Gary Rubenstein enjoyed reading Robert Pondiscio’s book about Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy. He recommends it. What Pondiscio reveals is that SA does not cherrypick students, as critics charge: It cherrypicks parents.
One premise of the book is that the fundamental secret to Success Academy’s amazing standardized test scores, mentioned throughout the work is the filtering of the right families. On page 266 he writes “The common criticism leveled at Moskowitz and her schools is that they cherry pick students, attracting bright children and shedding the poorly behaved and hardest to teach This misses the mark entirely. Success Academy is cherry-picking parents.” Parents must go through a series of tests and hoops to jump through for their children to get into and to stay in a Success Academy school. First there is, of course, the lottery. But winning the lottery is just the first step. Described in great — and frightening — detail in chapter 20 “The Lottery”, lottery winners have to attend a mandatory informational session where they are told how much work it is to be a parent of a child at the school — how lateness is not tolerated and there is a 7:30 AM start time. How there is no transportation provided. How every Wednesday is a half day and there is no after school program. How absences require a doctor’s note. Many prospective lottery winners give up after that meeting. Then there are several other steps like extensive paperwork and uniform fittings and a dress rehearsal. Even Pondiscio is shocked to watch how a student who is deep on the waitlist eventually get admitted to the school. But having families who are this willing and able to comply with the demands made by Success Academy leads, predictably, to high standardized test scores. He doesn’t say this so bluntly, but let’s face it — this is a kind of cheating.
But if you look at the back of the book, you see that it was well reviewed by various reformers including former NYC schools Chancellor Joel Klein. How can this be? Well even though Pondiscio says the test scores need to be seen in the context of the family selection process, he also argues, several times throughout the book, that it is OK that they do this. The argument is that wealthy families use their resources to get their child into a school that is a good fit for them so why shouldn’t poor families who have the resource of being highly functional use that to get their child into a school that is a good fit for them too?…
My first response to this would be that only 16 out of the inaugural 73 students even endured to graduate Success Academy. If a higher percentage were actually served by Success Academy, then this argument of ‘shouldn’t they also get to choose a school that is good for them?’ would be more compelling. Since for the vast majority, they did not choose a school that was good for them, even after going through all those steps, and they did ultimately choose to leave, so what kind of choice did they really get? For the small number of families and children that turn out to be a good fit after all, there are at least double that number who regretted that choice and surely feel duped by the false promise that Success Academy actually cares about their children.
Maybe an analogy will make this more clear: On airplanes, only wealthy people have the choice of flying first class while people who can’t afford that must fly in coach. So now Success Airlines comes along and they have something they give people the choice of flying in something like first class except the seats are outside the plane on the wings and you have to get to the seats on your own and there’s a 2/3 chance that you’re going to be jettisoned from that seat before the flight is over anyway. Should we say that having a choice like that is something that poor people deserve to have?
If Pondiscio is making the case here that Success Academy should have the right to exist, I’ve never said that they shouldn’t exist. But their existence should not be to just benefit the few that are a good fit at the expense of not only the students at the neighboring schools but also the students who left Success Academy before graduating. To do this, I think that they need more oversight and regulations and transparency about what goes on inside their schools. And I’m glad that this book does a nice job about showing the sorts of abuse that occur in the school which I’ll get to next.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
But they cherry pick students too. If your family goes through all of the family-scare-off tactics and survives, but their kid still doesn’t do well academically, SA has ways of getting rid of the kid.
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Yes, I was going to post the same thing.
The fact that they do that AFTER they have already cherry picked parents is outrageous, and yet is is perfectly acceptable to the “reformers” who seem to believe those kids are so irredeemable violent or psychologically disturbed or their parents are just so uncaring that there is no need to bother their pretty little heads about that minor fact. They start with a cherry picked group and then cherry pick from among the cherry picked!
And that has been documented in the NAACP report, where the parents explains how a bunch of kids were identified by Success Academy staff the first week of school and placed in the back of the room and their parents called and clearly informed that Success Academy did not want their kid in the school and they should pull them out, stat. Now of course, a parent could refuse, but can you imagine a school telling you how godawful your child is and how they despise him and want him out, and then keeping him there?
And then Eva Moskowitz has the chutzpah — the unmitigated gall — to lie and say that her school teaches the same kids as you find in any failing public school and how dare we want to “steal possible” from those kids who she wants to expand schools to serve.
Pondiscio never mentions Moskowitz’ lies. After all, like most of the complicit people who help Trump whom Pondisciio reminds me of, he claims that lies don’t matter as long as some parents are happy.
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The “got to go list” was proof that they cherry pick students.
Or perhaps “cherry kick” students would be more precise.
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This is idiotic. SA is supposed to be a public school replacement and Pondisco claims it’s OK to cherry pick anybody, parents, students, monster teachers.
Have you guys read this about an SA kindergarten teacher?
“That was really rough for him to hear. At the same time, did I say, ‘It’s OK if you don’t finish your book review?” Now it’s Syskowski who starts to tear up. “No. It’s not OK. Because why would I let him fail when other kids are surpassing it and they’ll go to first grade? You would not want me as your child’s classroom teacher. You would not want Mr. Carnaghi or Ms. Skinner to be your child’s teacher if we were like, ‘You know what? You’re right. It is really hard. Let’s just let them be a B’” How about if they get two out of the four sight words correct? ‘That’s good enough.’ Where are they going to be in thirteen years? Then we won’t talk about college. And that something that ..” Syskowski lowers her gaze to the floor. “I get chills. That’s something that’s really hard for me to …”
Syskowsky doesn’t finish the thought. She can’t. She’s crying. “I do get emotional. Because your children are amazing. They are absolutely amazing. I try to …” She quickly gathers herself. “We will never lower that bar because it’s too hard.”
