The U.S. Department of Education criticized Eva Moskowitz for releasing the private disciplinary record of a student whose mother repeatedly criticized the school. This comes soon after the ED awarded Success Academy $10 Million to expand.
Leonie Haimson, advocate for student privacy, comments:
This press release is also posted here.
For immediate release: June 4, 2019
For more information contact Leonie Haimson, leoniehaimson@gmail.com; 917-435-9329.
US Department of Education finds Eva Moskowitz and Success Academy repeatedly violated a child’s privacy according to FERPA
On Monday, June 2, 2019, Fatima Geidi finally received a response to a FERPA complaint she filed more than three and half years ago with the US Department of Education. The Student Privacy Policy Office of the Department of Education found that her FERPA complaint against Eva Moskowitz and Success Academy charter schools was justified and that they had indeed repeatedly violated her son’s privacy rights. The official findings letter to Ms. Moskowitz, dated May 31, 2019, is here.
On October 31, 2015, Ms. Geidi filed a complaint detailing how Eva Moskowitz, CEO of Success Academy charter schools, had revealed details of her son’s disciplinary records to the media and on her website. Ms. Moskowitz made these disclosures in order to retaliate against Ms. Geidi and her son after they had appeared on the PBS News Hour to report how he had been repeatedly suspended at one of her schools. Her original FERPA complaint is posted here.
Yet the US Department of Education waited more than two years to even launch an investigation into her complaint. In the meantime, Ms. Moskowitz included many of the same exaggerated charges against Ms. Geidi’s son on several pages of her memoir, The Education of Eva Moskowitz, that was published in September 2017. When Ms. Geidi noticed these passages in a bookstore, she filed a second FERPA complaint on December 20, 2017.
Last week, the US Department of Education refused to accept the weak rationalizations offered by the Success Academy legal staff about these disclosures and found that in both cases, they were flagrant violations of FERPA.
Yet in order to address these violations, Frank Miller, Deputy Director of the Student Privacy Policy Office, wrote that Success Academy must merely ensure that “school officials have or will receive training on the requirements of FERPA as they relate to the issues in this complaint.” He refrained from imposing any penalties or demanding that the offending passages be deleted from Eva Moskowitz’ book – a book that is still for sale on Amazon and in bookstores all across the United States.
As Fatima Geidi said, “While I am glad that the US Department of Education agreed that Ms. Moskowitz and Success Academy repeatedly violated my child’s privacy by disclosing trumped-up details of his education records to the media, on the Success website and in her book, I am furious that they failed to fine her, or at the very least, demand that she take the offending passages out of her book. Because the Department of Education waited over two years to respond to my initial FERPA complaint, Eva Moskowitz illegally put the same information (false by the way) about my child in a book where it may remain forever. This is unacceptable, and I demand that the illegal passages from the book be deleted.”
Leonie Haimson, co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, said, “Ms. Moskowitz and Success Academy have repeatedly violated FERPA in order to retaliate against parents who dare reveal how she abuses children and pushes them out of her charter schools. These illegal disclosures happened again just last month, in the case of Lisa Vasquez and her daughter, as reported in a Chalkbeat article. On May 9, 2019, Ms. Vasquez filed a FERPA complaint with the US Department of Education and the NY State Education Chief Privacy Officer. Her FERPA complaint is posted on our blog, where we point to other privacy violations by Success charter schools. Simply asking for Success staff to receive privacy training will likely prove no real deterrence to Eva Moskowitz. Instead she and her staff will likely continue to flagrantly violate their students’ privacy with impunity in the future.”
The US Department of Education has provided more than $37 million in discretionary grants to Success Academy since 2010, including nearly $10 million awarded in April 2019. Its officials should be required to explain why they chose not to withhold any federal funds from her schools, and worse, will allow the offending passages in Ms. Moskowitz’ book to remain in perpetuity. The unacceptable delay of more than three and a half years in responding to Ms. Geidi’s initial complaint and the lack of an meaningful response by the Department provides further evidence as to why parents should be able to sue for damages under FERPA when their children’s right to privacy has been violated.
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
She’ll probably get a slap on the wrist and a $100 fine, just like Ben Chavis….
Now that Success Academy’s actions are officially recognized as being in violation of the student’s rights, it is in Eva’s best interests to delete the passages from her book and publicly apologize because of the possibility of Ms Geidi or someone who supports her, maybe someone not to be messed with like Leonie or Diane, going public with complaints that the charter company continues to break the law. That would be very bad public relations for the company. PBS could do a whole segment about it. Keeping the passages is unprofessional and pretty childish anyway. Just dumb.
We have to make a concerted effort to pound the message home:
“That would be very bad public relations for the PRIVATE CHARTER company.
Eva just got educated — by Betsy DeVos, of all people.
There must be a rift in the space-time continuum.
Ha!
Betcha a beer, SDP, that Betsy had nothing to do with the decision and more likely than not attempted to change the department’s findings.
Wonder if she called Bill Barr and asked him to ease up on charter guru Ben Chavis. CA state audit said he funneled $3.8 million into his personal account but six years later the Justice Department dropped charges and fined him $100.
