Leonie Haimson reports that Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy Charter School chain eliminated a classfor students with disabilities.
https://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2018/08/success-academy-eliminating-one-fourth.html?m=1
“In June, I was contacted by two parents whose fifth-grade special needs children were in a self-contained 12-1-1 class at Success Academy Bed Stuy middle school. They told me how the principal, Rishabh Agarwal, had brought them individually into his office and told them that the school was getting rid of their 12-1-1 self-contained program, because the school didn’t know how to educate kids with special needs and it was too difficult to find a certified special education teacher.
“He said their only two choices were to agree to have their kids held back in a regular 5th grade class or transfer them to a different school outside the Success charter network of 46 schools.
“I contacted two attorneys with experience in special education, who told me that if their IEPs mandated a 12-1-1 class the school could not legally get rid of the program, but neither parent wanted to sue. Neither did they want their children to be held back, since they’d been held back already at least once already by Success and felt that their children’s records did not merit being retained once again. I asked the two parents to email the principal to confirm their story, and to copy Eva Moskowitz.
“A few weeks later, I checked back with the parents, and they told me their emails had not been responded to by anyone at the network. They put me in touch with a third parent who confirmed their story — that the entire class of fifth graders had essentially been driven out of the school, and the parents had received no help from Success in finding a new school.”
Read on.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
That’s too bad. Have you ever seen a child (or an adult) mock or make fun of a special needs student? Disabled students enrich the school, bringing an opportunity for all to grow in compassion, tolerance and understanding. To the extend a student is unable to interact with this enrichment, they are deprived of a rich experience for growth. I am now retired after teaching and mentor teaching in inner city children centers and elementary schools for thirty years or so. I’ve often thought, for people to understand each other, they first need to have experiences with each other; and I think that’s especially true today.
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Seriously, how much will it take for the SUNY Charter Schools Committee to finally finally finally hold Success Academy accountable? The Committee comprises 5 members, all older, wealthy, and white. (The only “educator” in the bunch is Meryl Tisch.) Success Acdemy doesn’t have even one school that met all three target enrollments for certain populations: special education students, English Language Learners, and economically disadvantaged kids, according to the data that was available 6 months ago. So why are its schools allowed to expand? Even the tiniest bit of accountability requirements are not met — so stop expanding until they play by the rules — ALL of the rules ….
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This is exactly the right question. I have been shocked that no journalist has done any reporting on the special treatment that the SUNY Charter Institute gives to Moskowitz and Success Academy. Starting when SUNY let them re-locate their school into a wealthy neighborhood and then drop priority for at-risk kids in favor of giving students who lived in the district priority. That’s when Pedro Noguera resigned from the SUNY board in early 2012.
And it is not just that Joseph Belluck and the SUNY board refuses to investigate any complaints from parents whose kids were kicked out or investigate when the model teachers that Moskowitz trains get caught on video demonstrating how at-risk kids are REALLY treated when they don’t perform at a high enough level. It’s that SUNY will bend its own rules to accommodate Success Academy. SUNY gave early renewals to a bunch of Success Academy schools years before they were supposed to. SUNY has given Moskowitz her 3rd school in very wealthy District 2 Manhattan despite already having two schools to serve that affluent district that have some of the lowest % of at-risk students of any charter school in NYC. Success Academy Union Square has only 24% economically disadvantaged students so why would SUNY approve a 3rd elementary school in District 2 when other much poorer districts have far more poor students and far fewer Success Academy charters? SUNY insists that Moskowitz should be in charge of all her own teacher training.
I hope that a journalist does an article about the SUNY Charter Board and how co-opted they are by doing what Andrew Cuomo’s biggest funders want most. They have done absolutely no oversight beyond saying that as long as the students who remain do well — even if there are only 16 of them!! — they will happily reward Moskowitz with more charters at taxpayer expense. And she can do anything she wants to the kids who are in them and SUNY won’t care.
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ALL the games are rigged. That’s the only way to hold onto power.
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“The school didn’t know how to educate kids with special needs and it was too difficult to find a certified special education teacher.”