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and, like so many other charter schools, they especially know how to get rid of kids just before testing season
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I have long argued that charter schools require pre-enrollment parental interviews to determine the parents’ education level and language mastery, home and neighborhood culture and environment which are reliable predictors of student success. My parents were a maintenance mechanic and a nurse, but in a five minute conference with them a screener could discern that they had high expectations for all seven of their children, the language skills to inspire and tutor them, and plenty of peaceful study room. Like my son told me after taking a vocabulary entrance exam, “They were just words I heard you and mom use.” He wasn’t gifted; he was just luck, like me.
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I wonder how much money the ed reformers spent to pay Pondiscio for the time he spent writing his book. LOL. I love how it took him months of time to figure out what was clearly reported more than a decade ago!
The NY Times, November 3, 2008. “The Education Crusader Slideshow”
Slide number 11 of 12: Photo of Moskowitz with parents and the caption:
“Greeting parents coming to pick up their children. Ms. Moskowitz asks a lot of participation from parents, as a condition of admitting their children. She told one group, “If you know you cannot commit to all that we ask of you this year, this is not the place for you.”
THIS IS NOT THE PLACE FOR YOU.
Moskowitz made that clear from the start. The ed reform movement and Pondiscio pretended to see no evil because Eva Moskowitz was making all sorts of claims about the miracles she was working with all the kids from failing schools who she turned into high-performing scholars.
No one in the ed reform movement was allowed to call out her lies. If Eva Moskowitz wanted to issue out of school suspensions to over 20% of the very youngest elementary school students, her enablers would agree that those kids were violent and deserved it. Their casual racism was shocking to me. Remember, the kids who Moskowitz’s defenders were agreeing were so violent and awful were the kids whose parents were jumping through hoops to get their child in. But Moskowitz somehow got away with insisting their kindergarten children were naturally violent at extraordinarily high rates.
All I can say is that she would never have gotten away with that if those Kindergarten students she claimed were so violent at extraordinary rates were white and middle class.
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In New Orleans charters make clear they will require Saturday school and they will not provide transportation. So if you have two jobs and no car, you don’t enroll your child. Also too many tardies can result in expulsion and the school contacting child protective services. Filtering parents is just as effective as filtering children.
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I’m most of the way through Pondiscio’s book, which is very readable. It does strip the mask off, and he obviously knows he’s doing that and is struggling with it, but obviously determined early on that he’d be honest. It’s a little tough, because he doesn’t explicitly say “We’ve been lying all along,” but that’s what he’s telling us, with evident discomfort.
I’ve followed education “reform” closely for nearly 20 years (since for-profit, publicly traded Edison Schools was the magical-“reform”-miracle-run-by-saints that was all over the news in 2001). The “reformers” have aggressively, if dishonestly, insisted that their miracle charters do NOT cherry-pick at all, even when that’s an obvious lie.
Pondiscio blocked me (and Anthony Cody and maybe others at the same time) on Facebook several years ago during a discussion of “reform” when we disagreed with him — and I’m pretty sure that what he blocked me for was pointing out that charter schools cherry-pick.
“Reformers” HAVE opened the door to acknowledging the cherry-picking at times — I’ve had this gaslighting discussion a number of times:
Me: Charter schools cherry-pick.
“Reformer”: They do not!
Me: Patiently explains how charter schools cherry-pick.
“Reformer”: What’s wrong with cherry-picking?
But then they go back to the “charter schools accept all students though an impartial lottery” BS the minute that discussion ends.
A piece of background on a different “no excuses” “miracle” charter chain: Some years ago, a happy parent at KIPP San Francisco Bay Academy (a 5-8 charter school) posted proudly on a districtwide school parents’ listserve that his child had “tested” into the KIPP school. I immediately asked what he meant, and he vanished from the discussion (as charter advocates always seem to do when they’re busted in one or another charter lie). My daughter was just starting 7th grade, so I filed an application for her to see what would happen. Sure enough, the school contacted me to schedule her test. So, we see how this works. (We didn’t follow through the process further.)
The popular, controversial author Malcolm Gladwell wrote about KIPP schools in his simplistic book “Outliers.” What he said was that KIPP’s magical miracle silver bullet was a longer school day. But he also described a young KIPP student who told him about the intake counseling session (that’s what they call it) in which the principal scared her to death about how much work she’d have to do at KIPP. And the child told him that her friends in the neighborhood won’t go to KIPP because they’ve heard the work is so hard. So we can see how that works, though Gladwell appears to have entirely missed the point.
In response to the question of how much “reformers” paid Pondiscio — well, he’s a fellow and honcho for various billionaire-funded “reform” operations, so they pay him to breathe. That said, they’re not necessarily going to be pleased by the book, because it really isn’t pure puffery for Success Academy. He goes pretty deep. My possibly facile view of most “reform” voices is that they say what they’re paid to say; they’re mouthing a script; they would change their tune the second the checks came from another direction. In reading this, I actually think Pondiscio is sincere.
A big question the book implicitly raises is: How much of Success Academy’s apparent success is entirely due to the cherry-picking, vs. its actual pedagogical practices — which of course also fuel the cherry-picking? That’s always been impossible to study regarding apparently successful charters, because they’ve always lied about the cherry-picking. Will the book change anything?
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Yes yes yes!
I think Pondiscio is only “sincere” up to the point that his own lucrative career is in jeopardy.
