Gary Rubinstein read a story in the local Rupert Murdoch newspaper saluting Eva Moskowitz’s charter chain for its high SAT scores, but then noticed how many students were in the senior class. (Billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch is a multimillion-dollar donor to the Success Academy charter chain.)
What school advertises its SAT scores? Success Academy!
Gary noticed that of the students who started in second grade, nearly 70% did not make it to the senior year.
He writes:
The New York Post recently ran an editorial about the SAT scores of the Success Academy senior class of 2020. Of all the different numbers they referenced, one that I took note of was 114 — the apparent number of students in the senior class.
The class of 2020 is the third graduating class of Success Academy. The class of 2018 had 17 seniors out of a cohort of 73 first graders in 2006-2007. The class of 2019 had 26 seniors out of a cohort of 83 kindergartners in 2006-2007. Some of the class of 2019 were students who had been held back from the class of 2018 — probably in a comparable number to the number of 2019 students who will graduate this year. So the 26 out of 83, or 31% persistence rate probably accounts for students who take an extra year to graduate.
For the class of 2020, things get a bit more complicated since in 2008 Success Academy did its first expansion and grew from one school, now called Harlem 1, into four schools now including Harlem 2, Harlem 3, and Harlem 4. Some of the past records are incomplete for these schools, but when the 2020 cohort was in 2nd grade in 2009-2010, I find that there was a combined 353 students in the cohort. By 6th grade, they were down to 263 students and by 9th grade it was 191. In 10th grade they were 161 students and in 11th grade, 146. And now, according to the New York Post article based on a Success Academy press release, they have 114 seniors. So only 32% of the students who were there in second grade made it through their program.
Better test scores through attrition, a surefire formula for success!
I have had a long-running exchange with a wealthy pundit who gives six-figure amounts to Success Academy. He says they have found the secret sauce for educating all children in the New York City public schools, and for all schools everywhere. I ask him what should be done about the majority of students they accept who don’t survive. He seems to think they don’t matter. Only the strong survive. Or deserve to survive.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Alternately, Success could just admit they’re selective and still be proud of their students and scores.
The selection process is different from an entrance exam – it’s based on attrition- but it’s the same mechanism.
I think they don’t admit it for political reasons- if the schools are selective then they can’t be compared to schools that don’t select using attrition, and ed reform wants to compare them to show charters are superior.
The selectivity is probably part of the appeal for some parents, and that would be ordinary too. I don’t think it’s a big secret that some parents choose schools based on a real or perceived notion that the school is selective. It’s a big part of marketing private schools.
Ed reformers insist on over-sell everything. Moskowitz could be legitimately proud of her schools for what her schools are but that’s not good enough. They have to inflate the successes and insist it’s the same as an open admission public school, and it’s not. They discredit themselves when they don’t have to, in their ideologically-driven zeal to bash public schools and privatize everything that isn’t tied down.
It wasn’t enough for Arne Duncan to congratulate a Chicago charter school for doing a good job. Instead he had to invent ridiculous statistics like “100% graduation rate!” for schools that lose half the high school class between freshman and senior year and don’t replace any of the students who left. Why? Because it’s political marketing. They’re selling these schools and this model.
Chiara,
That’s right.
Selective schools don’t boast about their test scores because they admit they are selective.
Eva pretends that she accepts all kids and gets astonishing results. She doesn’t admit that she accepts(almost) all kids then weeds out the low performers, which produces great results.
She tells funders that she has discovered the secret of success for all, but doesn’t admit the significance of attrition.
The one honest thing that Robert Pondiscio noted was that Success Academy does NOT accept “almost” all kids.
Success Academy demands that parents whose kids win the lottery jump through all kinds of hoops and at any point — missing a uniform fitting or a meeting — their kid can be dropped. Furthermore, at those meetings the parents are told in no uncertain terms “if you cannot do all that we ask you to do, Success Academy is not the place for you”. So what they get is a relatively small percentage (50%?) of the lottery winners whose parents are the most highly motivated to jump through those hoops.
And that is one reason why the high attrition rate is so shocking and speaks so poorly of the kinds of ugly and horrible treatment that those children who are not quick enough learners are given. Any school that begins with a group of parents who have already shown they would jump through multiple hoops for the privilege of enrolling their kid in the school should have incredibly low attrition. Not incredibly high attrition.
