A teacher at the acclaimed Success Academy charter chain in New York City publicly complained about Eva Moskowitz’s silence after the murder of George Floyd.
Alex Zimmerman of Chalkbeat reported:
Four days after the killing of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police, a Brooklyn Success Academy teacher emailed her network’s CEO, one of the nation’s most prominent charter school leaders, asking why she hadn’t said anything publicly.
“I am deeply hurt and shocked by your lack of words on the topic that affects so many of your employees, children and families in communities that you serve,” first-year Success Academy Flatbush teacher Fabiola St Hilaire wrote to Eva Moskowitz. “All of your black employees are paying attention to your silence.”
Moskowitz responded about an hour later, thanking St Hilaire for reaching out but also brushing her aside. “I actually opined on this subject early this am. Please take a look,” Moskowitz wrote, referring to a tweet sent the same morning. “I hope you can understand that running remote learning in the middle of a world economic shutdown has kept me focused on [Success Academy’s] immediate needs.”
Upset by the response, St Hilaire posted the email exchange on social media, thrusting New York City’s largest charter network into a wider debate about institutional racism. Some current and former employees were angry that Moskowitz seemed to dismiss the concerns of an educator of color as well as the broader movement to reckon with structural racism in the aftermath of Floyd’s killing.
Eva Moskowitz quickly backtracked when she saw the reaction among her staff to her silence and her brusque dismissal of St Hilaire’s criticism. Moskowitz was interviewed by Donald Trump as a contender for his Secretary of Education. She supported his selection of Betsy DeVos.
The exchange between Moskowitz and a first-year teacher set off a debate about institutional racism in Success Academy and its harsh no-excuses methods. Those draconian disciplinary methods were defended by Robert Pondiscio of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute, who is white, and by Moskowitz, who is also white. Black children need harsh discipline, they argued.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Please, please, please join me, those of you of similarly whitish appearance, in the nationwide ranks of White People against Racism.
We call ourselves the Mayo Nays.
Hahahahaha! Sign me up, Bob.
Eva commissioned a commercial producer / production team to create a video to be shown to black Success Academy to get them to step it up and act more white … errrr … act more properly in the classroom.
A teacher or Success Academy employee saved this “shot sheet” for what scenes should be shot for and included in the final video — presumably approved beforehand by Eva herself, as she runs that show with an iron grip.
Someone then just posted this on Instagram:
(Holy crap! is my reaction to this)
If this document is for real, it needs to be widely publicized. It’s really shocking.
Back in FALL 2016, Gary Rubinstein wrote about how someone discovered a Vimeo channel that there were 485 (!) internal training videos that Success Academy had made for introductory and on-going training of its teachers and administrators. (The ABOVE “shot sheet” — dated September 2015 — is the script or outline treatment for one of those videos, with the finished version ending up on Success Academy’s Vimeo channel.)
Educators outside of Success Academy were horrified at what was being taught at Success Academy, how it was being taught, and also what was required of administrators. Here’s Gary’s first article about this, which includes his own withering critique of Eva’s videos:
https://garyrubinstein.wordpress.com/2016/09/01/success-academy-reveals-some-of-their-secret-methods/
Here’s his second article doing the same:
https://garyrubinstein.wordpress.com/2016/09/03/circle-time-at-success-academy/
A follow-up article from Rubinstein, posted shortly after this, shows that Success Academy officials, most likely responding to Gary’s two articles, then made their Vimeo channel full of Success Academy training videos “private”:
https://garyrubinstein.wordpress.com/2016/09/05/success-academy-scrubs-their-public-video-page/
There’s an old saying, “If you got nothing to hide, hide nothing.”
Furthermore, what happened to Eva Moskowitz’ claim that she would happily share the “secrets” of Success Academy’s success with all schools? Then what? She scrubs them from the internet?
Jack,
One of my grandsons put the saying this way: “Nothing to hide, nothing to fear.”
What is happening right now in our country is the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in my lifetime. It’s magnificent. It gives me such hope!!!
I freaking love the young people coming up. They are so woke. There is so much conversation around these issues. And action. This is what awakening looks like.
Exactly. And, incidentally, shame on Eva Moskowitz.
