identifies episode 5 as the crucial reveal about Success Academy,
Gary Rubenstein identifies episode 5 as the crucial reveal about Success Academy, where even a supportive reporter notes the behaviors that shows the central message of Success Academy: Control.
Star Wars fans know that Episode 5 — The Empire Strikes Back, was the best of the Star Wars saga. And of Beethoven’s nine symphonies, the most famous is surely his fifth. Likewise, of the seven episodes of Startup’s podcast about Success Academy, the fifth (found here) is the most powerful and the most important.
To say that this episode has the ‘smoking gun’ would be an understatement. This episode has not just the smoking gun, but a video of the culprit firing that gun. I’m not sure why this episode hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves. Maybe because it is so many hours into the podcast and most people don’t listen to all the parts. Or maybe there are so many Success Academy excuses and talking points weaved into all the other episodes that this episode just seems like a small blemish on a generally favorable portrait of the controversial charter network. Whatever the reason, I’m hoping that people will take the time to listen to the whole podcast and to share it, along with my summary, widely.
This episode is entitled ‘Expectations’ and it explores whether or not the expectations Success Academy has for it’s students and for the parents of those students are something that the students and parents rise to meet or if they scare away potential families and families who struggle to keep up with those expectations.
They play a tape of Eva Moskowitz speaking to families who have been accepted into Success Academy:
EVA: Hi everyone, I’m Eva Moskowitz the founder and CEO of Success Academies. It’s very nice to meet you in this large auditorium.
LISA: Eva paces across the stage in stilettos, a fitted blue dress and leather bomber jacket, her standard attire. She’s speaking to a couple hundred parents, near Success Academy Union Square. That’s one of 30 Success elementary schools offering spots to new students.
EVA: First of all, congratulations for those of you who have won the lottery.
LISA: This year Success Academy had a little over 3000 spots for about 17000 applicants. That means through a random lottery, only about one out of every six kids got a spot.
Eva tells the audience that she designed Success Academy with the hope that kids would fall in love with school. They have science labs in kindergarten, kids learning chess early on. She touts the school’s high academic standards. But she is also clear about some of the things that parents might not like.
EVA: We believe in homework. A lot of it. So if you feel really strongly that that is not something you like, you probably shouldn’t come to Success. Cause we’re going to be arguing for 12 years about homework and we’re gonna win.
LISA: Want small class sizes? We don’t have that. And, of course…
EVA: Tests. Anyone against tests? Anyone want to be part of the opt-out movement? Great, thank you for your honesty. Success is not the place for you.
LISA: Success is not the place for you. Parents start hearing that line early on. Eva makes it clear at this meeting that they’ll expect a lot of parents.
EVA: We’re very very strict on kids getting to school on time. School starts August 20th and you must be here the first day of school, no exceptions. We expect at a minimum for you to return our phone calls. I had a parent who was refusing to meet with the principal. God forbid. No no no no no.
About half of the families that get into Success Academy after winning ‘the lottery’ choose to not go there, maybe because of messages like this.
The devastating part in this episode follows a 5th grader at Success Academy named Nia. Nia had been at Success Academy since kindergarten and had passed both sections of the 3rd and 4th grade state tests. But she was getting about a 70 average in 5th grade so the school said that she was at risk of repeating 5th grade. According to the podcast, this is something that is said to hundreds of families each year.
Getting ‘left back’ is a big deal. It has major consequences that can affect the rest of a student’s life. From then on, that student will be a year older than her classmates, always having to explain why she is a year older, that she was ‘left back.’ The school said she would have to get her grades up, which she did, to about an 80. But the school said that it wasn’t enough. It didn’t matter that she was now comfortably passing. It also didn’t matter that she had passed the state tests the previous years and that she was likely to pass the state test again this year. They said that when they took it all into consideration they decided not to promote her. However, they would promote her if she would transfer out of Success Academy.
The amazing hypocrisy here is that Success Academy is saying that the fact that this girl passed the state tests was not enough. They are actually admitting that passing the state tests — the thing that the entire reputation of Success Academy is based on — is not an accurate measure of achievement.
The podcast goes on to compare SA to a regular public school. Gary finds the comparison shallow and disappointing.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Eva tells the audience that she designed Success Academy with the hope that kids would fall in love with school.”
I think Eva follows the same script that Colonel Saito from “The Bridge on the River Kwai” did, where he tells the British POW’s that are starving and being worked to death to “Be Happy in your work.”
Eva clearly thinks treating kids like they are in a U.S. Marine Corps style book camp is going to get them to fall in love with “her” school.
When Eva asks them if they “love their school” they will all know there is only one answer Eva wants to hear and the kids will feed it to her so she won’t increase the torture.
