Eva Moskowitz, the Queen of no-excuses charter schools in New York City, has a problem.
Her high school, according to Chalkbeat, is “in chaos.”
Someone leaked a tape recording of her speech to parents at the elaborate graduation ceremony for 16 students.
The school had a mass exodus of teachers and principals.
Eva’s obsession with rules, discipline, and obedience was upsetting everyone.
On a muggy morning in August, Success Academy CEO Eva Moskowitz stood before a group of parents inside the network’s first high school, trying to regain their trust.
Parents were angry that students were being told they could be held back a grade if they missed four assignments. They were concerned about teachers going too far to enforce the dress code. And they were fearful about an exodus of teachers — as well as an email that said if parents missed a June meeting, Success would “assume your scholar is withdrawing.”
Moskowitz, a fixture in New York City politics who talks about her network of 47 schools with an almost religious fervor, acknowledges that she never planned to run high schools. But Success did open one in 2014 and a second several years later. It hasn’t gone smoothly.
I knew that I was putting it together with bubble gum and Scotch tape,” Moskowitz told the parents, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by Chalkbeat. Of the Success Academy High School of the Liberal Arts in Manhattan, she added, “We’ve been at this for 13 years, and I have never seen a school in our network that has been this disorganized.”
Success Academy, New York City’s largest network of charter schools, graduated its first high school students in June to much fanfare. But behind the scenes, according to nearly two dozen parents, students, and current and former school officials, its first high school spent last year in crisis….
Success Academy is famous for rules.
That was true when the network launched with a kindergarten and first grade in 2006 and remains true now, as Success serves about 17,000 students — mostly students of color.
The schools deploy an at-times controversial “no excuses” approach, with strict discipline and high academic standards. As some other charter schools backed away from out-of-school suspensions in the last few years, Moskowitz has defended them with vigor.
Her schools are also known for their academic rigor, intense test prep, and sky-high state test scores. Their elementary and middle schools regularly blow past city averages on state tests and even beat much wealthier districts like Scarsdale and Chappaqua.
But how should Success’ trademark strictness be adapted for students who are older, more independent, perhaps less inclined to accept big consequences for small infractions? That question has dogged other no-excuses high schools, and Success appears to be struggling to find answers.
For the last three years, the task of figuring that out fell to Andy Malone, a well-liked former Success middle school principal who took over the high school in 2015. (The school’s first principal lasted one year.)
Malone didn’t last either.
Read the rest of the story.
Eva claims “I knew that I was putting it together with bubble gum and Scotch tape.” Her no-excuses charter network currently has assets of $65 million.
If you are so clueless you can’t operate a school with $65 million cash on hand, maybe open a deli or a dry cleaner?
that’s a whole lot of bubble gum and scotch tape
🙂
In any other context the reported behaviors of Success Academy leaders and teachers toward children would have been considered abuse. Being mean is not an acceptable education philosophy. It is grounds for firing, shut down, and suspension of licence to operate. The guiding assumption that poor kids and African American kids need to be controlled and obedient should be prima facie evidence for denial of ability to operate any school in the United States.
There’s so much in this article worthy of discussion.
Here’s one thing:
In May, the school told parents they had to attend a meeting scheduled on June 5 or else the network would assume their child was leaving the school. Former staffers say it was the first time such meetings had been required at the high school, and Keisa Johnson, whose daughter was a junior at the school last year, interpreted it as a threat.
“A lot of parents that I spoke to literally had to take the day off just to make the meeting,” she said.
A Success spokeswoman said meetings are held every year in an effort to be transparent about new requirements, and that any parents who contacted the school about a conflict were accommodated.
I am staggered by the the audacity of Eva, who makes $800,000 / year demanding low-income, tenement-dwelling parents — who make perhaps $30,000/year at the most drudgery-laden jobs in the most expensive city on Planet Earth — must take off work (and lose that day’s income), or even that those same parents risk losing their jobs to attend some meeting … as in …
Attend this meeting or else, we’re kicking your kid out of our school!
I’m sure if one of the affluent parents earning $300,000/year plus told Moskowitz they were too busy to attend, they would get a pass.
What the f—?
What the f–ing f—?
… is all I can respond to Eva (or rather a Success employee, under Eva’s direction) engaging in stalker-like monitoring of a private citizen’s conversation:
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
Meanwhile, a separate Success employee trailed a reporter outside the school. At one point, the employee also followed a parent, Amanda Santiago, for several blocks as she spoke with a reporter.
