’s worth mentioning that Eva’s management theories only work in huge markets, like NYC. She wouldn’t be able to burn thru 70% of her staff every year without a huge pool of newer people to tap. In a smaller place word would get around about bad working conditions and she’d be bringing in temps or hiring from the bottom – people who can’t get a job anywhere else.
You are absolutely right but that holds true for STUDENTS, too!
Moskowitz would never be able to burn through 70% of her students if she didn’t have a school system of 1.1 MILLION public school students to pull from.
Unlike KIPP or other charter networks, Moskowitz never tried to expand beyond NYC. I think it would be hard for her even in a city the size of Boston to churn through students the way she does. She could open a few schools and then she’d have to stop expanding.
Moskowitz opened 4 elementary schools in the entire borough of the Bronx — which arguably was the borough most in need of good elementary schools. Some of the poorest Bronx districts had none.
But the wait lists for SA were among the very longest.
But after opening those 4, Moskowitz opened 4 elementary schools in some of the richest neighborhoods of Manhattan. There are 3 Success Academy elementary schools in very affluent District 2 — more than in any single Bronx district. And not only are the wait lists shorter in District 2, but it is possible that they clear completely and out of district students are admitted.
It is very revealing that one of the most affluent Manhattan Districts has more SA elementary schools than any single Bronx District.
It is very revealing that as soon as Moskowitz started opening schools in rich neighborhoods, she demanded that the SUNY Charter Institute allow her to change her lottery preferences so that students who could afford to live in that affluent district were given priority.
Previous to that, her charters gave lottery preferences to at-risk students zoned for failing public schools. Other charters give priority to at-risk kids. Moskowitz gives priority to those kids who live in the district where her school is located. And she just happens to have 3 elementary schools in affluent District 2 Manhattan and 1 or zero elementary schools in the poorest Bronx districts.
Moskowitz needs to be able to burn through at-risk students or disproportionately fill her schools with middle class students whose parents are college educated professionals. She has figured out how to do both, but needs a city the size of NYC to do it. And she needs a complicit SUNY Charter Institute board. She has both.
Finally, it shocks me that it has taken until now for SA teachers to talk about holding students back and how many leave. This process happens from the very first required meeting of lottery winners. Churning through students, replacing some, suspending others, flunking others over and over again until they leave. Moskowitz has been doing this for a decade, and the SUNY Charter Institute and the media have been ignoring (in the case of SUNY, intentionally ignoring) what was always right in front of their face.
Thanks. You’re very informative about NYC schools.
The “push out” thing happens in public schools here, too. We have a rural district run by an ed reformer and it’s an open secret that she keeps her numbers up by making “lower performers” feel unwelcome with harsh discipline and constant suspensions.
The US Department of Education lauded the school in 2012.
That school is only “successful” because they send the students they don’t want to surrounding schools. Which everyone knows.
It’s so easy to game ed reform metrics. It incentivizes the worst behaviors and promotes the worst people.
Meanwhile the public schools here who are picking up the students who are counseled out get stern lectures.
“it incentivizes the worst behaviors”
You are exactly right. If the people promoting ed reform were not so dishonest, but really wanted to figure out how to make public education better, they would have acknowledged this long ago.
The fact that they can promote this market driven reform while pretending they don’t notice that it incentivizes the worst behaviors is how I recognize that they are – deep down — greedy operators who are in it only for their own careers and the high paying compensation they get for looking the other way and not caring one whit about all the children harmed because they aren’t theirs.
The teachers who leave are the ones with the consciences. The teachers who are promoted to principals in a few years are the ones who have no compassion nor moral center. They model themselves after Moskowitz herself in their willingness to do anything to serve their own self-interests.
There is an Ursula Le Guin short story that has stuck with me since I read it as a teenager. “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”
A child sits in a dark basement mistreated and full of misery — the price that the others in the community pay for their happiness.
And while most people are willing to accept this trade off — there are those few who see it and walk away.