If he was “sincere”, he would be pointing out that the cherry picking of families (and further cherry picking of kids) has been denied by charter advocates. He would address the big lie.
And he would want to address why so much lying was involved.
All these faux journalists interviewing Pondiscio and no one has actually asked him “have these charters admitted cherry picking families?” “Why have they denied that they cherry pick families?”
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Dale Russakoff did a pretty good review of the book in the NYT, I thought.
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“How much of Success Academy’s apparent success is entirely due to the cherry-picking, vs. its actual pedagogical practices — which of course also fuel the cherry-picking?”
Yes, the only unique thing about Success Academy’s “pedagogy” is that it fuels cherry-picking.
I have often pointed that that the state test passing rates for African-American and Latinx students in NYC range from 30 – 35%. Last year there were nearly 90,000 African-American and Latinx students in 3rd through 8th grade who passed the state ELA exams. Almost as many passed the Math exams. Double that plus one grade and you get over 180,000 African-American and Latinx students in New York City PUBLIC schools who do well on state tests.
And yet people who do not understand the immense scale of the NYC public school system claim that it would be impossible for Moskowitz to cherry pick kids.
On the contrary, if Moskowitz really had some wonderful new system, she would be fighting to open charter schools in other NYC cities like Albany where African-American students’ passing rates are less than half that in NYC public schools (14%) But in a smaller city like Albany, the cherry picking would be evident from the first. Success Academy needed a school system of 1 million students and co-opted reporters who don’t like numbers to cherry pick. She needed a school system in a city that attracted motivated poor families — many immigrant and first generation.
But we’ve always known Eva Moskowitz’ Success Academy charters have cherry picked students. What always stunned me is that Moskowitz was allowed to lie about it and insist that the people who said she cherry picked — including the families of kids who were encouraged to leave — were the liars. And to the great shame of the media, they went along with it and give a lot of credibility to Moskowitz’ innuendoes that the children who left were nasty, terrible and awful children who were far too psychologically disturbed to belong anywhere but a special school for psychologically disturbed children and kept far away from “good” kids. Ugly innuendoes about children and their families given credibility by the education media who were too lazy – or too co-opted – to see what was right in front of their noses.
How many of those parents who happily enrolled their child at Success Academy slunk off quietly after being told that it was their child who was the problem? Or it was their awful parenting skills that was the problem? Or that their child would be held back for the 2nd or 3rd time? It’s so easy to “win” as long as you don’t have any concern for the people you hurt along the way. Moskowitz is the perfect education leader for the Trump era.
And is absolutely not surprising at all that Moskowitz made it her personal mission to make sure Betsy DeVos was Secretary of Education. Moskowitz’ over the top praise of DeVos during the confirmation process and her demand that the Senate confirm DeVos for the good of kids everywhere was a clear message. I actually suspect Pondiscio knew Moskowitz was wrong about DeVos but he certainly never questions Moskowitz’ judgement or morality.
Does Pondiscio ever question Moskowitz’ integrity in the book? Or was her hard work getting Betsy DeVos confirmed just something Pondiscio was willing to condone knowing that the kids he believes matter — the ones whose parents do all that Moskowitz demands — were helped and he doesn’t really care what happens to the rest?
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Thanks for the review! So-called reform is built on a mountain of lies.
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I would sum up Pondiscio’s view as the good old “the end justifies the means.” I do think he acknowledges the many negatives, and I do think he’s sincere, but that’s what it boils down to. That is, his view is that lifting some number of disadvantaged young people to an academic level they wouldn’t have reached otherwise is worth all those downsides and even harm. That’s IF there’s no cheating going on with those tests, and I never have faith on that count. He believes they’re not cheating.
And I think “end justifies the means” is the ruthless, soulless Eva Moskowitz’s view too.
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Caroline,
The end? 16 graduates out of 78 starters in kindergarten. Not much of a returnfor all those millions Eva raised.
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I really like your posts because you ask the questions and notice all the logical fallacies that ed journalist simply transcribe as fact.
Pondiscio knows there are other NYC charters and public schools that don’t use those kinds of reprehensible teaching methods to shed students and yet some students — not even close to 99% of them — still do fine.
Pondiscio must know that there are 90,000 African-American and Latinx students in 3rd through 8th grade in public schools who are also learning. That means there are probably over 180,000 African-American and Latinx students in K-12 who are doing fine without being subject to that kind of over the top harsh discipline.
And yet knowing how much Success Academy cherry picks parents and even then sheds students, Pondiscio still insists that the particular group of students who are allowed to remain at Success Academy schools could never be educated without using harsh tactics, public humiliation, frequent suspensions, and the myriad of other practices that were criticized by the middle class white parents whose kids got a taste of it at Success Academy Hudson Yards Middle School before Moskowitz sent that principal packing for using those tactics on affluent kids with college educated parents, many of them white.
The problem is that Pondiscio never has to answer questions from skeptics — he simply won’t do it. But what he implies has quite a bit of racist undertone. There are some white students whose parents send them to special Success Academy schools which have disproportionately low rates of very poor students and disproportionately high rates of white students. But Pondiscio would never write that white students in NYC need this kind of harsh discipline and humiliation tactics to succeed because those white students would be failures at any good public school that didn’t use those tactics.
And yet that is what Pondiscio implies about African-American and Latinx students. It is how he justifies the “means” — the horrible way so many kids are treated in order to get them to leave. Pondiscio implies those “means” are justified by the “ends” – which are that kids who would otherwise be abject failures in their public schools are given a good education.