“You need to stop following me,” Santiago said after the Success employee refused multiple requests from Santiago to stop listening. After a minute or two of arguing with Santiago, (the Success employee) relented and walked away.
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
It’s like Eva’s version of the former East German Stasi secret police.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
Wikipedia on The Stasi
“One of (The Stasii’s) main tasks was spying on the population, mainly through a vast network of citizens turned informants, and fighting any opposition by overt and covert measures, including hidden psychological destruction of dissidents (Zersetzung, literally meaning decomposition).”
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
So if this employee reports back to Eva that the parent spoke ill of Success Academy, Eva will kick that parents child out?
Eva’s operation is like Jonestown, with Eva as the charter world equivalent of cult leader Jim Jones.
The question is why Joseph Belluck and the SUNY Charter Institute not only condone and encourage Moskowitz to allow her staff to absue children or parents as they wish, but actually REWARD her for it.
Remember it was Joseph Belluck who insisted that Moskowitz should have sole power to train her teachers and as long as the only children left in the school score at least a 3 on standardized tests, Belluck says his job is done. No need to investigate parent or children’s complaints once Moskowitz says she took care of it.
Belluck is the Mitch McConnell to Eva Moskowitz Trump. Any dishonesty or punishment of “enemies” (including children) is fine by him.
“That was true when the network launched with a kindergarten and first grade in 2006 and remains true now, as Success serves about 17,000 students — mostly students of color.”
I hate to blame the victims, but the above is absolutely true. What do these parents think they’re getting into when they enroll their kid at Success? What were they expecting? It’s like joining the Marines and getting upset when they wake you up at 4:00 a.m. to do a 10 mile run and an hour of calistentics. I think a lot of parents get their kid into Success because they want those kids kept under control, but they don’t appreciate that the rules apply to their kid too.
I would speculate that running this kind of boot-camp is a lot easier in the elementary and middle school grades (particularly when the kids have been in the program since elementary), but becomes a substantially more difficult when kids become teenagers. This speculation is based partly on my own experience raising two kids. At some point, you can’t order them around like you used to.
Oops, I left out the first part of what I meant to quote: “Success Academy is famous for rules.”
“The schools deploy an at-times controversial “no excuses” approach, with strict discipline and high academic standards. As some other charter schools backed away from out-of-school suspensions in the last few years, Moskowitz has defended them with vigor. Her schools are also known for their academic rigor. . . .”
“high academic standards”. . . ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ah ha ha ha ha ha
“academic rigor”. . .ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ah ah hah ha ha ha hah ha ha
Exactly!
Even semi-critical articles repeat this nonsense that Success Academy has “academic rigor” and “high academic standards” that are different than what public schools have.
It does not. What Success Academy has is a no-tolerance policy for any child who is unable to get at least a 3 on state tests. Either they are failed as many times as necessary until their parents pull them out, or after repeating an early elementary school once or twice, the score is finally acceptable to Success Academy staff.
But first they attempt to weed out the Kindergarten and first graders by targeting the low performers as “bad” kids and humiliating them publicly so that their classmates understand that these children who aren’t performing at level are not worthy and bad.
And if a 6 year old who has been bullied non-stop by the model teacher whose practices Success Academy loves so much that they make her a model for the network is NOT acting out, it would be surprising.
Look at how Eva Moskowitz acts out as soon as someone says anything critical about her. She will illegally release the private records of a 6 year old student if anyone criticizes her. She will claim that lots of the 5 and 6 year olds in some of her schools that have no white kids are violent. She will insist that Betsy DeVos is a terrific choice and demand that Senators confirm her. She will condone having her staff follow parents down the street to show them that they mean business if they dare to speak out.
And yet she trains her teachers to humiliate and punish 6 year olds and then suspends them from school if they act out.
The editor and founder of Chalkbeat, Elizabeth Green, wrote a highly laudatory article about Success Academy last year.
Diane,
I read that fawning article (which was also printed in The Atlantic) and it was certainly revealing about the writer Elizabeth Green. She actually confessed to feeling so upset about having to direct the least bit of criticism toward Moskowitz and then laughably concluded that Moskowitz’ charters were absolutely necessary because without them (Green implies) every African-American and Latino child in NYC would be doomed to a lifetime of failure! Sadly, the fact there that there are 60,000 public school African American and Latino students just in 3rd through 8th grade alone who test proficient on state tests does not seem to register with Green in her awe of this supposed miracle Moskowitz achieved in allowing a fraction of that total to remain in her charters until testing grades.