AGREE, Bob! Thank you for ALL you do.
I love your comments, too. 👍🏽
These young people didn’t get it from the ground. Their public schools teachers have been incubating, encouraging and empowering them to be articulate, passionate, thoughtful members of our democracy. All those teachers unions with social justice platforms – among them Seattle, Chicago, Oakland, Los Angeles, Boston – have incorporated anti-racist teaching and restorative justice in our classrooms. Now it shows in the streets.
Yes, Christine!!!! Thank you for making this important point!!!
Likewise: I’ve been waiting for this moment my whole life; better late than never, I guess.
Yes, Mark, yes!!! It’s like, freaking finally!!!!!!!
Diane, what prompted you to say Robert Pondiscio argued “Black children need harsh discipline”? I think I’ve read most of what he’s written in the last ten years, and I can’t recall that view expressed.
The Chalkbeat article discussed Success Academy’s harsh disciplinary policies that leads to the suspension of many black students. Pondiscio defended those policies and said that black parents want them.
But Moskowitz has vigorously defended her network’s strict approach arguing that exacting behavior expectations that are consistently enforced provide a necessary condition for student learning. And network leaders argue it works: Success’ students, the vast majority of whom are Black or Latino, typically outperform much whiter and more affluent districts on state tests. Parents of color continue flocking to Success, and network leaders are honest about what will be expected of them and their children.
“There is no doubt in my mind that there is a significant appetite among low-income parents for exactly the flavor of education that Eva Moskowitz offers,” said Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow at the conservative-learning Fordham Institute who spent a year observing a Success elementary school in the South Bronx and wrote a book about it. “It just does violence to reality to pretend that this is some kind of pedagogy that’s being imposed on families of color.”
Did I misinterpret his defense of Eva’s harsh disciplinary policies? Isn’t he saying that Eva offers exactly what parents of low-income children of color want? How do you interpret these words? Did Chalkbeat misquote him?
I see a difference between “Black children need harsh discipline” (which makes it sound like it’s RP’s judgement that they need it) and the quotation from the Chalkbeat piece which (a) refers to “education” and “pedagogy” not discipline specifically so it’s a little hard to know to extent he was thinking of discipline, but more important (b) he’s saying “it’s what parents want.” That’s different than “It’s what I judge black children need.”
Daniel Willingham,
If a parent wins a kindergarten seat for a charter school that all but guarantees their child will turn into a top performing scholar, and then jumps through hoops to enroll their kid in the school, but eventually leaves the school, it certainly seems suspect for Pondiscio to exonerate Success Academy’s harsh tactics as being “what parents want.” Because all statistics show that this isn’t “a few” parents who leave. The attrition rates of this top school should be minuscule but they aren’t. And the entire charter movement’s enabling of Success Academy to hide their true attrition rates — the charter movement’s insistence that attrition is irrelevant and should never be closely examined as long as it isn’t as high as a failing school’s attrition — should be a huge red flag to you. Why is attrition hidden as if it is a state secret?
High attrition rates are not a huge red flag to Robert Pondiscio. He seems to embrace the ugly (and in my opinion, racist) innuendo that the extraordinarily high number of students who left this top performing school for subpar and failing schools all had parents who just didn’t value top notch academics. All of Pondiscio’s writings seem to begin with this underlying belief that all the student who remain at Success Academy would be academic failures if they didn’t experience the harsh Success Academy tactics in which struggling students are publicly humiliated and severely punished. Do you believe that?
It is far more likely that those harsh tactics are used to drum out the students who aren’t thriving academically. And the argument that Pondiscio is pushing is that the children who remain are thriving BECAUSE of that harsh discipline and that those students would be abject failures without it. Do you believe most of those students could not learn without harsh discipline and humiliation? I don’t. I think those are the same students who would have thrived if they were treated the way middle class white students are treated in their schools. Pondiscio clearly does not believe those students would have thrived without harsh discipline meted out by Success Academy teachers trained in how to use those harsh tactics to “motivate” the students the way they need to be.