Anyone want to bet that if there was a charter school of white kids in which the most disadvantaged and struggling white kids were humiliated and punished and targeted with the sole purpose of getting their parents to remove them from their school, that Pondiscio would not say “but those means — treating those white students so horribly — are totally justified because the white kids who remain would be utter failures if they attended any other public school in NYC.”
The reason a charter school cherry picks is because they want the students who would do well in almost any decent school. But Pondiscio seems to imply that the kids who are cherry picked would NOT do well without the harsh discipline and humiliation tactics that Success Academy uses.
And he would never say that about the white students who are at the “kinder and gentler” Success Academy schools that have significantly higher numbers of white and middle class students. He isn’t saying all those white students would be abject failures in any decent public school.
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Yes, a SMALL number of disadvantaged young people. But I still think that’s his view — even that small a number.
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But are you saying Pondiscio believes that “small number of young people” would not do well in another type of school that does not treat them so harshly and force them to witness the humiliation of their “not good enough” peers who leave?
That’s what I find so offensive. There are white kids at Success Academy charters (concentrated in schools with significantly more affluent students). And I have never heard Pondiscio implying that those white students would be abject failures in decent public schools. I don’t think that even Moskowitz herself would dare to claim that the white students in her charters would be failures without her patented strict discipline, public humiliation, and having to learn to be adept at blowing air bubbles and never allowed to sit without hands clasped. But Pondiscio certainly does seem to imply that is the case for the African-American and Latinx students that are supposedly “saved” by Success Academy’s harsh methods.
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I think Pondiscio addresses most of the issues we raise here and then justifies them with his view that they’re giving that small subset of kids who survive Success Academy a chance at a better life through education. He downplays some of the issues; not necessarily all. I would say he’s conflicted.
I’ve read about Success Academy for years, and I don’t think I’ve read about its schools that don’t totally serve low-income black and brown kids. I haven’t finished the book, so I’ll see if he ever addresses that.
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” justifies them with his view that they’re giving that small subset of kids who survive Success Academy a chance at a better life through education.”
Right, that is exactly my point. It is clearly possible to offer that small subset of kids who survive Success Academy a chance at a better life through education without doing the reprehensible things targeting the lowest performing children and causing great harm (and lying about it and calling the parents who complain the liars and releasing their child’s private records to prove how awful their children were). There are public schools and charter schools and private schools all over the NYC where African-American and Latinx kids thrive without that. But Pondiscio keeps rationalizing the harsh treatment as if it is NECESSARY for the survivors of it to learn. He absolutely refuses to acknowledge that it is used to weed kids out kids so he sees no reason it must stop.
NY State law does not allow charters to cherry pick students. Ergo, Pondiscio will never acknowledge that a charter supported by the billionaires he needs to keep liking him would do that. Cherry picking parents is more acceptable — after all, the charter isn’t excluding any parent and those parents are simply making an informed choice. So pointing out that Success Academy cherry picks parents is not just a “safe” observation, but it is actually one that provides a cover for the exclusionary practices Success Academy uses once the students enroll. Pondiscio is in no real danger with billionaire reformers when he praises the fact that Success Academy only takes the most motivated parents. He is giving them cover.
carolinesf, your comments are very enlightening and very temperate in tone. I wish I could write like that. But you were banned from commenting on Pondiscio’s website when you brought up attrition rates, correct? Why? If there was nothing to hide, charters would be transparent about attrition, not jump through every hoop to hide them. After all, attrition happens after the self-selection process so it should be incredibly low. I suspect it is not.
Pondiscio has been associated with two charter schools — Democracy Prep and the International Charter School of NYC (which has quite an affluent population). Neither of them gets the results that Success Academy gets. Why?
If I could ask Pondiscio a question, I’d say “You are on the board of advisors of the International Charter School of NYC. That charter school has state test results that are barely better than a mediocre public school. What are you doing so wrong and when will you be replacing your entire administration with Success Academy-trained staff who will institute the harsh discipline and humiliation you insist are necessary for kids to learn?
The dirty little agreement is that the charters that don’t ruthlessly cull struggling kids agree never to object when charters like Success Academy make claims that “prove” that their administrators and teachers vastly superior to all other charters’ inept staff and CEOs. The so-called “inferior” charters remain quiet in exchange for what seems to be a promise by the ed reform industry and those who owe their careers to it, like Pondiscio, never to directly compare them with Success Academy and other “high performing” charters that are the favorites of billionaires.
Just once I’d like to hear Pondiscio asked why not a single one of the charters he has been associated with has achieved the same results as Success Academy? Is it their crappy teachers, administrators, board, or simply the sub-par curriculum their inept CEOs choose to use?
I don’t really think that Pondiscio believes poor African-American and Latinx students need the brutal discipline of Success Academy or they will be failures. So why did he wrote a book that condones that because he insists the only purpose of that brutal discipline is to help those students learn? When we all know the purpose is to make it easy to target kids on your “got to go” list. But it seems — at least from what I’m reading – that Pondiscio is insisting that “got to go” lists are irrelevant or don’t really exist and the rate that students disappear at Success Academy is absolutely not worth examining closely at all.
I realize that no person dependent on billionaire reformer largesse is allowed to say that Success Academy excludes students. But even most parents there know it is true. It is beyond absurd that Pondiscio comes to the conclusion that it is merely the self-selection of parents that is responsible for the results. Yes, I’m glad he pointed out that there is self-selection by parents, but that happens at every charter. To insist that is the entire story seems remarkably oblivious. Or intentionally oblivious.
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Well, being fair to Pondiscio: In his book he absolutely DOES acknowledge that SA is cherry-picking, and he’s quite explicit about it. That’s one (or the) reason the book (which I’ve now finished) is worth reading. He may be soft-pedaling some of its malevolent characteristics (I don’t know enough to know that), but he’s quite forthright about some.
