Liat Olenick was a charter school teacher. Fatima Geidi was a parent of a charter student.
They write in a joint article that proposals by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren should not be controversial. Charter advocates have reacted fiercely against any effort to regulate the privately-run schools. But, say the authors, charters will improve if they are both accountable and transparent, as Sanders and Warren propose.
They write:
As a former charter school parent and a former charter school teacher, we support these proposals – and we believe, that if implemented both at the federal level and with a similar approach at the state level, this agenda would actually improve charter schools while also limiting some of the harm they have done to district public schools.
First, a little about our experiences, which are, sadly, far from unique.
I, Liat, spent my first year teaching at a Brooklyn charter school that was started by non-educators and suffered from extreme turnover in administrators and staff. We had six principals over the course of the first year, and ten teachers either quit or were fired. We also lost special education students because our school wouldn’t or couldn’t provide the services they needed. Instead, they were sent to nearby public schools. Now that I work in a public school in District 14, we experience the reverse process — my school has no choice but to accept the many students pushed out by charter schools when they don’t conform to their rigid academic or behavioral expectations.
I, Fatima, am a single mother whose son was suspended over 30 times by his charter school, Upper West Success Academy, starting in first grade, including for very minor issues, such as walking up the stairs too slowly. He was also denied his mandated special education services, which worsened the situation. The school demanded that I pick him up so frequently in the middle of the day that I was forced to drop out of college myself. When I finally pulled him out of the school, his therapist told me he suffered from symptoms of post-traumatic stress.
Then when my son and I were subsequently interviewed on the PBS Newshour about how he had been treated at the school, Success Academy officials at the network sent copies of his disciplinary files, full of trumped-up charges, to every education reporter they could find and posted it online. Eva Moskowitz, the Success Academy CEO, also recounted false stories about his behaviorin her published memoirs.
Although the US Department of Education eventually found her and the school guilty of violating the federal student privacy law called FERPA more than three years after I filed my initial complaint, Success officials have refused to comply with the law and continue to retaliate in the same way against other parents who dare to speak out against the unfair treatment of their children by releasing their confidential files to reporters. Meanwhile, the New York State Education Department has confirmed that Success Academy has systematically failed to provide students with their mandated special education services, even after having been ordered to do so by hearing officers.
Since my son left Success Academy, he is slowly recovering, and is now doing better in high school, but it took him years to undo the damage he experienced. I have met many other parents whose children suffered similar or worse fates. Success Academy charters are currently facing five different federal education lawsuits for violating student rights, and yet are the fastest growing charter chain in the state of New York, having received more than $60 million in grants from the federal government since 2006 to aid in their expansion and replication.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I think it will be easier for people to understand this if the federal charter grant program is described as “additional” funding for charter schools, or even “additional funding that public schools are not eligible to receive”.
It’s an important distinction because of course charter schools are eligible for all the same federal funding that public schools get, and will continue to be eligible for it even if the charter grant program disappears.
The truth is both Sanders and Warrens plans would increase funding to charter schools, because both plans include increase public school funding across the board, ALL of which existing charter schools would receive.
When ed reformers oppose the Sanders and Warren plans they are opposing increased funding for existing charter schools, in favor of expanding charters.
They’re choosing GROWTH of charters over increasing funding for existing schools, whether those increases go to public or charter schools.
I think this is perfectly consistent with the mindset and philosophy- they hope to knock out their competitors (public schools) with fast growth. It’s about grabbing market share.
Chiara.
You have a point. It rests on the sham positioning of privately managed charter schools as “public” and also from the complicity of too many public school districts in authorizing charter schools that suck money from public schools.
There is a fix for this. It can be done by a federal definition of a public school that excludes charter schools as “public” and cuts off federal funding for them.
Unfortunately the Supreme Court is likely to make vouchers for education the new norm, with few restrictions on the “education service providers.” Also, federal funds account for about 12% of school funding. The rest is about half and half from state and local funds.
Chiara & Laura: Neither Sanders nor Warren’s proposals suggest closing existing charter schools– they seem to accept the “public” moniker provided (a)transparency et al pubsch reqts are applied, & (b)the rush to expand charters is halted/ re-examined in light of effect on distrsys budgets. Meanwhile, if either Sanders or Warren’s proposed multiplying of Title I funding were implemented, neither startup nor ongoing charters would need to depend on DeVos’ slush fund– & the hedge-fund et al investments currently in the picture would diminish in need; the for-profit investment/ return model might even be completely undermined. I read a Strauss Answer Sheet column applying Warren’s proposal to the case of a particular Bklyn Charter which had objected to Warren proposal to dump CSP. The charter was started up on some $600k’s of CSP funds, & doing OK. The article showed how that charter would get 83% of the CSP start-up amount.. ANNUALLY!
Why doesn’t Success Academy just admit they are a variety of magnet school?
They put the selection process within the school. They admit students and then weed them out. That’s the only difference.
Maybe NYC needed more magnet schools and Success Academy fills a need- I don’t know- but how can you trust people who won’t even admit that they’re running selective schools?
They won’t admit it because they want to pretend they aren’t selective, and that can then be used to bash public schools. It’s political.
“Why doesn’t Success Academy just admit they are a variety of magnet school?”
You asked the question that co-opted reporters like Eliza Shapiro at the NY Times will not ask and do not care to ask. It would be an obvious question, right?