You are probably right, but the mere fact that Betsy’s underlings were able to slip one by her means there must be a rift or a wormhole somewhere in her office.
Where are the NYTimes headlines? Washington Post? Any presidential candidates giving any attention to Eva as a perfect example of the arrogance of Devos and the industry?
we can dream
Two bits says there will be no repercussions for Evita la pollita coming from the Dept of Ed, or anyone else for that matters. Time to go to civil court I guess.
Here are some examples of case law. In some instances parents have been awarded damages, additional instructional time among others. https://www.wrightslaw.com/law/pleadings/fed.court.complaints.htm
“Eva is Appealing? To whom?”
“Eva is appealing”?
Others might dissent
Appealing is revealing
Eva’s re-pug-nant
The real culprits are:
Joseph W. Belluck – chair of the SUNY Charter Institute
Member: Angelo M. Fatta, Ph.D.
Member: Eric Corngold
Member: Edward Spiro
Member: Dr. Merryl H. Tisch
Susie Miller Carello – Executive Director of the SUNY Charter Institute.
This is the group of people who have sole responsibility for Eva Moskwitz’ actions. Remember, these six individuals did nothing after Moskowitz violated this child’s privacy and did nothing when Moskowitz did it again to another child.
I notice that the background of these people is very different than the background of the children whose privacy they allow Moskowitz to violate.
I feel certain that if their own children’s privacy was violated in this manner, or the privacy of the affluent white children of their relatives and friends, these individuals would not be rewarding the violators and ignoring their parents’ objections and implying their children deserved what they got.
The SUNY Charter Institute board also did nothing when one of Moskowitz’ favorite teachers — one who got the special privilege of being named a “model” teacher — got caught on video humiliating a child who also wasn’t of the same background as the trustees and executive director who keep insisting that the children are given the treatment they deserve. Again I doubt that if their own children or the affluent white children of their family and friends were being publicly humiliated when they did nothing wrong, these trustees would be insisting that the child deserved every punishment he received.
Remember their names because they are the ones who know about this and enable this kind of reprehensible behavior when their job is to put a stop to it.
They should all be fired from their positions and investigated to learn their ties with the billionaires who support Success Academy.
Their job is protecting the children in charters and instead they have protected Eva Moskowitz.
This is the DFER definition of “oversight”. It means protecting the CEOs of charters and not the children in them.
Tisch is Ed.D, not Ph.D. or M.D.
Thanks for clarifying that, Diane. I hadn’t realized that an Ed.D couldn’t claim the title doctor. My father, who was a Ph.D, eschewed the title as (his words, not mine) “pretentious.”
Now that I know this, I’ll understand why I myself find colleagues who earned Ed.Ds from online diploma mills pretentious.
An Ed.D. is a “doctor,” but the Ph.D. is more prestigious. I noticed that one person on the SUNY board was described as a Ph.D. while Tisch was described as “Dr. Tisch.” Consistency matters. The Tisch family are billionaires. Merryl waschancellorof the NY Board of Regents and was very supportive of charters. Now she is on SUNY board, which is the state’s other charter authorizer. It awards charters to Success Academy.
Ah: again, thank you. I definitely know who she is. I seem to remember posting something on my first blog some years ago when she got into some sort of dustup with Christopher Cerf. At the time, I found it hard to imagine two people who deserved each other more.
Diane,
You are right — I just copied and pasted the trustees directly from the SUNY Charter Institute website and Tisch is listed as “Dr.”.
It astonishes me that these people do absolutely no oversight beyond looking at the percentage of students who pass state tests.
High suspension rates in charters where the oldest students are 6 and 7 years old in first grade! These trustees will take your word all those (non-white) students are acting out violently.
High attrition rates in a charter awash with money giving students the extras no public school can match and supposedly “the best education in the state”? These trustees will take your word that parents with few options were made to feel welcome and you are just mystified why so many of them pulled their children from your school.
The trustees should be sued by the parents who made these complaints and were ignored, because they are not doing the oversight they are mandated by law to do.
The fact that some students are served and their parents are happy in no way absolves these trustees of their responsibility to the kids who were treated the way we witnessed in the video and much worse. But these trustees seem to believe their only obligation is to the students who charters decide they want to teach.
And their (intentional) lack of curiosity about what happened to all the students who mysteriously disappear despite winning a supposedly coveted lottery spot is either incompetence or corruption. Especially when they have been notified time and again of parents complaining about their child’s treatment.
There are different ways to hammer the message home:
“Joseph W. Belluck – chair of the SUNY [PRIVATE} Charter Institute and The SUNY Charter [PRIVATE] Institute board also did nothing. . . ” [my additions]
Bracket the word private if necessary.
We have to be as relentless if not more relentless than the edudeformers and privateers.
It’d be nice to see everyone using the correct terminology for PRIVATE charter schools. Like:
“The U.S. Department of Education criticized Eva Moskowitz for releasing the private disciplinary record of a student whose mother repeatedly criticized the PRIVATE CHARTER school.