A school enrolls only children whose parents have said they would jump through hoops and do anything asked of them to have their kid in the school. To have extraordinarily high attrition when the starting class is only comprised of only those types of parents is shocking.
That is one reason I knew that Robert Pondiscio – deep down – was far more concerned about pleasing his right wing funders than giving an accurate portrayal of Success Academy. He would have to be incredibly brainless not to realize that a school that limits itself to the most highly motivated parents should have the lowest attrition of any charter school. It should not have one of the highest attrition rates of any charter network. I don’t think Pondiscio is too stupid to recognize that. But I do think he is a deeply unethical person in the manner of Susan Collins. Sen. Susan Collins claims to be honorable while every one of her actions makes it clear her first loyalty is to enabling Trump and she will only go so far – and no further – to (as SNL puts it) “vigorously shake her finger” at Trump.
Pondiscio will only go so far in talking about Success Academy. He surely believes his “vigorously shaking a finger” (i.e. talking about how Moskowitz only wants the most motivated parents) makes him honorable. It makes him the Susan Collins of the ed reform movement. When it comes to a choice between acting ethically and keeping his position by pleasing those in power, their choices are clear. So no mention of attrition rates or even any interest in looking closely at them. It’s what is wrong with the entire ed reform industry. Like the Republicans, they are only interested in truth up to the point when they can still keep their jobs. I’m waiting for the Justin Amash of ed reform, but instead the “best” we have are the Susan Collins folks like Pondiscio.
Justin Amash is still a true believer in the right wing agenda, but he isn’t willing to look the other way at immoral and improper behavior because it helps the agenda he likes.
I wish I could say the same about Collins and Pondiscio. There don’t seem to be any Justin Amash’s in ed reform. No people willing to endanger their well-compensated position to tell the truth.
Leonie Haimson has said (I don’t recall where) that Success Academy enrolls only 50% of those who win the lottery. By the way, if you wonder why I refer in the categories to “Harlem Success Academy,” it is because that is the original name, which Eva dropped when she decided to go citywide.
If we look at a the cost per pupil in order to graduate, we would see that the high cost for a handful of students is highly impractical. We also have no way of knowing how well these same students would have performed if they had been in a well resourced public school. The Success formula is not scalable for the real world, and Moskowitz would not be able to educate the handful of students without funds from the donor class. It is a pity that she also gets to drain money from under funded NYC schools for her little “niche” project. Somebody should look at these schools in terms of efficiency as this extreme creaming is highly inefficient and expensive.
I think her natural state is to be unhinged in a DSM kind of way.
VERY nicely said: “It wasn’t enough for Arne Duncan to congratulate a Chicago charter school for doing a good job. Instead he had to invent ridiculous statistics like “100% graduation rate!” for schools that lose half the high school class between freshman and senior year and don’t replace any of the students who left. Why? Because it’s political marketing. They’re selling these schools and this model.”
I think Eva Moskowitz is highly offensive. Unfortunately, she has all the major papers in her pocket, so no one will speak out against her. Her latest pr stunt at City Hall was disgusting. She purposely had her students waiting on the City Hall steps for Mayor de Blasio to enter. Then, when he didn’t acknowledge the awkward situation she created, she told the children (from what I saw exclusively black and brown) that he thinks they are invisible. Then, she projects using the hashtag – #kidsoverpolitics, a mantra which she herself doesn’t follow. It is just gross the way she uses children of color for her own purposes. I understand that some families think her schools are their best option, but it is shocking to me that parents will throw their children’s dignity out the window for her nonsense.
BTW This was all enabled by former Mayor Mike Bloomberg. I am a NYC resident. I have seen Bloomberg in action, and no, he is not what I want for this country. He is all about protecting oligarchical interests. Tell your friends.
“Her latest pr stunt at City Hall was disgusting. She purposely had her students waiting on the City Hall steps for Mayor de Blasio to enter. Then, when he didn’t acknowledge the awkward situation she created, she told the children (from what I saw exclusively black and brown) that he thinks they are invisible.”
Are you sure you are right? I keep reading that Mayor de Blasio is giving Eva Moskowitz everything she wants and more as he is a (secret) tool of corporate interests and will do whatever Moskowitz wants now.