Here is to more Success Academy teachers willing to walk away.
Yes, the District 2 Success Academy schools do take out of zone students. I know a child from Queens who is starting at the Hudson Yards Success Academy this fall.
Correct. Another truism here is that while you can still get higher results than zoned schools with high teacher turnover, you cannot get much higher results with the levels reported in this article without pipelining a lot of students out of the school.
The 33% college completion rate should sober Reformers. If even Eva’s super-students can’t cut it in college, maybe the difficulty of educating poor kids to a high level is much harder than they thought. I personally think E.D. Hirsch’s heretical hypothesis has much promise: shift schools’ focus away from mental workouts that allegedly build general skills (cognitive science says this is fruitless) to systematic transmission of knowledge, the true foundation of reading comprehension ability, writing ability and good thinking. This approach is what shrank the achievement gap in France before they Americanized their curriculum in the 90’s, after which the achievement gap widened.
Stay up on your soapbox Ponderosa!
Too many teachers have been sucked into the empty promises of college and career readiness, critical thinking skill development, 21st century problem solving, etc – without the requisite foundations of vocabulary, knowledge, and experience.
Advocates of the current fads in teaching should read this book by cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham: “Why Don’t Students Like School”.
Re: the 33% college completion rate.
Do we all know the dirty little secret about college?
It is much easier to fail out of a public college than Harvard and other elite private colleges and universities. If your parents are rich enough to pay the bill, you will have many opportunities to screw up academically at private colleges and be given many chances. And unless you are a STEM major, it isn’t that hard to pass a course.
If you are at a poor student at a local community college or state university and struggling academically, you aren’t given as many chances to fail.
And that does not even include the financial aspect, where many students who are poor are also expected to work and are juggling family issues. There was an article recently about how many poor students at some elite colleges were basically scrounging for meals during vacations when they didn’t have the money to go home and the college food service was closed.
Just looking at a college completion rate is not very revealing.
If Eva is recruiting and keeping middle class students, she will most likely use them to bring up her college completion average. It is easier for middle class students to make it through college than poor students. Obviously, part of the reason is economic, but there is a lot more dysfunction and family crisis among the poor that can contribute to students dropping out.
Students at the elite universities are elite students. The six year completion rate at the Ivies is about 95+%. This has nothing to do with their parent’s money and unlimited chances to screw up. Students at these schools are highly successful because they are some of the smartest, most serious, conscientious, competitive, and hard working students in the world. When is the last time you saw Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or Columbia on the list of “top party schools”?
“Although Harvard does not officially recognize fraternities and sororities, that does not mean they do not exist. … Harvard students throw room parties as many Yalies do, and while alcohol consumption is strictly prohibited in the freshman dorms of Harvard Yard, Harvard students say finding drinks is hardly a problem.”
https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2004/11/19/does-harvard-really-know-how-to-party/
I never suggested that Ivy students were saints. But you wouldn’t find this . . .
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwityrjp1MrcAhXkwVkKHRzOCZ4QjRx6BAgBEAU&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.stacksmag.net%2F2014%2F08%2Ftop-20-party-colleges-universities.html&psig=AOvVaw3Xs9waIwkvGFYNnErMSgr6&ust=1533171844108967
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiIyYGO1crcAhUjwFkKHeidAxYQjRx6BAgBEAU&url=http%3A%2F%2Fcollegepartyguru.com%2Farticles%2Fpages.php%3Flink%3DFreshman_Advice&psig=AOvVaw3Xs9waIwkvGFYNnErMSgr6&ust=1533171844108967
KIPP! Does Eva own KIPP too?
“Using private funds unavailable to most traditional schools, KIPP employs a team of counselors to buttress its graduates in college and offers some book stipends and emergency financial aid. Still, even with these supports, only 38 percent of KIPP graduates earn a college degree within six years of high school.”
KIPP’s 38 percent is FAILURE when compared to the national average.