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“They are actually admitting that passing the state tests — the thing that the entire reputation of Success Academy is based on — is not an accurate measure of achievement.”
Actually, what they are admitting is that the only thing that matters is whatever they say matters — and it has nothing to do with student achievement.
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The Disrupters keep moving the goal posts. First it was test scores. Then it was graduation rates. Now it is parent satisfaction.
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The art of war is based on deception to spread confusion.
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Eve Moskowitz seems to be the Elizabeth Holmes of education
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Ah, yes, Elizabeth Holmes, the creator of Theranos. The overnight billionaire. All of it gone. Lawsuits pending. Angry investors.
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Holmes sounds like the perfect GOP candidate to run for Congress, a governor’s mansion or the White House, but she will have to wait for Trump leave because he is already filing to the slot for Crooked Person #1.
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“Success is not the place for you.”
A whole lot more meaning in there than Eva intended—or likely did intend.
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The 50% who don’t make the cut go somewhere, and where they go is to the public schools.
The same public schools ed reformers don’t support or invest in.
It’s okay if “the movement” only advocates on behalf of children who attend their preferred schools, charters and vouchers, but if that’s the deal they should stop calling themselves “public education advocates” and instead call themselves “charter and voucher advocates”.
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What is innovative about this school? It’s a selective public schools that selects on the back end instead of the front end. They got rid of the 5th grader with the 70% score by telling her she had to repeat a grade, because they don’t want any students with a 70%.
How is this different than an exam school? In a way it’s worse than an exam school, because the children can enter, go a couple of years and THEN get rejected.
Where do the children who gets C’s and flunk out of Success go? To the public schools Eva disdains, correct? She’s wholly dependent on a public school system. Her “model” won’t work without a safety net.
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If Success has A students than it must have C and D students, right?
How does a C student survive in Eva’s world? That’s not allowed? So they only students who deserve to go to school are A students?
The other name for this “innovation” is “selective school”. They’ve been around for 200 years. Because she doesn’t use an entrance exam we’re all supposed to pretend there are no C students who are perfectly fine and valuable people who get an education?
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Thank you, Eva, for teaching America how to make a successful school! All we have to do is expel all the kids who get C’s. I hereby introduce the Every School Succeeds Act which will permit all schools to expel sub-C students. That’s how we can bring education reform to scale. Problem solved. Soon the Reformers will be fawning on public schools they way they’ve fawned on Success. Soon Arne Duncan will be lauding hitherto-scorned public school teachers in op-ed pieces galore. I can’t wait!
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Eva Moskowitz welcomes every student, even C students. She turns every child who walks through her door into a scholar and if she does not, then the child and the parents are entirely at fault.
C students are simply “bad” kids who need more of that patented Success Academy “misery” to turn them into A students. In large classes. Or C students are lazy or their parents won’t do what Success Academy demands they do to make sure their C student turns into an A student.
In other words, C students deserve nothing but disdain and humiliation — preferably in front of their higher performing peers. That’s the Success Academy way. It’s not Success Academy’s fault that parents pull those C students from their school. Success Academy would be happy to keep humiliating and flunking those children forever if only their terrible parents cared about them getting a good education.
And if those terrible parents complain, why Success Academy will let reporters view the student’s records, because FERPA doesn’t count when the charter school is always in the right and has been “victimized” by those lazy, bad kids and their bad parents.
I wish I was joking. Success Academy just let reporters view another set of private records about a child whose parent dared to complain. The administrators say it is their right to ignore FERPA because what Eva Moskowitz wants always trumps any silly right of a child they don’t want to teach.
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In addition, Eva and her peers will also make sure the public schools get half the money per student that the corporate charters get. After all, sub-C students don’t deserve that much funding per student because those kids are not working hard enough to justify spending that much money on them.
And Eva and her peers will argue that the corporate charters must get twice the amount per student because their students work harder and learn more.
Then, Eva and her peers in the corporate charter school industry will triple their pay because they are teaching the best students in America and deserve more … but charter teachers will still be paid less without benefits than public school teachers who will now be teaching huge class loads because of the funding cuts.
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Rubenstein’s take on homework is so true. Gosh, he’s good.
Gary, can you be a stand-up comedian like Bob Newhart before he went on TV and during the day his “real life” was accountant and at night “Stand Up” comedian?
I loved this: “EVA: We believe in homework. A lot of it. So if you feel really strongly that that is not something you like, you probably shouldn’t come to Success. Cause we’re going to be arguing for 12 years about homework and we’re gonna win.”
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“No Success for you!” — The Charter Nazi
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Of course, she also means “No success for you!”
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