Success Academy cherry picks students and gives those students a lavishly funded education. Certainly those students deserve a lavishly fund education. But so do the others. And the dishonesty of Success Academy about what they are doing has many racist implications. When you are insisting that 18% of the Kindergarten and first grade students “needed” to be suspended in one of your charters that has virtually no white students, you are implying something really racist about those children being violent. And that is what the charter movement has elevated as “truth”.
NYC public school parent:
None of this addresses what I asked…I questioned whether RP said “Black children need harsh discipline”
Daniel,
I relied on the words in the Chalkbeat article. Robert Pondiscio can write here whenever he wants. He has my personal email. Why did he go to Twitter to denounce me instead of writing me himself?
Diane
I can’t speak to RP’s state of mind or why he responded as he did….but if on reflection you think your characterization of his position isn’t right you can just take the high road and edit that bit of your blog.
Daniel,
I am unsure what Robert objects to. He has my personal email. Why doesn’t he write and tell me what he finds objectionable? Does he oppose “no-excuses” disciplinary policy? Does he think it is not “harsh”? Did he object to my describing it as harsh? I am totally confused about what he wants me to change. I assume he asked you to complain. Why didn’t he speak for himself? Why did he go to Twitter to call me “shameful” when I don’t know what he objects to? Why doesn’t he speak for himself? If I got something wrong, I will change it, but he has to let me know what it is.
I don’t understand your answer.
I am saying it is racist for anyone to believe Eva Moskowitz when she alludes to “students throwing chairs at teachers” and implies that violent actions committed by a disproportionately high percentage of her very youngest students is the reason some of her charters had extraordinarily high suspension rates in the youngest grades.
Robert Pondiscio clearly doesn’t question the need for Success Academy to suspend 18% of the Kindergarten and first graders in one of their charters with virtually no white students one year.
It is long past time when the SUNY Charter Institute board and white enablers like Robert Pondiscio should have called out those high suspension rates for the very youngest students as wrong. Instead, they pushed the false narrative that those high suspension rates for Kindergarten and first graders were necessary and the young children deserved to be suspended because they acted out so violently.
I hope you will call out the dishonesty of those kinds of excuses that Eva Moskowitz always makes whenever her high suspension rates are questioned.
Robert Pondiscio was a friend a decade ago. We lost touch. Then he became infatuated with charters and joined the rightwing Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which I had helped to found but then quit in 2009. I quoted Robert’s comments to Chalkbeat in support of Eva Moskowitz. He did not agree with what I wrote about him. Instead of writing either here or to my personal email, which he has, he went to Twitter to denounce me for twisting his words. That’s why I quoted in full in the comments what the Chalkbeat article contained: his support for Eva M and her pedagogy.
Why is Daniel Willingham so very concerned about Robert Pondiscio – who I am sure is paid quite handsomely to never question the false narrative that all the African American kindergarten and first grade children who Success Academy chose to suspend deserved it because of their violent actions?
Why isn’t Daniel Willingham concerned about the students who have been publicly destroyed by Eva Moskowitz releasing curated school records that characterize them as violent and horrible children to punish them for having a parent who questioned how the school treated their child?
Diane,
OMG I just read Robert Pondiscio’s twitter feed. There is something very off about his desperate need to defend Success Academy and Eva Moskowitz and try to change the topic to how unfairly you are treating him.
Robert Pondiscio wants to play the white victim here.
But Pondiscio is not the victim. The children whose private records get released by Eva Moskowitz to mischaracterize them as violent children are the victims. The students who get “voluntarily” drummed out are the victims. The students whose once eager parents learned the hard way that when Eva Moskowitz said she welcomed every child, she didn’t mean their child are the victims.
The 5 and 6 year old children who are given out of school suspensions and publicly labeled as violent when their parents complain are the victims.
The victims are every single child who is harmed by those who promote the false narrative that Eva Moskowitz is telling the truth when she justifies the high suspension rates of the very youngest students and implies their own violent actions are to entirely to blame.
John Merrow reported on Success Academy’s outrageous claims about the many young students who Eva Moskowitz wanted the public to believe deserved every suspension meted out to them when they supposedly acted out violently.