“In 2012, the national average for full-time students at 4-year degree-granting institutions was 59 percent. So, 59% of students graduated in 6 years, nationally.”
https://www.collegeraptor.com/find-colleges/articles/college-comparisons/2-key-statistics-for-comparing-colleges-graduation-rate-and-retention-rate-explained/
Eva’s letter to parents is filled with scare tactics. She’s trying to bully parents and their children into believing that being overworked and mistreated is what’s best for them. No wonder the high schoolers are protesting. They’ve grown aware of their natural rights.
I remember when I went from teaching elementary to secondary school. It took adjustment, to put it mildly. If one treats teens like little children, they react rebelliously. They find many ways to protest, hopefully peacefully. Eva is now trying to treat 17 year olds like little children. She’s in for a surprise. Scare tactics don’t work.
The kids there have no agency. Sad
Yes, this is a letter filled with scare tactics, involving outright lies. I’m surprised no one in the comments section has mentioned the following snippets from her letter:
Very few students of color are allowed into Stuyvesant and other specialized schools. These students are instead forced to attend schools where the standards are low and where Advanced Placement courses aren’t even offered.
Wow! Sounds like Eva is getting really desperate, if she has to stoop to printing complete lies like these in a public document. No wonder why she is losing teachers at an astounding rate. Who would want to work for someone who is so manipulative?
Beth,
You are so right. Moskowitz loves to pretend it is either her schools or “failing schools” for African-American and Latino students who are “not allowed” into specialized high schools. It is a lie.
I looked at the results for the Algebra II/Trig Regents exam for 2016-2017 — the very same year those “surviving” 16 Success Academy students took that exam.
Let’s compare those 16 students who have had 10 or 11 years of Eva Moskowitz’ drill and rote learning to the African-American and Latino NYC public school students educated in public schools:
How many of Moskowitz surviving 16 students achieved Level 5 in Algebra II — the highest level? The answer is 0. None. Not one student.
How many African-American and Latino students in those public schools that Moskowitz insults daily achieved Leval 5 in Algebra II? The answer is over 450.
A mere two out of Moskowitz’ 16 students achieved the next highest level — Level 4. Two students scored Level 4. Two.
Compare that with the NYC public schools that Moskowitz insults in her letter as the ONLY choice those students have. 1,700 African-American and Latino students in those schools scored a Level 4 — the same as the very top 2 students at Success Academy received.
Most of the 16 Success Academy students received a perfectly respectable Level 3 on their Algebra II Regents. A total of 11 Success Academy students scored Level 3.
In NYC public schools that very same year that 11 Success Academy students scored at Level 3, there were over 6,300 African-American and Latino students who received Level 3.
To recap — only 13 of Moskowitz’ surviving 16 students received a Level 3 or above on the Algebra II Regents Exam. In NYC public schools, there were 450 + 1700 + 6300 African-American and Latino students who scored a Level 3 or above.
That’s 8,450 African-American and Latino students in many dozens of NYC public high schools that are NOT specialized high schools who are doing as well — and sometimes better — than the 13 students who had the benefit of 10+ years of Moskowitz’ expensive education.
Those African-American and Latino students in public high schools are invisible to Moskowitz and her PR team works to make them invisible to the public.
Because Moskowitz needs to convince the handful of parents that only she is the savior of their children’s education. As long as they meet her criteria.
I understand why Moskowitz does this — it certainly helps keep the people who subsidize her outsize salary happy.
But I don’t understand why the media allows her to get away with it.
Think about how racist the underlying rhetoric that Eva Moskowitz uses is. She knows that in the very same year that 13 of her students managed a Level 3 or above, there were 8,450 African-American and Latino students in public high schools all over the city who did just as well with many doing better. But she writes a letter implying that if those 13 students weren’t at Success Academy, they’d be failures.
Countless dreams of talented and righteous young adults broken and lives unnecessarily disrupted, for a few meaningless exam points more as children unnecessarily suffer.