So it’s a misunderstanding to say he doesn’t admit that – the point is that he does admit it, and describes in detail how it works, and he at least implicitly acknowledges that it’s not really kosher. But then he rationalizes it in ways that I sum up as “the end justifies the means.”
He didn’t ban me from his website (I’ve never seen his website) – it was a Facebook discussion about charters and “reform” during which he flew into a rage and suddenly, mid-discussion, blocked me on FB, and Anthony Cody too, and possibly others – I don’t remember who else. Naturally I’ve thought of him since then as a hot-tempered, short-fused jerk who’s intolerant of any disagreement, so I was surprised that Gary Rubenstein said he’s a nice guy. But my point about that in context of this book is that I’m pretty sure he flew into that rage because charter critics were pointing out that charters cherry-pick – and now he’s changed his tune and admitted that the charter chain he most admires aggressively cherry-picks, only now he thinks the end result makes that OK. So obviously it’s ironic that some time ago he flew into a rage when critics said what he’s now saying.
You’re misunderstanding here, because this is absolutely what Pondiscio says in this book: “No person dependent on billionaire reformer largesse is allowed to say that Success Academy excludes students.” He DOES quite clearly say, with detailed description, that SA excludes students (and families, based on intensely demanding requirements for parents/guardians during the admission process).
I don’t think he talks in the book about the charters he’s been associated with, though he writes a lot about having taught a public school class in the past, and portrays himself as not a very successful teacher. But he does talk about other charters that are less successful, and basically indicates that it’s because they’re not as consistently forceful, disciplined and demanding as SA (and if SA is abusive too, well…).
I don’t think he’s being oblivious, though. I think he’s on a different moral wavelength.
It’s complicated. Here’s something he wrote on page 322 that I agree with, until I dive into it: “…there are things we know and do not say in education and education reform. One of them is that we expect too much of schools.” (He means, of course, that schools are expected to compensate for all the struggles and dysfunctions and inequities and ills suffered by people living in poverty.)
But the way he phrases it is dishonest. That’s what “no excuses” is all about – education “reformers” arrogantly believing that schools CAN do that “too much,” and blasting, blaming and tearing down public schools and teachers for not living up to the unrealistic expectations that “reformers” have trumpeted to the skies. After years of “reform,” it’s clear that “reformers” and their nostrums can’t live up to their own expectations either, so they’re slithering and flailing trying to deal with that. His view is basically that Success Academy is closest to meeting those unrealistic expectations, due to its harsh practices, which clearly make him uncomfortable but which he thinks are justified.
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Thanks for the comprehensive response.
I think we are saying the same thing but with different perspectives.
“His view is basically that Success Academy is closest to meeting those unrealistic expectations, due to its harsh practices, which clearly make him uncomfortable but which he thinks are justified.”
But why are they justified? Because he claims it is those HARSH PRACTICES that make kids into scholars! Isn’t that what you are saying?
But think about how offensive that is. Pondiscio is implying that an African-American student cannot learn unless he is subject to harsh practices but a white student can. He is implying something really negative about those Success Academy students who do well. And I doubt very much their parents would agree.
If you told incoming Success Academy parents that one of the best, very diverse private schools in NYC was giving a free ride to 100 low-income students in NYC, but that Robert Pondiscio told the private school that they better make sure not to offer that to any students at Success Academy because Pondiscio insisted that all Success Academy students NEEDED the harsh discipline of Success Academy and they would definitely be failing students if they were given that scholarship, do you think those parents would agree? Would they like it that Pondiscio made sure their kids didn’t get a scholarship because they agree that their kids would never make it in a typical diverse high performing private school because that private school didn’t give the harsh discipline that Pondiscio says is absolutely necessary for kids like theirs? Would they thank Pondiscio for doing them the “favor” of making sure their children got the harsh discipline that Robert Pondiscio knew their children “needed” because without it their kids would be failures?
My problem is that Pondiscio’s conclusions seems to rely on those kinds of really nasty innuendoes like that about Success Academy students and I think he can only get away with it because those kids are not white.
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NYC: my experiences as a student and a teacher suggest disruptive behavior and academic slacking off is more prevalent in (though definitely not exclusively confined to) lower SES groups, whether they be white, black or whatever. If there had been a Success Academy in my lower-class all-white hometown, and they couldn’t have afforded private school, my parents would have sent me to it. Fortunately my parents had the money to take me out of the chaotic WHITE public schools and send me to private school during middle school. This isn’t about racial prejudice; it’s about responding to real chaos that you probably won’t comprehend until you try substitute teaching in one of these schools.
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Or watch Entre Les Murs (The Class).
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NYC Parent, I would say we’re coming from the same viewpoint, but you’re misinterpreting when you say Pondiscio is denying that SA cherry-picks. In the book, he acknowledges quite strongly that SA cherry-picks, and describes how, and defends it. So that’s what I’m clarifying.
That is definitely a sharp reversal from the longstanding charter-sector lie that they admit everyone and teach the same students as public schools and all that blahblah obvious BS.
He doesn’t really address the fact that it’s a reversal from the longstanding lie.
I think he believes (correctly) that the harsh practices are a part of the cherry-picking – because they drive so many kids and families away. And he also believes they’re helpful in making the kids into scholars.
I’m not defending or agreeing with his views! Just clarifying what they are.
Also, he and Eva Moskowitz and other “reformers” claim it’s hypocritical for privileged white people to criticize the cherry-picking when they (we) could choose selective private schools. But I retort that it’s hypocritical to exalt rigid educational and harsh discipline practices that he would never, ever allow to be inflicted on his own kids.