I suppose no article about Success Academy will be published in Chalkbeat that doesn’t promote the false narrative that Success Academy’s “sky-high state test scores” are based on Moskowitz miracle curriculum taught by inexperienced teachers, and ignores their outrageously high suspension rates of 5 year olds, their forcing parents to attend meetings that weed out parents without resources to drop everything, and their “high expectations” that they blame students for not meeting. I suppose Elizabeth Green would never publish an article that actually asked “how many at-risk kids who win lottery spots for Success Academy actually take their spot or remain in the school?” When it comes to pushing the false narrative that Eva Moskowitz has discovered the greatest education ever, there is no one pushing it harder than Elizabeth Green.
Chalkbeat is funded by Gates, among others.
Well to me this is an example of Eva running the plantation, do as I say and don’t think. What is the emotional price these minority students must pay to follow her laws of behavior. What prison system did she get her degree’s from?
Do white kids have to obey every rule in their white entitled schools? I don’t think so.
The issue of poverty is not education it is a holistic approach to life in which America doesn’t engage in. Healthy housing, food, clean water, schools that are on the same level physically in every zip code. Certified Teachers in front of the classroom and a real education administrator vs a City Council political figure who wants to be the queen of education and who doesn’t deserve anything but an award from Wall Street for the destruction of public education..
Success Academy Hudson Yards Middle School got a big influx of children who attended Success Academy elementary schools which had disproportionately high numbers of middle class white children with college educated parents.
Their affluent, college-educated parents complained that their middle school children were having “meltdowns” (that’s what Moskowitz calls “acting out violently” when a 6 year old African-American child reacts to being targeted for humiliation by specially trained SA teachers).
Moskowitz made sure the principal trained in a Harlem middle school with virtually no white students realized that there are different rules for affluent students at SA Hudson Yards Middle school. Anyone want to bet whether all of those affluent students will be forced to complete 10 SAT test prep assignments every single week during their summer vacation or be flunked and forced to repeat 11th grade again, when they move on to high school?
Did you trade the children for gold, a lead role in a test-score cage?
Her schools are also known for their academic rigor, intense test prep, and sky-high state test scores.
What better way to sustain a mythical function, then to use ‘scores/grad rates
to articulate the function. Disconnect scores from the narrative and define the
function with real life outcomes.
Brand X (at the expense of brand Y) doesn’t contribute to increase human welfare,
quality of life, or the society “we” want. Scores don’t measure human welfare,
quality of life, or the society we want.
The make-believe world of standards/scores doesn’t stop institutional
falsehoods, it continues them…
Hasn’t Eva used Duct tape to cover children’s mouths when they talk.
If Eva could get rid of it, she’d have their tongues cut out.
No, the duct tape was Michelle Rhee. She bragged about it when she held a meeting in DC greeting new teachers. Great form of control.
Eva Moskowitz and Michelle Rhee were cut from the same genetic cloth. If we ran a DNA test, the odds favor that they’d both have the psycopath gene MAOA (monoamine oxidase A).
The PCL describes psychopaths as being callous and showing a lack of empathy, traits which the PPI describes as “coldheartedness.” The criteria for dissocial personality disorder include a “callous unconcern for the feelings of others.” …
Psychopaths, and to a degree, sociopaths, show a lack of emotion, especially the social emotions, such as shame, guilt, and embarrassment. …
According to Cleckley psychopaths show unreliability, while the PCL mentions “irresponsibility,” and the PPI describes psychopaths as showing “blame externalization” (i.e., they blame others for events that are actually their fault). …
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mindmelding/201301/what-is-psychopath-0
Two paths diverged in a school and Eva
She took the psychopath, the diva,
And that has made all the difference
Two paths diverged in a school and Rhee
She took the psychopath, you see
And that has made all the difference
Two paths diverged in a school and Gates
He took the path of Norman Bates
And that has made all the difference
Love it!
Eva’s mind is in chaos
Eva’s mind is chaos, organized chaos, a troll/bully’s chaos … we can say the same thing about Arne and the rest of the mob of misfits and frauds out to profit off the destruction of traditional public education.
Loved it. Eva took the psycho’s path … but she had to walk down that path behind Trump because he will not let anyone else be at the head of that growing line of greedy fools. Trump has to always be in charge, always win even when he loses, and always be the liars’ leader.
It is in chaos indeed – just read THIS
https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/ny/2018/08/27/eva-moskowitzs-son-is-teaching-economics-at-success-academys-high-school/