TFA teachers are not prepared to handle anthing but mild special needs and only if parents are willing to have their special needs children subjected to no nonsense discipline.
The charter laws in the states are just as rigged to allow this as they are in NY.
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“TFA teachers are not prepared to handle anthing but mild special needs…”
TFA teachers are not prepared to handle ANY children much less special needs students.
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bingo
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This is basically what private schools do all the time. It doesn’t matter whether you are more than willing to pay $40,000+ tuition each year to have your child there. If the private school decides that even $40,000 isn’t worth the bother to teach your child, he will be counseled out.
Unfortunately, charters use taxpayer dollars and that means they can’t counsel out.
Here is what is most appalling. Moskowitz now runs a school system that is already nearly twice as large as the school system in the capitol city of Albany — and she wants to grow bigger.
But Moskowitz does not want to act like a city which must pay the private tuition at very expensive private schools for the kids they want to push out of their school for having special needs that they don’t want to deal with.
It is as if Andrew Cuomo decided that the public schools of Albany were now allowed to send as many special needs students and students with discipline problems to neighboring Saratoga Springs and the taxpayers of Saratoga Springs would now be obligated to pick up the costs of teaching them. Because Gov. Cuomo decided that Albany public schools shouldn’t be burdened with the cost of those students anymore and he’s angry at Saratoga Springs so let their taxpayers pay for it instead. Substitute Eva Moskowitz and New York City public schools for Albany and Saratoga Springs and that is what Cuomo has done.
Charters who want to expand like Moskowitz does should have absolutely no right to counsel out any child without paying their private school tuition. If Moskowitz wants to run a network two times as large as a small city, then she has to take on the obligation to provide an education from EVERY child who wins a seat and not just the ones who are profitable so she can justify her outsize salary.
Moskowitz can’t have it both ways. Either she acts like a public school system that takes care of the needs of ALL the students in her system, or she acts like a private school that dumps kids who they don’t want to teach and she should stop taking public money. Success Academy is much too large to claim that it can’t provide for the needs of ANY student — because they should be paying the private school tuitions of those that they can’t.
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“Charters who want to expand like Moskowitz does should have absolutely no right to counsel out any child without paying their private school tuition.”
It’s another example of how charters are NOT public schools. I knew several parents in my NJ district in the ’90’s who obtained reimbursement for tuition to expensive privates handling difficult SpEd issues, merely w/a threatening letter on legal letterhead. Since then, our district has added successful SpEd pgms for devptlly-delayed & autistic, finding it cheaper to do it in-district. But Eva’s not a public; all she has to do is “counsel out” to NYC pubsch SpEd programs – they bear the resp for providing an adequate & appropriate ed to all comers — she doesn’t. Yet she gets paid the same from the same tax-trough.
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Knowing what you think about Success Academy, you will enjoy this article:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/8/23/1790324/-Success-Academy-Charter-School-CEO-Rakes-in-the-Dollars?_=2018-08-23T02:54:25.376-07:00
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The lack of oversight by Joseph Belluck and his minions at the SUNY Charter institute board is truly disgusting. I’m sure she could pay herself $2 million a year from all savings she has when she makes expensive children disappear. When you profit by refusing to teach any children who are too expensive, you can pay yourself a very, very, large salary and when the only oversight agency is the SUNY Charter Institute board who has never once investigated any complaints in 10 years, you have lots of money to reward your own reprehensible actions.
It’s like Trump getting rich by screwing over the middle class subcontractors who worked for him and refusing to pay their invoices after they had completed their work. “Sue me” Trump would say, knowing his wealth and power would make it very hard and they’d shut up and take pennies on the dollar.
Moskowitz’ charters treats those children and their parents the way Trump treated those people who did work for him. They all are very, very happy to hurt more vulnerable people if it gives them something they want.
It’s called bullying and Trump and Moskowitz are the poster children for what bullying by those with power and money looks like when it is directed toward vulnerable children.