I’m sure those fake protests were just a ploy to get people to believe that de Blasio isn’t giving Moskowitz everything she wants when she has the run of the DOE. Moskowitz and de Blasio probably go out for drinks after those fake protests (or probably a fancy dinner paid for by their billionaire supporters) and laugh at all the silly public school parents who don’t realize that de Blasio is secretly pro-charter and does everything Moskowitz wants, to please her and her powerful and very rich friends.
Eva continues to expand her empire under deBlasio. The city even pays rent to her to lease space for her school in a building that Success Academy owns.
“The city even pays rent to her to lease space for her school in a building that Success Academy owns.”
And that is the fault of Andrew Cuomo and the legislators in Albany that forced de Blasio to do this after he refused to continue Mayor Bloomberg’s policy of simply giving Success Academy free space even though charters were legally obligated to pay for their own space at the time. Albany simply passed a law that ordered de Blasio to do what Mayor Bloomberg did just because he wanted to!
It’s sort of a Catch-22 because de Blasio gets attacked if he offers free space to Success Academy in public schools and he gets attacked for paying her to lease private space and those are the only two choices he has.
I personally love that de Blasio keeps offering free space in places that Moskowitz doesn’t want, which puts Moskowitz in a bind because he is offering the space he is legally obligated to give her, but she wants it to be somewhere else. That’s why she keeps getting those parents to run those protests that Beth mentioned above.
Or maybe it’s all a farce and Eva and Bill go out and drink champagne together having fooled everyone into thinking she isn’t getting everything she wants from de Blasio. Wonder why she even bothers to force her parents to protest when de Blasio clearly takes his marching orders directly from her.
But the weather is getting cold, so maybe someone can tell those parents they have no reason to be outside City Hall because Moskowitz already owns de Blasio.
I would hope that you are wrong. I don’t think de Blasio has any platform, and I have no inside information. When I see ads on tv (for which they are no longer using a pseudonym finally) and multiple editorials in different newpapers, it lead me to believe that something is going on.
Also, this happens A LOT in ed reform. They present information in a way that is over-hyped or sometimes just wrong and no one questions it.
“Meanwhile, XQ has made a few specific claims about the future of work that are misleading or wrong — notable since, in New York City, the education department has accepted not just the organization’s resources but its framework for starting a school. On New York City’s website, those interested in applying for a cut of the $32 million in promised grants are told to explain how their idea will “prepare students for the complexities of a fast-changing future, including the world of work.””
XQ is a VERY prestigious organization. They are flush with cash and they hire the best and brightest out of the ed reform ranks. Yet they invented a statistic and sold their ideas for years based on the invented statistic. DeVos also recites these same numbers, and so does Jeb Bush.
None of them have the slightest idea if “65%” of jobs will be automated yet they’re running around the country telling students this. It was convenient for them politically so they just ran with it.
This isn’t the first time. They did the same thing with the “skills gap”. They recited that as fact and it’s not fact. It was never fact. It was one interpretation of an issue in the economy and it’s arguably been completely discredited. No alternative explanation was offered- they all settled on the “skills gap” as an explanation for flat wages and that was the end of that. No further discussion or inquiry permitted.
I don’t think XQ is a very “prestigious” organization nor do they hire “the best and brightest,” just the best connected. Just another billionaire vanity project.
We have always known about the early grades attrition, but the huge red flag here is that there were 191 students entering 9th grade and only 114 are on track to graduate in 4 years.
Losing over 40% of the students who began 9th grade is shocking. Maybe you’d find that at a terrible high school where parents can’t wait to find a better school for their kids, but the notion that one of the very best public high schools in the entire state — one that gets 100% of their graduates into college — would have parents leaving in droves is clearly a huge red flag. Parents leave BAD schools that have little to offer their kids — they don’t leave wildly successful schools that have unlimited money to lavish extras on their kids. They don’t go running away from high schools where 100% of the graduates get into colleges. Unless something else is going on.
Remember that the only students admitted to Success Academy’s high school are those who have been taught at Success Academy elementary and middle schools. If they are not prepared for the rigor of their high school, the only people to blame are their elementary and middle schools! If 20% of the 9th grade boy disappear and aren’t in the 10th grade cohort — which is exactly what happened with this class — that speaks very poorly of their Success Academy middle schools that did a terrible job of preparing so many students for high school!