But I’ll tell you why. Because 1. It is illegal for charters to do so in NYC and 2. Because the only reason that Eva Moskowitz gets support from right wing billionaires is her proven willingness to not just teach students but also to do and say anything to undermine public schools. and part of that depends on the right wing haters of public schools using Moskowitz’ results to “prove” how cheap and easy it is to turn every failing student into a high performing scholar if you just get rid of union teachers and open charters. Clearly, that doesn’t work if you admit that your charter CEO would rather embrace Betsy DeVos and kiss Ivanka Trump and Paul Ryan’s butt than to educate a child who dared to struggle in school and harm her bragging rights. A child’s value is determined by their academic success and those who are not successful are expendable — they are put on got to go lists. “Model” teachers demonstrate how to harass them to other teachers. But that truth must be hidden and instead the myth that the kids owe all their academic prowess to Eva Moskowitz must be maintained by reporters like Shapiro.
Eliza Shapiro is white and I have yet to see her do a single interview with African-American parents who are not rabid fans of Success Academy and all charters. The NAACP’s report doesn’t exist for her – the only reason I can think of for her to blatantly ignore it is that it includes testimony from African-American parents who are critical of charters and she seems to demonstrate a very nasty bias against those parents. Parents like Fatima don’t exist for Eliza Shapiro, but she goes overboard to report what the parents at pro-charter “protests” against Elizabeth Warren say. There could be 80,000 African-American and Latinx students doing well in NYC public schools, but to Eliza Shapiro those students are simply not as important if she can find a few thousand students at charters who do well. Every single story Shapiro writes contains the subtext that she knows in her heart that it would impossible for a charter chain that chooses from 1.1 MILLION students to find enough African-American or Latinx students who can do well without some kind of “miracle” curriculum. That racism underlies all her reporting — her belief that African-American kids owe all their academic success to charters because they would all be abject failures in public schools and she knows this because she chooses to believe almost all of them ARE abject failures in public schools.
To understand how racist that is, imagine if Shapiro said that white and Asian students would all be abject failures if it wasn’t for BASIS Charter Schools in Arizona and students who are white and Asian owe all their academic success to BASIS since otherwise they would be failing or at best mediocre students. Imagine if all white and Asian students in Arizona who were NOT in BASIS Charter Schools who did well were simply invisible to Eliza Shapiro because she was so certain that if a white or Asian student was not in BASIS Charter school, they are clearly low-performing students.
No education reporter could get away with such an outrageous claim. But it is what they do all the time when it comes to Success Academy.
And that is why Success Academy can’t admit it wants the huge advantage that magnet schools have to pick and choose their students. They and their charter-friendly reporter enablers are pushing the false narrative that their students’ success is due ONLY to the special sauce the non-union teachers in charters offer and not because the school has “standards” that means they simply eliminate all students who don’t meet that standard.
“There could be 80,000 African-American and LatinX students doing well in NYC public schools, but to Eliza Shapiro these students are simply not as important if she can find a few thousand at charters who do well.” I know you have stats on this, NYCPSP, & I think it’s very important they be brought to the public eye, over & over again. The numbers of truly disadvantaged kids succeeding at SA need to be put in context w/their peers succeeding in NYC public schools. Then the comparative %s have to be stacked up next to the premium paid to float a 2nd tier of SA “NYC Pubschs” which are allowed to operate w/many fewer SpEd/ ESL students, while they flout NYC pubsch policy on suspension/ expulsion/ attrition, & steal pubsch basics like libraries & cafeteria time, not to mention deleting NYC pubsch space for extracurriculars– via colocation
“The school demanded that I pick him up so frequently in the middle of the day that I was forced to drop out of college myself. When I finally pulled him out of the school, his therapist told me he suffered from symptoms of post-traumatic stress. ”
They made it impossible for this child to attend this school. That’s a selection process. It’s not an entrance exam, but it acts as the same sort of sorting mechanism.
An entrance exam is at least consistent and transparent. Success Academies selection process is neither. It’s wholly subjective and completely opaque.
At least public magnet schools list the requirements and apply them to all comers. Success Academy doesn’t even do that. They’re deceptively selective while loudly proclaiming they’re not. It’s worse than an entrance exam.
From the NYTimes, The Education Crusader Slideshow, 11/03/08
“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.”
If a parent cannot commit to what is asked, this is not the place for them.
What’s most sad is that the selectiveness is right in plain sight – much like Trump’s corruption – but when you have co-opted reporters who will never call out the truth, you can simply say one thing and do another with impunity.
“Reform” has allowed so many mini-tyrants like Moskowitz set up their own little well connected fiefdom as Moskowitz has done in New York. The politicians kiss her ring, and the wealthy lavish money on her programs in order to gain tax breaks from her “non- profit.” However, while some students survive the many cuts in her survival of the fittest schools, her whole approach is not economically scalable. Some of her practices are just unhealthy for many students.
Gary Rubinstein took a look at the class of 2020, based on what he could cobble together from information he could find. These private empires paid for by public money are not forthcoming with information. Rubinstein estimates that “even more startling is that of the 191 9th graders that had been at Success Academy for 10 years, only 59% of them are on track to graduate three years later.” https://garyrubinstein.wordpress.com/
Even if Eva one day gets shut down and fined for her crimes against children and parents, she will still walk away wealthy because for the already rich the fines are never enough. In fact, the fines are so low that the wealthy are encouraged to lie, cheat, bully, and break the law.