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And it’s hypocritical (and truly insulting) to insist those students NEED that harsh discipline or they would be complete failures so therefore it is justified!
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“If there had been a Success Academy in my lower-class all-white hometown, and they couldn’t have afforded private school, my parents would have sent me to it.”
I attended a public high school where only half of the students went on to any higher education, and most who did commuted to the local college. There were a few “honors” and “college bound” classes in English and History. I never heard of an AP class or exam until I got to college.
I’m sure if there were no honors classes, I’d want to go to a charter school that was only for the most motivated students, too. That isn’t the point. The point is that none of the kids in the classes I was in would have needed harsh discipline to learn. I’m sure those kids were in the classes I wasn’t in, but they would not have been welcome at the charter, so that is irrelevant.
I feel as if I’m beating a dead horse here, but maybe this will help you understand: Imagine you had a choice of TWO charters in your school. Success Academy which forced you to blow air bubbles and sit with hands clasped perfectly at all times and all their other harsh practices, and “Nice” charter, which cherry picked well-behaved students with no behavioral problems and taught them in small class sizes without using Success Academy’s humiliation and punishment tactics.
Would your parents ordered you to attend Success Academy because they believed you would have been incapable of learning without the harsh discipline and punishment and they knew you’d never hack it at “Nice” charter for the well-behaved kids?
Is it the harsh practices that make Success Academy appealing to parents who know their kids won’t succeed in school without experiencing some of that patented humiliation? Or is it being in a school that can concentrate on well-behaved students with the most motivated parents? Would most Success Academy parents forego a great school because they believed only harsh discipline and humiliation would turn their kid into a scholar?
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From Gary’s post, the first sentence:
“Robert Pondiscio’s new book “How The Other Half Learns” (Avery September 2019) answers the age old question: Can a bunch of twenty-something teachers who know nothing about education, nothing about child development, and nothing about what it is like to be a parent, get a non-random sampling of students of color to pass standardized tests?”
Just writing “non-random” covers up the tautology of the claims the Moskowitz makes.
Success Academy teaches only the students who prove that they can pass state tests when taught by their inexperienced teachers using the one method of teaching they are trained in and 100% of those students will pass state tests.
It’s shocking that other charters haven’t called her out on this. There seems to be an unwritten agreement that Moskowitz will never compare her extraordinary passing rates to other charters and bash those charter CEOs and their inept teachers for wasting public money and Moskowitz won’t demand that the inept charter CEOs immediately turn their charters over to her. And in return, those charters will shut up and let Moskowitz pretend she teaches the same students that are in failing public schools and as a reward Moskowitz’ funders will throw them some bones, too.
That the other charter CEOs are willing to remain quiet is all you need to know about how truly corrupt the entire charter movement has become. Even Pondiscio himself will jump through hoops NOT to say anything negative about Eva Moskowitz herself nor call out the big lie she promotes that has caused so much damage to so many kids who Pondiscio clearly believes are not worthy of his concern since they don’t make the cut. His abandonment of those kids and his unwillingness to examine the damage that the lies of Success Academy have created seems to be intentional.
What if Pondiscio asked “what is to become of all those students whose parents can’t pick them up at 12:30 on Wednesdays and meet all the other requirements that are much harder for poor families to meet than middle class and affluent families to meet?”
But he doesn’t seem to care what the answer is. He doesn’t seem to care about those students at all.
If Pondiscio had the courage of his convictions, he would be calling for every city public school system to establish “choice” schools who will only teach those whose parents are highly motivated to do what is asked and will even remove those parents’ kids if they struggle too much academically. I would like someone to ask Pondiscio to his face: Why aren’t you advocating for this kind of choice school within the public school system? And what happens to the rest of the kids — who clearly from Moskowitz’ attrition rate are the majority of at-risk poverty-stricken students in public schools? Or don’t you care?
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I’ve considered that — what if a school district paired public schools in a high-poverty area? One school would impose any admissions hurdles it chose and admit only the students and families who leaped those hurdles, and the other would accept everyone by default. And the hurdle school could kick out anyone at any time with no one able to raise a peep of complaint. (In real life, obviously a public school isn’t free to do that, for a number of reasons, and a charter can.)
I mean, this is a horrifying idea in some ways, but it would certainly shed light, and I have no doubt that it would dispel the notion that private operators have some mysterious magic.
I actually think Pondiscio does indicate concern throughout the book about the kids whose families can’t meet the requirements. He writes with distress about a boy with likely learning/behavioral disabilities whose family was harassed and tormented by the Success charter, including 911 calls about the boy — rather than avoiding the subject, he met with the boy’s family to find out what had happened. (Predictably, they were gone from the school — also, a teacher who left suddenly may have left because she was ordered to lie about the boy, and he addresses that too.)
But his conclusion seems to be basically that privileged kids have the right to handpicked, high-functioning classes without breaking a sweat, so why shouldn’t those poor kids who are able to leap the hurdles — and it’s a shame about the rest, but at least some are being helped.
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What does it mean to have “concern” for those kids? It sounds like he has “concern” the way Susan Collins is “concerned” about the children being ripped from their parents at the border by Trump.
When everything you do is designed to enable and justify all the practices that someone is doing instead of loudly condemning it and demanding that it stop, then you are complicit in how those kids are treated.
I didn’t read the book, but unless Pondiscio actually condemns Eva Moskowitz for those actions — and for denying those actions and basically implying those parents are liars — then his concern is about as deep as Susan Collins’ concern about Trump. The bottom line would be that Pondiscio believes treating kids reprehensibly and lying about it is justified because some kids are helped.