I noticed that 28% of the 9th grade students with disabilities were missing from the 10th grade cohort. What happened to them? And I wonder how many of the remaining ones made it to graduation?
I suppose if every NYC public high school simply dumped 40% of their lowest performing students, their average SAT scores would also be higher. And it would prove what?
Another hostile comment about schools and teachers. When you have anything to say that doesn’t tear down someone else, let me know.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
A charter school with a 70% attrition rate is recognized as “good” and a public school with a 10% attrition rate is chastised. I love the double standard.
Only 32% of the students who were there in second grade made it through their program” — that one third of second-graders stayed in the SA system till graduation is actually quite an achievement. Can Gary Rubinstein obtain similar statistics for public schools? I doubt it, because public school system usually have at least two districts — elem/middle and high — that manage three grade levels: elementary, middle and high. These districts are managed separately, and the schools are located in different buildings. Moreover, even when staying within the same sub-system, say in elementary, kids are re-shuffled every year. May I ask, why the schools do that? Why kids are not permitted to stay together for several years?
Success Academy is not just a regular public school. It is a school that boasts it can turn every child into a superstar. When nearly 70% of the kids who start disappear from the rolls, doesn’t that say something about the boasts?
“Only 32% of the students who were there in second grade made it through their program” — my comment is not whether SA turns every child into a superstar. It about an argument made against it, that only one out three students remained there during eleven years. My question was: can similar statistics be obtained regarding regular public schools? Are public schools organized in a way that a kid enrolled into K or first grade remains within the same school and around the same classmates for the duration of education?
Whenever someone (like me) starts discussing particular issues of math, science, foreign language, arts education in public schools, someone like you switches to the “schools are for upbringing citizens, for building community” defense. Well, if anything, SA builds better community for its students than regular public schools. SA’s students, after spending more then ten years together, may have a chance to become friends for life. Here, a positive comment from me.
BA, have you considered explaining why you despise public schools and teachers?
Do you thinks the students at SA miss the majority of their classmates who disappear and worry that they might be next?
BA,
Please name the good public high schools you know where more than 40% of the entering 9th grade students do not graduate in 4 years?
If you can come up with even one good public high school with a 4 year graduation rate of 60%, I’ll be impressed.
And please don’t blame it on the terrible education those incoming 9th graders got, since that shoddy education was at Success Academy middle and elementary schools!
I mean, if another high school only had a 60% graduation rate, the first thing you’d be saying is the 9th graders clearly had terrible teachers in Kindergarten through 8th grade!
Do you think that’s the problem with Success Academy High School? Are you going to blame their elementary and middle schools? You should!!!!
NYCPSP, these percentages do not necessarily mean that SA is a bad school. Attrition from high-demand school is expected, and the higher the demands, be it intellectual or behavioral, the higher the attrition. High demands do not mean great education, but neither high attrition means bad education. You are simply not used to the idea of a high-demand school, and the closest equivalent you may have, specialized high schools, do not count because those who made it there already are dedicated to success, they are almost adults. This cannot be said about elementary kids, whose parents wanted them to push forward, but turned out the kids simply cannot handle it. Although I am personally against zero-tolerance policy.
70% attrition is success?
I would say that the flaw in BA’s argument is that Success Academy parents attest that the school does everything it can to keep students. For instance, Upper West Success students are forced to go to the Hudson Yards location for 5th grade, an “early” middle school. This places them out of District 3, where many of the students live. Apparently, Success Academy rarely gives out grades higher than 95, which puts the students at a disadvantage when applying to regular public middle schools since there is grade inflation at other schools. They have their own soccer league. They do not encourage kids to take the SHSAT. Given that Success Academy works hard at retaining its per pupil allotment, it’s suspicious that so many students leave.
BA you are saying two contradictory things.
You say that 40% of the students who started at the high school in 9th grade did not graduate in 4 years because it was too demanding for the mediocre education those students got previously.
But you don’t want to blame the elementary and middle schools that failed with 40% of their students despite being given millions of dollars extra to make sure that those students were properly prepared for high school. Instead you are blaming the students because their elementary and middle school kept passing them along for 9 years and led their parents on to believe that meant that they were ready for high school when 40% of them — a huge number!! — were not!
