As Leonie Haimson explains in this post, it has been a busy few weeks for Eva Moskowitz, founder and CEO of NYC’s controversial Success Academy charter chain.
Once again, her chain has been accused of violating the rights of students; Betsy DeVos awarded $9.8 million to her schools, added to the $43.4 million Eva previously received from the federal Charter Schools Program; she will receive an honorary degree from Tufts University; and the President of Harvard University is giving the commencement speech to her graduating class.
How does it happen that the president of the nation’s most prestigious university is speaking to what may be a graduating class of a few dozen students at a charter school? .
“The former president of Tufts, Lawrence Bacow, who is the current president of Harvard is scheduled to speak at the Success high school’s graduation, which last year only graduated 16 out of the 73 students who entered the school in Kindergarten or first grade. No doubt both occurrences were influenced by the fact that the head of the Success board, hedge funder Steve Galbreath, is also on the Tufts board of trustees and heads its investment committee.”
Follow the money.
Don’t be surprised if next year Moskowitz land DeVos herself, America’s leading charter school champion.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
There is a lot wrong with the country. And it is so tiring and disheartening seeing all of these smart yet hopelessly myopic people “succeed” within the warped prism of our times. I’m sure it has always been this way in much of business and politics, but it was never so pervasive, I don’t think, and transparent, and insidiously hypocritical. This is our new education about our new education.
This is ALL I need to know about Tufts and Harvard.
It’s funny how people brand “things.”
Can we name those schools of BS? Seems there a lot of them these DAZE.
I’m trying to figure out why when DeVos and the echo chamber fund charter schools they say they are supporting charter school students, yet when public school students ask for funding, they are told “no” because that’s funding “buildings” and ed reform supports students and not buildings.
Are charter schools in buildings? How is funding charter schools supporting charter students but funding public schools is not? Maybe our kids don’t count as “students”. Maybe that’s the distinction. They’re just the small people in the specific buildings that ed reform opposes.
This stuff is just nonsense. None of the ridiculous talking points they apply to our schools is used with their own schools.
A meeting with DeVos and Moskowitz is like a meeting of the “coven” of the echo chamber.
The words fall out of DeVos’s mouth, in a torrent. They don’t mean anything other than that she hates public schools and loves religious schools. No matter what research says, she loves them.
As Basil Fawlty once said of one of his wife Sybil’s friends, “dreadful woman, just dreadful.”
At least Sybil was funny and made an essential contribution to a classic.
Absolutely. The actress who played here was a woman named Prunella Scales, whose real name may be odder than her fictional name.
But yeah, nothing funny about Eva Moskowitz.
Harvard has become an expensive diploma mill for education “managers” who listen to economists and faculty like Howard Fuller who think segregated charter schools are fine and economist Thomas J. Kane, who was Deputy Director of Research and Data at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation while a Professor of Education and Economics at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Beginning in 2010 the Kane/Gates Measures of Effective Teaching Project (about $64 million) with not even an ounce of concern about the ethics of all that.
Has anyone added up the hundreds of millions of dollars wasted by the Gates Foundation on “measures of effective teaching,” money that could have been invested in public schools instead?
One of my former Laatina students went to HGSE after graduating from Smith. When I asked what she thought of the experience, she replied that she was angry every day. She felt that public schools were continually denigrated as failures, particularly for students of color and kids in poverty. She used her public school life from K-12 and her subsequent achievements, as well as those of her classmates, to push back against that false narrative continually.
Made me proud!
I wish that Harvard Crimson reporters would start investigating their President’s huge favor to give legitimacy to Eva Moskowitz — who made it her personal mission to make sure Betsy DeVos was confirmed as Secretary of Education and has been well-rewarded for her hard work. Moskowitz not only endorsed DeVos, but she wrote op eds and gave interviews and made speeches in which she demanded that the Senate confirm DeVos because (Moskowitz said) DeVos was an excellent choice who would do so much for schools. I think Moskowitz meant DeVos would do so much for Eva Moskowitz’s schools.
Maybe Harvard is terrified of the Trump DOE investigating their admissions policies and therefore the President wanted to please Betsy DeVos by helping one of DeVos’ biggest cheerleaders, Eva Moskowitz.
If Bacow heard a principal at a suburban school full of white affluent students claiming that as many as 18% of the Kindergarten and first grade students were acting out violently, he would obviously know there was something wrong with the school, not the children the principal claimed were all so violent.
So is it Bacow’s racism that makes him believe Eva Moskowitz when she claims the same about some of her charters with virtually no white students that had those outrageously high suspension rates for the youngest students?
Moskowitz’ endorsement of DeVos and endorsement of high suspension rates for schools with virtually no white students has clearly demonstrated that Moskowitz is no different than Trump in her willingness to say whatever will “seal the deal”.
Lawrence Bacow is like Mitch McConnell — willing to look the other way at all kinds of disgusting behavior and instead enable that behavior because he believes he will get something out of it that he wants and he doesn’t care at all about anything but pleasing the people who give him what he wants. Speaking at a graduation for 31 kids (or perhaps fewer depending on how many have disappeared this year) is something Bacow will do if he gets something out of it. And that’s all that matters to him.
I don’t know if Bacow is doing this to please Galbreath or to please Betsy DeVos, since both Galbreath and DeVos adore Eva Moskowitz and Eva Moskowitz adores both of them.
By the way, the fact that in 11th grade, this class of 31 students was down to 9 male students — losing 55% of the male students in that class in 6th grade — should give one pause. When only 29% of the graduating class is male, and 71% is female, it seems highly unlikely that is just random.