Pondiscio isn’t asked the question, “is that what you want all public schools to do with their students and make the ones who aren’t up to snuff feel like failures until their parents pull them?” And of course the follow up would be “and then what happens to those kids that neither the wonderful Eva Moskowitz and the public school system refuse to teach?” The bottom line is that Pondiscio just doesn’t care. Or he cares about them as much as Susan Collins cares about the kids being ripped from their parents at the border. Tut tut but at least the person doing it is doing so much good for a few special kids they think deserve it and that makes them happy.
Pondiscio knows those kids could be helped without the lies and dishonesty and the reprehensible practices that do so much harm to the students that charter doesn’t want to teach.
Just like Republicans know that there could be border security without ripping kids from their parents. But they are so fearful of actually criticizing those who their funders don’t want criticized that they remain silent.
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NYC:
I don’t think you –and other non-teachers on this blog –truly comprehend how rough many schools are. Pondiscio does –he taught in one. Did you send your kid to a rough school? What is your fix for rough schools?
Success Academy sucks. But it sucks less that these rough schools. That seems to be Pondiscio’s point.
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I taught in “rough” schools for thirty years in the same district and experienced several different management syltes. The ONE that worked the best was with the ONE principle that turned the school over to teams of teachers. Each team was responsible for a different aspect of the school. I was on the team that dealt with the most challenging and difficult students.
That Principal’s last name was Pagan. He had a reputation of turning around tough schools and the district had hired him for that purpose. Giano Intermediate back then had a reputation as the most dangerous school in the San Gabriel Valley. When Ralph took over, other schools refused to bus their sports teams to Ginao to compete with our teams because of the danger. By the time Ralph retired a few years later, all of that had changed for the better.
The child poverty rate for the schools where I taught started at 70-percent and climbed higher depending on the school and location. The generational streets gangs that lived in the communities around those schools were so dangerous, we were warned to never leave the school grounds on foot, and the local police did not patrol those same streets at night. I taught at the high school for the last 15 years of the thirty I spent in those schools and the West Covina police sent a squad car to the HS every day at lunch to drive on campus and sit insight of the area where most of the student body ate lunch.
It was a rare day that we didn’t see police cars parked outside the administration office because they were picking up students in handcuffs all the time.
The grade schools had at last one CPO as did the middle schools, but the high school had about six CPO who was linked with walkie talkies and patrolled the campus on bikes.
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ponderosa,
I have read some of your posts so unless I wildly misunderstood them, I think you agree with me.
You certainly seem to imply there are always at least some students – perhaps only one or two – whose education experience is ruined by the worst-behaved students. I have never understood you to be saying that there are none. And frankly, if you were to say that I would not believe you. I have two relatives who taught (one still teaches) in schools with very disadvantaged students. There are ALWAYS students who want to learn and don’t act out, even if a large number have behavioral issues. Do we agree on that?
So that begs the question of who it is that Success Academy is teaching. They are teaching those kids who are ready and eager to learn. Not the behavioral problems.
” What is your fix for rough schools?”
Am I “fixing” your public school by taking out all the students who are ready to learn, who all have families willing to work on their kids’ academics at home, and put them into my special charter for kids who are well-behaved?
Am I “fixing” your school by leaving you all the remaining students – as well as the ones I decide to send back to you – because I say to you “you can discipline them however you want but in the end, every one of these students will be tested and their average test score must be better than the average test score of students in my school or you’ll be fired and replaced with a better teacher like the ones in my charter school?”
If you believe that it is the harsh discipline that results in 99% passing rates for students, then you would happily put your job on the line to prove that my charter that cherry picks the better performing students and throws back the struggling ones will not be able to compete with your harsh discipline classroom. But the fact is, I don’t really need to use harsh discipline or even be a particularly good teacher if I am given the franchise to simply take the students I choose to teach from your school and put them into mine.
My point is that lying about what your school is doing does not “fix” public schools. It hurts them. I suspect you agree with me that your school needs a lot more than “more discipline” to turn 100% of the students into high performing scholars, unless you cheat by simply throwing the kids you don’t want to teach into the street. Don’t you agree?
There won’t be any fixes unless education reformers stop lying about which kids they are willing to teach. I think you would probably agree with me that they would probably exclude many of the students in your own public school. And even if your school adopted harsh discipline, too, you still would not match their results.
The harsh discipline is not necessary for many, if not most of the kids in the charters. Do you really believe that there are no kids in your public school that would thrive if they were in the very best private school that didn’t use humiliation and harsh discipline?
I recognize that cherry picking kids leads to wonderful schools for the kids in them. But I will never accept that those cherry picked kids in charters are only succeeding because they get harsh discipline and humiliation and they’d be failures if they were in a high performing private school that didn’t use such harsh tactics. And that lie is so harmful in so many ways, to the kids who are drummed out, their families, and every single public school robbed of resources because they don’t deserve those resources if they can’t achieve the same results as this high performing charter that “teaches the same kids” but does is so much better.
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You misconstrued my question. SA is a symptom of our failure to fix the rough schools. It is not a fix itself.
If you only had the choice between sending your kid to SA or to a school like the one Lloyd describes or the one in The Class, which would you choose?
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Ha, and yet, there were students who graduated from that high school that went to college every year. Some even ended up with scholarships and grants to universities like MIT or Stanford … with the same teachers that also worked with the toughest students in the same classes.
I find it interesting that you ignored my comment on what worked to turn one of those rough schools around. Ralph did not turn Giano Intermediate into a no-excuses “Success Academy” where the children are bullied and brutalized like they were in a military boot camp and pressured to fit in or get the boot.