Keep this number in your head, BA. Nine years of elementary and middle school education. Curated specifically to prepare kids for high school. With millions of extra dollars in private donations that no public school has to provide this education. And yet 40% of the students after 9 years of that education are not properly prepared enough to graduate from high school in the usual 4 years. Who are you going to blame for that? The kids?
By the way, “high-demand” means that there are lots of people clamoring to attend a school and they are so grateful to get a seat that they rarely leave of their own volition when they get there. A ticket to the final Star Wars movie is in “high demand” and it is doubtful that 40% of the people who buy tickets will walk out of the movie after a few minutes saying “it turns out it really is terrible”. And if 40% of the people who made the effort to buy a ticket and go to the movie do walk out after a few minutes or halfway, then you can bet that the new Star Wars movie really is very terrible.
You seem to be confusing “high demand” with a “demanding” high school, which generally means it has high academic standards that require a student to have an excellent elementary and middle school education. Clearly a demanding school will be a problem if the middle school and elementary school education is just not very good – in that case one would not be surprised that 40% of the students from that elementary and middle school could not handle a demanding high school where poorly educated students are not welcome.
The problem is that if it your own fault that the students got a sub-par education from grades Kindergarten to 8th grade, then it is rather harsh to tell them they aren’t wanted because they didn’t receive a good enough education to be able to handle the work.
It’s a dilemma, isn’t it?
NYCPSP, you nailed it
NYCPSP. I see nothing unusual that half the kids, even when enrolled from elementary school, cannot handle the load of a demanding school. It is not enough just to win a lottery, one has to work day in and day out for a decade, it is hard. Attrition rate by itself tells nothing about the quality of education. I need to see their curriculum to decide whether their school is any good.
You, along with many others, have a weird idea that the more students graduate the better is the school. Nope. Graduating students who cannot read or cannot add fractions is not success. Inflating grades is not success.
But Success Academy can’t be compared to a regular public school! It has the secret sauce! It has cracked the code! It claims to know how to turn ALL children into scholars.
“Graduating students who cannot read or cannot add fractions is not success. Inflating grades is not success.”
BA,
Wow, what a harsh thing to say about Success Academy’s middle and elementary schools!
Are you really suggesting that the reason that 40% of the students in a high school’s 9th grade class were MIA 4 years later when they should have been graduating is that they came into high school with barely any ability to succeed?
As I say, if you want to argue that Success Academy is superb because 40% of the students who were educated in Success Academy’s elementary and middle schools cannot handle high school work, then go right ahead. I don’t want to stop you.
Maybe Eva Moskowitz should make that argument! “My high school is so good that 40% of the students whose K-8 education I was responsible for can’t handle the work and some like BA suggest they can’t even read or add fractions. So please give me more money as the proof my schools are superb is that 40% of the students who receive my superb K-8 education can’t handle my even more superb high school.”
It sounds like the kind of logic Eva Moskowitz used when she demanded that the woman she respected with all her heart – Betsy DeVos – be confirmed as Secretary of Education. And if you believe Eva Moskowitz when she tells you that her hard work convincing Senators to confirm the great Betsy DeVos was for the kids, you’ll believe her when she explains that the reason that 40% of the kids she educates in K- 8 can’t handle high school work is all “for the kids”.
Okay, I am not a big fan of Success Academy.
But nevertheless, to the defense of the school I will say the following:
From Daily News article:
The Education Department numbers also show 49% of students from the Class of 2017 met City University of New York benchmarks for college readiness.
I could not find any more recent statistics on that.
It means, that 51% of the class could not handle college-level work, even though some of them got a high school diploma (graduation rate for the year was 74.3%)
At Success, I am sure, there was 100% college readiness. The main reason is – Success Academy does not allow social promotion. A student MUST fulfill all the requirements for the grade in order to be promoted to the next one. The school has additional tutoring and, I believe, summer program, for struggling kids, but it does not do social promotion.
When you compare the 30% of Success Academy kids who made it to graduation – and are college-ready, vs. 49% college-ready kids across entire school system, the numbers are not THAT far away. Especially if the 49% are calculated off the 74.3% of graduates (which gives about 36.4%).
Now, I believe (and as an ex-SA parent I in fact KNOW) that the school has quazi-selective admission (read Pondicio’s book on that), and it is not honest in telling otherwise. But their results are somewhat comparable to public school ones.