Did Pondiscio defend Merrow? Or did Pondiscio twist himself in knots looking for some reason to discredit John Merrow just like he looks for a reason to play the victim with you. Because Pondiscio seems determined to avoid addressing the inconvenient fact that only a racist could believe Eva Moskowitz’ justification of her high suspension rates for the very youngest students.
It’s long past time for Pondiscio to point that out instead of claiming the mantle of victim for himself.
NYCPSP,
Thanks for taking the time to read how Robert is twisting facts and denouncing me but refuses to send me a correction. Charter world is gathering round him to console him. I invited him to answer. He won’t.
I just reread the Chalkbeat article that Pondiscio used to attack me. Unless I am no longer able to read, the article describes abhorrent practices that black teachers at Success Academy find objectionable, like calling 911 to bring in the NYPD to deal with behavior issues. Pondiscio says, in response:
“There is no doubt in my mind that there is a significant appetite among low-income parents for exactly the flavor of education that Eva Moskowitz offers,” said Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow at the conservative-learning Fordham Institute who spent a year observing a Success elementary school in the South Bronx and wrote a book about it. “It just does violence to reality to pretend that this is some kind of pedagogy that’s being imposed on families of color.”
Is he approving or objecting to these practices?
nycpsp, re: attrition proof of the pudding, & harsh no-excuses policy used to drum out the non-academically-thriving: right on the nose.
Diane (et al.) The author of the Chalkbeat article has weighed in on Twitter. He disagrees with how you’ve interpreted his story. https://twitter.com/AGZimmerman/status/1274139209415241728?s=20
To Daniel Willingham,
I read Alex Zimmerman’s tweet. It clarifies nothing. He tweeted to Pondiscio the quote from the story that I also quoted.
The original story that Zimmerman wrote concerned Black teachers’ complaints about racism embedded in the practices and policies of the Success Academy charters.
The teacher who began the fracas wrote to Eva Moskowitz and asked why she didn’t speak out about the murder of George Floyd. Eva responded with a note saying, basically, I was too busy. The teacher was outraged and started an online petition denouncing the leadership at SA, which has thus far gathered more than 3,000 signatures.
Zimmerman wrote the following about practices that disproportionately affected black children:
The posts describe calling 911 on students with behavior problems, policing Black students’ hair by banning certain headwraps, and a culture where white educators are comfortable dressing down parents of color for minor issues like arriving late to pick up their children. Half of the teachers and principals at Success are white, 27% are Black, 13% are Hispanic and 5% are Asian. Meanwhile, 83% of the network’s roughly 18,000 students are Black or Hispanic and most come from low-income families.
Alex Zimmerman then cited different opinions about SA’s practices, then shifts to Eva and Robert:
“But Moskowitz has vigorously defended her network’s strict approach arguing that exacting behavior expectations that are consistently enforced provide a necessary condition for student learning. And network leaders argue it works: Success’ students, the vast majority of whom are Black or Latino, typically outperform much whiter and more affluent districts on state tests. Parents of color continue flocking to Success, and network leaders are honest about what will be expected of them and their children.
“There is no doubt in my mind that there is a significant appetite among low-income parents for exactly the flavor of education that Eva Moskowitz offers,” said Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow at the conservative-leaning Fordham Institute who spent a year observing a Success elementary school in the South Bronx and wrote a book about it. “It just does violence to reality to pretend that this is some kind of pedagogy that’s being imposed on families of color.”
“At the same time, he isn’t surprised that some employees may be increasingly uncomfortable with the responsibility of enforcing strict behavior expectations on students of color, even if they are designed to foster student achievement.
“A lot of those techniques — rightly or wrongly — may feel oppressive to a new generation of young people, and I think that’s a vulnerability for high-performing charter schools,” Pondiscio said.“
So, Eva “vigorously defended” the practices that have sparked outrage and charges of racism, and Pondiscio follows up by saying that there is “a significant appetite” among low-income parents “for exactly the flavor of education that Eva Moskowitz offers.”
Perhaps my reading is inaccurate, but it seems to me that Pondiscio is supporting the contested disciplinary practices because some parents choose them. On Twitter, he describes these same practices as “repellent,” but he does not say so in Zimmerman’s article.