When’s Eva going to justify her salary and administrative overhead costs, including the consultant contracts? Is the amount about 10% of the average that the state spends per student?
The ability to keep staff is a rather low expectation for a manager. What are the consequences to Eva for failing?
Diane the comments attached to that article are really valuable.
People who have worked there are directly contradicting what Moskowitz told parents:
Former SA Teacher Stevejohn • 4 hours ago
Former SA HS teacher here. The student was unfortunately right, which is a large part of the reason so many staff (including the principal) left at the end of the year. We could not continue to support an administration (i.e. Eva) who treated families so callously. Especially families who have committed themselves to the Success Academy grind for 10+ years only to be pushed out when it really counts.
The truth of the matter is, most of the scholars who were held back then withdrew and went into a public high school midyear. So the tactic isn’t effectively preparing the kids for college, but it is effectively getting the kids who are most likely to struggle in college out the door before they count against Success’s numbers. There were also scholars who were interested in attending less elite schools or were (gasp!) even considering community college or trade school first who were targeted for holdover, because they didn’t fit the Success Academy narrative of 100% of kids going to competitive universities with nearly full funding. Hence the reason only 16 kids graduated last year (note: two disappeared between junior year and senior year, including one who completely DROPPED OUT in April… yet we continued to hail our 100% college acceptance rate.)
I figured she couldn’t keep getting bigger without some information coming out, even with the huge ed reform promoting her and robotically repeating her claims.
The new public school backed by LeBron James is getting a ton of attention in Ohio.
It’s nice to see a public school get some favorable attention, for once.
I can’t remember the last time it happened in this state. It sometimes seems like every politician in the state spends a good part of their time telling people public schools suck, with absolutely no recognition that public school students hear this constant drumbeat of negativity.
It’s just awful. They’re so far in the bubble they are no longer aware that they’re bashing the vast majority of students in the state.
Kind of a shame that a sports star knows more about public schools than the tens of thousands of “experts” we pay.
I like that the Akron public school system identified 240 incoming 3rd and 4th graders who were one or two years behind in reading and offered them spots. They didn’t try to game the system by looking for the highest achieving students or most motivated families.
I also like that they will have the money for 20 students per class. It is also providing support for parents.
And I really like LeBron James!
NBC covered the story on the Nightly News. They made a point of saying that it is a public, not charter, school. The campus is brand new, and it is a school with wrap around services. I hope LeBron is able to make a difference in these students’ lives. He is off to a good start.
Haven’t read the letter, yet, but she said at least one true thing. Her methods certainly do pay off…for her!
Back during those 2010 WAITING FOR SUPERMAN glory days for the charter school industry, Eva kept trotting out a teacher, Jessica Reid-Sliwerski, as her show pony teacher / asst. prinicpal, showcasing Reid-Sliwerski as the model S.A. teacher — young, attractive, telegenic, etc.. Jessica was everywhere — NBC’s EDUCATION NATION, the other pro-charter documentary ‘THE LOTTERY’, Steve Brill’s book. Reid-Sliwerski was the dedicated young go-getter teacher with whom Eva contrasted with the lazy, status quo, unionized teacher working in the public schools
Reid-Sliwerski was everywhere … until she wasn’t.
What happened is that Reid-Sliwerski quit, claiming that working for Eva was driving her to a nervous breakdown, destroying her marriage, and turning her into a child abusing teacher. Indeed, a few years later, she was quoted during the infamous Charlotte Dial, rip-and-redo-tear-then-repair video, saying that NO, this was not an isolated instance but abusive routine treatment dished out to kids at Success Academy.
Well, that same thing has happened again.
One of Eva’s other featured star teachers, Natasha Venner, has had a similar conversion experience.
I’m not sure of the sequence here:
… either …
… Venner vented to the Wall Street Journal, then quit (was forced to quit);
OR
… Venner quit earlier, then vented to the Wall Street Journal.
In the WSJ’s teacher attrition article, Venner vented about the conditions driving the sky-high attrition at Success Academy’s first and only high school.