It’s not surprising that Moskowiutz made it her personal mission to make sure Betsy DeVos was Secretary of Education. Did it matter to her that kids would get hurt as long as she was raking in the bucks? I think Moskowitz’ decision to fight so hard for DeVos says it all. After all, her schools did get huge donations from right wing billionaires and that subsidizes her salary.
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^^^I forgot to say thank you very much for the link to the interesting story!
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This is what true failure looks like, a school that fails to educate kids.
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“Success told POLITICO that five of the 10 students in the 12:1:1 class were held back, which would have resulted in five students in a fifth-grade 12:1:1 class and five students in a 12:1:1 sixth-grade class. The network, Success said, does not have the space, teachers or funds to offer classes with five students each.”
A dilemma of their own making. Success Academy’s special-ed program: put the kids in a self-contained class run by a teacher w/o speced certification or experience, & keep holding them back a grade until they get a B on stdzd tests.
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Or they keep holding them back until their parents finally switch schools. And not just special needs students but other students who SA deems not up to snuff.
Success Academy should be transparent about the number of students held back each year. When a charter school has unbelievable results like that, there should immediately be a hard look at how many of the original lottery winners for Kindergarten are progressing to 3rd grade testing years with their cohort — especially the at-risk one who by law are the students charters are obligated to teach.
It is shocking that the population of Success Academy’s older grades seems to be far less economically disadvantaged than NYC public schools. The graduating class had 9 or likely fewer than 9 economically disadvantaged students. (There were 9 when the class was 20 students, but then another 4 disappeared and most likely at least some were among those most disadvantaged students).
Success Academy sends its PR shills to brag that they get amazing results with special needs students. That is because they only keep the children that they can get good results with. It is shocking that so many of the lottery winners seem to never enroll or leave before testing years. How many? We don’t know because the SUNY Charter School has refused to look closely despite the myriad of parent complaints they have received.
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Or leave.
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
Of course she has, should we expect anything else from such a mean-spirited greedy person.
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A clear violation of federal law and should result in massive, crippling lawsuit. Why are the parents not suing?
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How can they hold a kid back twice!? And there’s still time to do it again. Graduating high school at 20+ years is insane.
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This makes me angry. Now, what would you think about this? Our new superintendent has created a program at a local public school called 5th Grade Success Academy. Is he trying to be like Eva? The book is still out about this man. I don’t trust him at all.
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What district?
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“I contacted two attorneys with experience in special education, who told me that if their IEPs mandated a 12-1-1 class the school could not legally get rid of the program, but neither parent wanted to sue.”
This is, imo, the main sticking point. I think that a major goal of the reform movement is to get around the IDEA federal mandate.
I would think thrice and counting before entering a lawsuit against SA because:
1) It would cost a LOT of money in legal fees and would last a long time. Eva and her donors have some serious $$$ to spend. Lots of money, time, and energy spent.
2) The shell game of whether SA is a PUBLIC school or not. AKA: you’d probably lose the case. They’re a public school when taking our tax dollars but in any other area, they’re a “charter school” which is where you get into murky waters. If it were a fair system, SA and other charter chains would’ve been busted by now. But the game is rigged and I believe she’d win the case.
Only public schools are compelled to follow the dictates of IDEA. Texas is getting a first hand look at that, at the moment, after years of neglect.
Special Ed can be expensive. I’m actually sympathetic with the smaller and poorer districts that end up spending a disproportionate share of their education budget on the needs of one or two severely handicapped students. I’ve seen this first hand and it effects the education of the majority of the kids. But the Fed has been remiss in contributing its’ share of money towards state needs since the Act was ratified; a point that should be addressed along with discussing possible provisions for higher needs districts that can’t bear the financial strain.
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Have to add that, after 24+ years of teaching special ed kids, I can definitely say that the Success Academy’s (and other schools’) “no excuses” mode of teaching is beyond just “ill equipped” to deal with kids who have special needs.
One size fits all is difficult and counter productive enough to deal with in a general ed setting. It’s a complete dead in the water in special ed.
As messed up and unfair as this is for the parents, they might just be better off getting their kids out of that compound.
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