I used the word “harsh” to describe a practice of calling the police when a student misbehaves. Perhaps you think this is normal. I don’t. Do you think the police should be called to school to discipline children? I don’t.
Robert complained on Twitter that I had distorted his words and that I made it seem that he endorsed practices that are “repellent” to him.
I have repeatedly invited Robert Pondiscio, on Twitter and here, to send me a commentary explaining what part of Success Academy’s program he finds “repellent” but I have gotten no response. I will post his response if he sends one. He has not.
It’s nice to hear from you, Daniel, but why won’t Robert send a post to my personal email, which he has, and explain which of SA’s practices is “repellent” to him, instead of repeatedly saying I was wrong. Wrong about what? I will correct any error I made but I need to know what the error was.
Daniel Willingham,
Why are you making this so complicated?
You claim that Diane Ravitch made an error when she wrote that Robert Pondiscio believed the students at Success Academy needed harsh discipline (the discipline that we all agree is “repellent”).
The only way that would be an error is if Robert Pondiscio is now saying that he believes that the students at Success Academy do NOT need that harsh discipline.
You have now convinced me that indeed, Robert Pondiscio agrees with Diane Ravitch and many people here that the students at Success Academy do not need harsh discipline.
Thank you.
So why do you think Eva Moskowitz would use “repellent” harsh discipline on African American students when Robert Pondiscio has made it clear that those students do not need it?
Diane, I appreciate all the context you provide, but I really commented on your blog because of one thing you wrote, not to challenge you on the merits of Success: you claimed RP believes “black people need harsh discipline.”
The quote you point to plainly doesn’t say that. It says he believes parents of kids at the school approve of the discipline used there.
What baffles me is why you’re digging in, and insisting on ascribing overtly racist views to RP that he did not express. You can make plenty of arguments against Success without slurs against RP, and you have. Insisting he’s a racist without evidence reduces your credibility on everything else.
btw, Robert did not ask me to speak on his behalf.
Agree. It’s really simple. Diane wrote that RP “argued that Black children need harsh discipline.” Has he actually argued that? If so, produce the quotations in which he’s argued that. If not, apologize, or at a minimum stop wondering why RP has taken issue with this.
FLERP,
Eva explicitly endorsed harsh discipline, like calling the cops when a child is unruly. Pondiscio says many low-income parents have an “appetite” for “exactly the kind of education that Eva offers.” Why should I apologize for quoting what he said in the article? I did not say he is a racist.
You wrote that he “argues that Black children need harsh discipline,” right? If someone told me that some white guy argues that black children need harsh discipline, and I credited that statement, I would conclude that that person was racist. Not sure how this is a close call.
And not saying you need to apologize—I’m sick of apologies. But I don’t get why anyone would not understand how someone would take offense at that characterization. Unless in fact Pondiscio has argued that black children need harsh discipline. In which case, I’d like to see where he has argued that.
FLERP,
The article is about a black teacher who organized a petition against racism at SA. Certain practices were identified, like calling the police when students are unruly. Those are part of the harsh practices that the teacher complained about. That’s why she organized a petition at change.org to hold Eva accountable. Eva defended those practices. RP said that low income parents have an “appetite” for “exactly” the kind of education Eva provides. I saw that as a defense of what Eva does.
Let’s drop this. I’m tired writing the same thing over and over and over.
I did not call RP a racist or ascribe overtly racist views to him. I quoted what he said in the article. He says that many parents want exactly the kind of education Eva provides, which was defined in the article as no-excuses, with examples. If RP wants to explain what he believes, he is welcome to post here and clarify what he thinks is acceptable discripline and what he thinks is repellent. I truly am confused by what he believes, and I welcome his explanation here, not on Twitter. I am not “digging in,” as you put it. I have offered RP a place to state his views. I can’t do more than that.
Daniel Willingham,
I find it very odd that in all this discussion you are much more bothered by what Diane Ravitch assumed when Robert Pondiscio was quoted condoning Success Academy’s racist discipline on the grounds that “low-income parents have a significant appetite” for it than you are about the fact that Robert Pondiscio was quoted saying that low-income parents have a significant appetite for those racist discipline tactics that the article was all about!
If anyone had the obligation to correct the record, it was Robert Pondiscio.