BACKGROUND:
During the Summer 2017 break, Eva had sent Venner to a conference / trip in Europe to bring back techniques and strategies on how to teach literature. Venner even wrote about the trip and its purpose on Success Academy’s website here, with Eva featuring Venner HERE:
(it won’t be there for long, lemmee tell ya!):
“Success Academy | Exploring Europe’s Past — For My Scholars’ Futures”
https://www.successacademies.org/education-blog-post/exploring-europes-past-for-my-scholars-futures/
However, just last week, Venner shot her mouth off to the WSJ, saying, among other things, about the brutal conditions for S.A. teachers:
“What really makes me sad is the number of first-year teachers who quit and decided never to teach again.”
Perhaps fearing Eva’s wrath, quickly quit to go work in a traditional (and unionized) NYC public school where she (GASP!) will be part of a union.
(Either that, or she quit earlier, then spoke to the WSJ, with nothing to fear … not sure of the sequence..)
I gleaned that info from this article from Alan Singer:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/7/26/1783610/-Teachers-Flee-Success-High-School
x x x x x x x x x x x x x
ALAN SINGER:
“Natasha Venner, an all-star history teacher who is leaving Success to teach in a public school, told the WSJ that ‘What really makes me sad is the number of first-year teachers who quit and decided never to teach again.’
“Venner is one of the teachers featured on the Success Academy webpage. In 2017, Success sent her to a Gilder Lehrman summer teaching seminar at Oxford University in the United Kingdom. I suspect the network plans to update its website now that her criticisms of its program are public.”
x x x x x x x x x x x x x
Singer’s article continues, with Eva, now on the defense, claiming that S.A. teaching conditions are fine, but that she / Success Academy are victims of other schools’ leaders, who have nefariously “poached” some of Success Academy’s “well-trained teachers.”
x x x x x x x x x x x x x
ALAN SINGER:
“The WSJ interviewed a parent who said her daughter, who will be a senior in September, was having ‘panic attacks’ because the teachers she and other students were closest to are leaving the school.
“Success Academy Charter School Network CEO, Charter School Queen Eva Moskowitz dismissed the WSJ article claiming that the network’s ‘well trained teachers often get poached’ by other schools. She conceded that some of the exodus might be because teachers were unhappy that a popular principal had resigned.
“There needs to be a full public investigation of the Success Academy Charter School Network. It is also well past time that pro-charter New York gubernatorial candidate Andrew Cuomo be held accountable for his support for Success.”
x x x x x x x x x x x x x
Oh, and Reid-Sliwerski, just as Venner did, also left S.A. to work at a (gasp!) traditonal public school and joined a (gasp!) teachers union that protects her from people like Eva.
Steve Brill wrote a pro-charter book called “Class Warfare,” about those wonderful hedge fund managers and Eva’s fabulous charter chain. He featured a young teacher in Eva’s school, who was a model for the charter teachers. Before he finished his book, she had left SA and took a job in the public schools.
That’s the one — Jessica Reid-Sliwerski.
By the way, LOTS of teachers get Gilder Lehrman foundation conferences. The foundation covers most of the cost (except for airfare overseas from those of us further west–they give you a stipend, but it’s not enough for those of us traveling further). So, SA didn’t need to “send” her at all. Also, it really would have little to do with literature, as Gilder Lehrman is a HISTORY foundation. I went to the seminar at Oxford in 2009. GREAT conference. And I’m a lowly public junior high teacher in an out-of-the-way state.
By the way, the page on the S.A. website where Eva celebrates Natasha Venner — who, again, turned traitor to Eva — is still up:
https://www.successacademies.org/education-blog-post/exploring-europes-past-for-my-scholars-futures/
Anybody want to do an over-under bet on how many days until this is taken off the S.A. website?
I’ll set it at 10 days (August 10th) as the exact date it will be taken down on.
