Only days ago, Mercedes Schneider wrote about major layoffs at Success Academy, which seemed to be belt-tightening.
But the belt will not actually be tightened because Success Academy is now hiring 1,000 new staff.
What’s the story with the revolving door?
Schneider looks at Glassdoor reviews, where employees write anonymously about their workplace.
SA burns through employees at a rapid clip. Turnover is high. The demands are so intense on students and staff that the staff churns and lagging students leave.
Schneider concludes that if you are one of the new hires, keep your bags packed.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I believe they have to re-hire or they lose their government paycheck protection stimulus.
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All of ed reform once again repeated the “100%” graduation/college stat about Success
It’s 100% of the 60% who survived the culling process to graduation.
These are not stupid people.They know the stat is misleading. They don’t care.
My public school could do this. Make it impossible for the bottom 40% to remain in the school and then declare “100%!” but they don’t.
I love how no one ever follows up either. If 40% are leaving they are GOING somewhere. Where do they go? What happens to them? Shouldn’t people who claim to be “student centered” and interested in “data” be at all curious about that?
I understand the lobbyists and ideologues but what’s the excuse for the academics? They don’t actually want to learn anything?
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Chiara,
It’s only 60% if you’re just looking at 11th grade to 12th grade. It’s a lot worse if you actually look at the complete cohort from admission to 12.
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Mike,
Unfortunately, it’s impossible to look at the complete cohort “from admissions to 12” since in the early years the unwanted students were “encouraged” to leave and replaced by students who could come in at 2nd or 3rd grade to fill seats. There was plenty of backfilling going on in the early grades, and there were ways that backfilling those seats could be gamed — most easily by requiring students who win a lottery seat for an older grade to be deemed worthy by Success Academy to enter that grade. If a 2nd grader wins a lottery seat for 3rd grade, but their parents are told that their child will have to repeat 2nd grade in order to enroll, that empty 3rd grade seat will remain open until the lottery number of a 2nd grader who Success Academy deems academically proficient enough to be in 3rd grade wins a seat. And the bonus is that some parents of those students who aren’t as strong academically who are told their child will have to repeat 2nd grade in order to enroll will turn down the seat.
The same thing can happen with a first grader who wins a lottery seat for an open 2nd grade seat. If Success Academy doesn’t deem the child suitable for 2nd grade, they can offer a first grade seat and leave the 2nd grade seat open until the lottery number of a stronger student comes up.
No one knows how many lottery winners end up leaving but are replaced by new (and possibly better) students in those K-3 years.
But there is one statistic that is impossible for Success Academy to normalize, and that is the number of students who were in the 2016-2017 9th grade cohort who should be graduating seniors this year.
And the NYSED data shows that there were 191 9th graders in 2016-2017.
But Success Academy just announced with pride that “all 98” seniors from the class of 2020 were admitted to college.
There is no way to spin those numbers — that means that only 51% of the 9th graders at Success Academy 4 years ago are graduating this year.
What is even more shocking is every single student in the 9th grade received their middle school education in Success Academy middle schools that had one of the highest proficiency rates in all of NY State!
Most charter high schools will blow off questions about why there are only 98 graduating seniors from that 9th grade class of 191 by whining that the students who they get come from terrible public schools and they just have been so poorly educated that their charter can’t expect them to be able to get them to catch up in just 4 years of high school.
But Success Academy can’t do that, because every single one of those 191 students came from those Success Academy Middle Schools that Success Academy brags are among the best in the state.
So since Success Academy can’t do what other charters do and blame public middle and elementary schools for giving them such poorly educated students, how does Eva Moskowitz explain why a 9th grade class of 191 only has 98 graduates?
She doesn’t have to explain because there isn’t an education reporter working at the NY Times, the NY Daily News, the NY Post or Chalkbeat NY who has asked her that question!!!
And if that isn’t an indictment of how lousy or lazy or co-opted or just plain gullible the NYC “journalists” covering K-12 education really are, then I don’t know what is.
But not one of them has shown an ounce of curiosity as to why 191 9th graders who were all given that superior Success Academy middle school education end up with only 98 graduating.
Only 51% of the 2016-2017 9th graders at Success Academy are graduating this year and not one education reporter asks any questions. They are an embarrassment to the journalism profession.
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We actually had this going on where I live. We had a go-getter rural superintendent who would loudly proclaim “100%!” proficiency until it came out that he was shunting the bottom quarter of students into Ohio’s “cybercharters”.
So 100% of the 75% who remained in his school at graduation. He just moved a quarter of students “off his books”.
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“U.S. Department of Education
#TBT: Antoinette Love, a public charter school student in New Orleans, was accepted to 116 colleges and was offered over $3.7M in scholarships. Her story is a testament to the transformative power of #EducationFreedom. #CharterSchoolsWeek ”
You will never see a public school student celebrated like this in ed reform circles.
Which is a really a shame considering so many of the ed reformers are public employees. I don’t know why we continue to hire and pay people who don’t support our schools and students. It isn’t fair to our students. They deserve to have people in publicly-paid positions in government who support them and their schools and they don’t have any. That harms them.
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The US Department of Education apparently did an exhaustive search of US public schools and somehow could not come up with a single lower income student who got scholarships.
I mean, we LIVE in these places. We KNOW this isn’t true. But somehow we ended up with a federal agency that is so completely captured by this “movement” they cannot congratulate a public school student without running afoul of the echo chamber.
Ludicrous, but that’s where this echo chamber has led us.
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Leavin’ Success that’s insane (Apologies to the late John Denver)
All my bags are packed
I’m ready to go
I’m standin’ here at Eva’s door
I hate to wake her ire to say goodbye
But the dawn is breakin’
It’s early morn
The Uber’s waitin’
He’s blowin’ his horn
Already I’m so happy
I could die
So kiss me and smile for me
Tell me that you’ll wait for me
Hold me like you’ll never let me go
‘Cause I’m leavin’ place that’s insane
Don’t know if I’ll be back again
Oh babe, Im glad to go
There’s so many times I’ve let her down
So many times I’ve played around
I tell you now, they don’t mean a thing
Every place I go, I’ll think of her
Every curse I curse I’ll curse for her
If I come back, I’ll bring a legal sting
So kiss me and smile for me
Tell me that you’ll wait for me
Hold me like you’ll never let me go
‘Cause I’m leavin’ place that’s insane
Don’t know if I’ll be back again
Oh babe, Im glad to go
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I live near Upper West Success Academy. Over the years while on public transportation I’ve overheard many bizarre conversations about what goes on there, including classrooms starting out the school year without teachers. As both articles posted demonstrate, when it comes to charter schools in NYC, there is no one in charge, which allows the unscrupulous to do whatever they please.
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