When Ralph turned that rough school around by using teams of teachers working together to deal with the challenges — like they do in Finland — we made decisions based on what we thought would work best for each individual student, and what we did worked.
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SA is not a “symptom” of our failure. It is a “symptom” of the dishonesty that prevents any way to address those problems.
What would the education universe look like if charters that cherry pick students did not lie and use their copious PR arms to convince politicians and the public that they had discovered the cure for what ails public schools?
For years, Eva Moskowitz has claimed she has the answers to failing public schools — harsh discipline and “good” young teachers who could get 99% passing rates with all students. It was only the teachers union preventing 99% success at public schools — they kept insisting their inept teachers be allowed to remain even when their students weren’t achieving the 99% passing rates that Success Academy proved could easily be done if those inept union teachers were gone.
What would the education universe look like if Eva Moskowitz admitted that she had absolutely no idea how to teach most of the at-risk students who make up the majority of students at failing schools, but she would gladly teach those among them with the most motivated students IF they turned out to be well- behaved and learn easily?
Instead, all discussion begins with the “fact” that Eva Moskowitz has demonstrated exactly how to achieve 99% passing rates with all at-risk students. And if public schools can’t achieve that, it’s simply that they aren’t trying hard enough. Just go to her website, download her curriculum and if your teachers are really not inept and lazy, their students’ passing rates will be 99% too.
What’s to talk about? She told you how to do it. So do it. It’s so easy even a newly minted college students with 5 weeks of training can do it.
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“My first response to this would be that only 16 out of the inaugural 73 students even endured to graduate Success Academy.”
Look at that quote and think about it; discover the other side of that coin.
Only SIXTEEN children out of 50-million or more across the country will graduate from a school like Success Academy and have to live with the trauma that Success Academy’s brutal, abusive tactics scarred those children for life.
Success Academy should be required to pay for the PTSD counseling these children will require to find some peace in their lives — for the rest of their lives, because there is no cure for that kind of trauma.
Imagine how horrible it would be if Eva Moskowitz was in charge of teaching all of our children … how many of them would wake up at 2 AM drenched in sweat from classroom flashbacks … for the rest of their lives.
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Not to mention from the 911 calls and ambulance trips to the ER over behavior meltdowns! That really happens in the book.
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Soon we can, perhaps, discuss the efficacy of systems in general that produce results by culling out people. I had a students who wanted desperately to be a pediatrician. She was unable to get into any kind of med school. I lost touch with her.
My father’s first cousin walked to Chattanooga in 1895 to enroll in medical school there. He was a successful doctor, eventually on the faculty at Baylor. What would have happened if he had been required to fight other applicants over test scores?
The dependence of our systems on test scores produce the systems that operate on the principle of washing out the unfit. Maybe we need this to a certain extent. I would not be happy with a doctor who had not demonstrated some excellence to someone. Still, it is not immediately apparent to me that systems that wash out those who will not or cannot make certain commitments to involvement in school naturally produce better results for our society. I agree with those who suggest that we need people who work hard and value what they work on. What I wonder about is whether the process of doing work for work’s sake just so some people will give up is of any use in producing the next generation of leaders.
I think not.
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I can’t accept the idea that a school should have the wright to select it’s students. The responsibility of all schools and their teachers is to meat the needs of the kids who walk through their door. But if they can’t do that, to find a better place for those with extraordinary needs.. What competence means for all teachers is the willingness and skill to modify their teaching so it fits everyone in the classroom. Although that sounds difficult, good teachers know how to do it without even rustling their buckets. (I know that because the teachers who worked with me when I was a principal were great and made it look easy most of the time.)
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Public Schools and Public School Teachers are 2 of America’s Treasures. The DEFORMERS know this and want to destroy Public Education and take down Public School Teachers and WHY? Answer: FOR PROFITS.
The DEFORMERS don’t know ****, just like the protestors of TMT re: Mauna Kea. Why does a handful of people make so much noise? Answer: Either PROFITS or plain STUPIDITY.
The Colonial Model is well and alive. SICK.
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The whole “absences require a doctor’s note” has become a thing here in Oklahoma as well, even at public schools, and it a very elitist requirement. Not every family has insurance. Not every family even with insurance can afford to take their student(s) to the doctor. Not every illness requires a visit to the doctor. Then you wind up with a whole host of other issues. Parents/guardians end up sending their student(s) to school sick infecting other students, teachers and staff, because of the doctor’s note requirement, hoping that someone will see their student is ill and send them home. But several schools lack nurses. So the students are sent to the office. A lot of times, especially in urban areas the phone number for the parents/guardians on file are incorrect, so the student is just sent back to class infecting more students and staff.
I’ve had students vomiting in my classroom with the stomach virus for several days, but since their parents/guardians didnt have a phone or the number wasn’t correct they came to school day after day. I had another student run 102 temp for several days while also coughing. Same situation as above. I just kept a place in my room separated from the rest of the class with blankets and pillows (which I took home and washed after each student) for those who were sick.
The whole testing issue. We are seeing it here in Oklahoma where Epic Charter magically has students drop right before testing the re-enroll. They promise this amazing online, at home school where teachers come visit you once per week, where assignments are clear, and an education fund. From those who’ve tried it out, most have never met their teachers, assignments are all over the place and it’s up to the parents/guardians, and students to decide which curriculum to use, which make absolutely zero sense. Epic also has this bizarre vendor list that none of us can make heads or tails of. It’s sky diving lessons, pregnancy photographs, to little league.
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