“Maybe Harvard is terrified of the Trump DOE investigating their admissions policies” — While I cannot imagine Trump instigating an investigation, it feels
like current energy in the nation is pushing to expose Harvard’s (and all “elite” college’s) dependence upon just that: elitism
The Trump administration is conducting an investigation of Harvard’s admissions policy with the intent of killing affirmative action and forcing Harvard and other elite universities to rely solely on test scores for admission, with concern for diversity banished. This is a long-sought goal of the hard-right that would effectively eliminate black and Latino students.
Oh, THAT kind of “investigation…”
I can’t think of another charter CEO who fought as hard for DeVos’ confirmation as Eva Moskowitz did with her op eds, interviews, and over the top praise of DeVos. DeVos owes a great debt to Eva Moskowitz’ tireless efforts on her behalf when her confirmation was in doubt.
So I have a feeling that the Harvard President is well aware he is doing a huge favor for DeVos by appearing at a small graduation of 31 or fewer students at a charter school led by the person who is among those most responsible for DeVos being confirmed.
Why else would he endorse a charter CEO who has advocated for suspending low-income non-white Kindergarten and first grade children so frequently because that CEO claims so many of them act out violently in her charters?
Maybe Harvard has given up on social justice and civil rights. They would rather “follow the money” like so many corrupt individuals.
“..enter any one of the schools denominated national, and request the master to show the acquirements of the children. These are called out, and he asks them theological questions to which men of the most profound erudition cannot make a rational reply; the children, however, readily answer as they had been previously instructed; for memory, in this mockery of learning, is all that is required.”
From the writings of Robert Owen.
I found that this has application in the debate about the no excuses test approach to education. Do people like Eva know this has been tried and found wanting so long ago?
“people like Eva…”
Do you mean the people who worked tirelessly to make sure DeVos would be Secretary of Education?
Do you mean people who said “Future generations have much to lose — but plenty to gain — in the next four years, and they will have a strong ally fighting for them in Washington, DC, when Betsy DeVos is confirmed” ?
https://nypost.com/2017/01/30/why-we-need-an-outsider-like-betsy-devos-as-education-secretary/
Being “like Eva” would mean that like Eva, that person would believe her time is best spent demanding that Senators confirm DeVos because she believes DeVos cares just as much about kids with special needs as Eva herself does. Two of a kind, DeVos and Moskowitz, helping each other get exactly what they want.
I think people like Eva Moskowitz would say and do anything that they see as benefiting themselves and their concern for anything other than what benefits themselves is exactly zero.
I guess someone could argue that Moskowitz is just a true believer and true rabid admirer of DeVos because she and DeVos share the exact same values. I guess someone could argue that Moskowitz isn’t an unethical pusher of whatever agenda will promote her “brand” and allow her to earn more money, but she just really embraces all that DeVos stands for.
Maybe some of Moskowitz’ defenders who post here can explain which is true — is Eva Moskowitz a cynical greedy person who so strongly endorsed DeVos because she knew it would lead to more donations and funding, or is Moskowitz a true believer who shares the exact same values as Betsy DeVos, just as she kept telling us she was.
It has always been my impression, mostly from you folk that post here, that Eva loves the testing thing and that her schools and the other no excuses approaches all focus on the test. I have been given the impression in these pages that they will do anything to attain good scores. Owen was criticizing the contemporary English schools in much the same voice Charles Dickens used in Hard Times, the voice of the critic of those for whom memorizing complexity that was not an understandable entity was a futility.
That was my intent.
Eva Moskowitz could have still loved testing without making it her personal mission to fight for DeVos’ confirmation.
You don’t have to spend your time endorsing DeVos if you are a charter CEO who loves testing. You do have to spend your time endorsing DeVos if you are a charter leader who is a true believer in all that DeVos stands for or you are a charter leader who believes they will be well-rewarded for doing everything in your power to make sure DeVos was confirmed as Secretary of Education.
She was well-rewarded.
One hand washes the other, or in this case soils the other. They’re all part of the neoliberal club. They should have matching jackets. If these schools want to ban fraternities and sororities for gender exclusion they ought to first start getting rid of their executives for engaging in classist exclusion of the 99%.
Eva Moskowitz gets $9.8 million from DeVos. Disgusting. Read how school teachers in Idaho are ‘rewarded’ by their politicians. The minimum salary is now $40,000 and some are excited about that raise. Good grief. Who can live on $40,000, especially if one has a family? This is a GOP run state. Glad I left but Indiana isn’t much better. [My whole teaching experience in Idaho was subbing for one day in a junior high school in Boise.]
……………………………………..
Idaho’s new minimum teacher salary: Who benefits and how it shakes out
Inbox
After 20 years of working in trades, Gordon Knight made a career change last year. He took a job as a kindergarten teacher at the Idaho Arts Charter School in Nampa.
This life change carried serious financial implications. “I took a substantial pay cut to teach,” he said.
But this spring, legislators approved Gov. Brad Little’s two-year plan to boost starting teacher pay. Geared to first-year teachers such as Knight, the law will increase Idaho’s minimum teacher salary to $40,000 in 2020-21.
Knight is excited about the pay raise, and school administrators support the new law as well. But they also say it is just one step to attract new teachers — and keep good teachers in Idaho classrooms…
WHO GETS THE MONEY?
For 3,651 Idaho teachers, the new minimum salary law carries a guaranteed raise.
These educators make somewhere between $35,800 a year — the current state minimum — and $40,000. Together, they comprise more than a fifth of Idaho’s teacher work force.
“https://www.idahoednews.org/news/idahos-new-minimum-teacher-salary-who-benefits-and-how-it-shakes-out/?utm_source=republish&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=republish”
Here is a perfect example of universities’ and colleges’ giving out BS degrees left and right to undeserving people. Embarrassing to teh college and insulting to those kids who work their butt off for a degree.