Anybody want to go for …
… the under (9 days or less — i.e. it’s taken down on August 9th or earlier),
or perhaps go for …
… the over (11 days or more — i.e. it’s taken down on August 11th or later)?
I’ll take whatever odds you set.
I can understand the 70% teacher churn at Sucksess Academy (TM).
Makes perfect sense.
What I don’t understand is the 30% of teachers that actually stay more than one year.
I’d like to have someone explain THAT because it defies all logic.
Stockholm Syndrome.
Yep
In general terms, unconnected to a specific school system, one might suggest, resume building for jobs in education reform grifting, private sector and shilling for non-profit education groups.
If you stay at SA, you have to continue to abuse the students for your authoritarian boss. If you leave, you have leave your students. Never easy. It’s a lose-lose situation. A teacher who cares will be tearfully conflicted. Better to work for a public school district from the outset. Then again, there’s also the possibility that Eva invites her friend Betsy in to tell all the SA teachers that if they leave to work at public schools, they will be mauled by grizzlies and “culture”.
The ” threat of grizzlies” argument does make sense, especially in Manhattan.
I withraw my “defies all logic” claim
So here is an explanation. Several small groups can quickly add to 3 of ten. Here are some motivations.
The true believers. Some of those teachers accept the idea that school is for the people who really want to control themselves and learn. They believe that all people can listen and discipline themselves to pay attention and study. They believe that those who will not are not worthy of the help that is being offered them.
Some are survivors. The rigors of teaching in this environment have been pretty well documented. It strikes me that the leader of these schools wants only those who strictly buy into the scheme, and purposefully creates pressures that force out those who do not share in the long day’s low pays concept.
The needy. Many people are graduating from college now with monumental debt. Gotta work somewhere. All the jobs at that high end restaurant are taken.
The plyable. Some people can just get along in the world. Nothing offends them in the philosophy of anything. They sort of half buy in to any paridigm of operative thought and action.
I think we are close to the 30% mark. This method of claiming excellence has been used for many purposes in other areas. Coaches at big schools regularly choose ten to fifteen basketball players from a student body of 2000. They ask the players to buy into their system, often by inserting difficult obstacles that push out all but the true believers. Michael Jordan famously did not make the team until he was older.
It is obvious that Success Academy has this approach for students. You give me tremendous effort or get out. Teachers or students. My way or the highway. I have known teachers in public school who,were allowed to have this same approach to their passion.
So what is wrong with all this? I cannot even begin. Too much to say. We all would like to teach people like one kid we have at school who taught himself first year calculus and made a 5 on that basis on the advanced placement test. Who in their right mind would claim that he was the product of their system?
School is for all of us, not just the ones who happen to buy in at a particular time in their life. Society is for,all of us, not just a few chosen ones. Failing to accept the egalitarian vision of our education system means that the meritocracy becomes a caste in later life, the Brahmins who are to lead while others follow. Along with them will come the untouchables, a group marooned in their place by this stacking up of children.
Not my vision.
What is happening should be no surprise. Eva’s success depends of student compliance. When students become young men and women they are no longer willing to hold bubbles in their mouth, walk a straight line and eat in silence. There is no glut of qualified high school teachers–why should they stay? From what I can see, not one of her students graduated with a Regents Diploma with Advanced Designation. Whether they are actually prepared for college which requires self-discipline, critical thinking and intrinsic motivation is highly doubtful.
You make an important point about reform solutions – and the failure of non-educators to understand the enormous difference between elementary and secondary students. There is a good reason secondary teachers are required to take adolescent psychology. Using a class of third graders to demonstrate how well a new product or program works should not impress anyone. As you say, the level of required compliance and enthusiasm is inversely related to age. Show us how well your idea works with that class of 25 seventh graders coming in from a hot day of recess and we might begin to listen.
Because there are children’s lives at stake here, I’m loathe to indulge in schadenfreude.
But still…I can’t think of another person and institution about whom and which I’d like to hear this news.
Kids, there are still plenty of good public schools in New York City; come join us!