“There is no doubt in my mind that there is a significant appetite among low-income parents for exactly the flavor of education that Eva Moskowitz offers,”
I am truly shocked that you could read that quote by Robert Pondiscio and not be bothered by it. Instead, you made it your mission to DEFEND that indefensible statement and attack Diane Ravitch for pointing out that Pondiscio’s quote was a pretty awful thing to say when he was asked about Success Academy’s racist discipline and given a chance to condemn it.
Alex Zimmerman reported on all the “repellent” discipline meted out to Success Academy’s students – most of whom are African American.
Zimmerman called Robert Pondiscio for a quote, and Pondiscio says:
“There is no doubt in my mind that there is a significant appetite among low-income parents for exactly the flavor of education that Eva Moskowitz offers”
And you, Daniel Willingham, are upset at Diane Ravitch and not Robert Pondiscio!!???
I think you may want to think about what your post suggests about what matters to you.
I do believe you have enough integrity to address this, but if I am wrong, so be it. Your defense of Robert Pondiscio saying “There is no doubt in my mind that there is a significant appetite among low-income parents for exactly the flavor of education that Eva Moskowitz offers” speaks for itself.
If that statement by Pondiscio doesn’t bother you more than Diane Ravitch assuming something you believe is wrong based on Pondiscio’s writings, that speaks for itself.
Because that Pondiscio quote is shocking as a response to a reporter writing a story about the repellent and racist discipline at Success Academy.
But it doesn’t seem to bother you. What bothers you is that the person who made that shocking statement when he was asked about the repellent practices at Success Academy was misunderstood.
Instead of saying “how dare anyone misunderstand that statement by Robert Pondiscio”, you should be saying “how dare Robert Pondiscio make that statement when he was asked for a quote from a reporter writing a story about the repellent and racist disciplinary practices at Success Academy.”
“There is no doubt in my mind that there is a significant appetite among low-income parents for exactly the flavor of education that Eva Moskowitz offers”
That isn’t a condemnation of racist and repellent discipline. It is a justification for why it should be allowed to continue unabated.
FLERP!’s argument sounds to me exactly like what critics of Black Lives Matters say.
When right wing Republicans are defending aggressive policing directed at African Americans and say that stop and frisk is a great thing that is responsible for keeping crime down, it is disingenuous for them to then say “We aren’t saying that African American communities NEED those racist police policies, we are just defending how great they are.”
You have chided Diane Ravitch because you believe that just because Robert Pondiscio has defended aggressive discipline directed at African American students and says that the charter that uses aggressive discipline against African American students is doing a brilliant job of educating their students, it is absolutely wrong for anyone to say that Pondiscio thinks those students “need” it.
Which of course begs the obvious question:
If you don’t think aggressive policing directed at African Americans is “needed”, why would anyone defend it?
If you don’t think aggressive discipline directed toward the African American students at Success Academy is “needed”, why would anyone defend it?
It is too cute for FLERP! to insist that everyone should assume that Robert Pondiscio does NOT think that aggressive discipline directed toward African American students is needed, but he just supports a policy he believes is “repellent” because, hey, why not?
“There is no doubt in my mind that there is a significant appetite among low-income parents for exactly the flavor of education that Eva Moskowitz offers”
FLERP!, you are too smart to get cute here. Diane Ravitch has given Robert Pondiscio plenty of opportunities to clarify why he is so determined to defend a repellent policy he himself keeps insisting is absolutely not needed.
If a repellent policy is absolutely not needed, no one would try to come up with cockamamie reasons to justify why that repellent policy should remain in place.
And Pondiscio’s claim that aggressive discipline is not needed, but low-income parents have an appetite for the flavor of it so it’s all okay, is really hard to defend. So why are you defending it?
Your sympathy should be with the victims of that repellent discipline, not with a white man who excuses it on the grounds that low-income parents have “an appetite” for that repellent discipline.
FLERP! says:
“If someone told me that some white guy argues that black children need harsh discipline, and I credited that statement, I would conclude that that person was racist.”
If “some white guy” DEFENDED giving black children harsh discipline on the grounds that their parents have “an appetite” for it, would you conclude that person was racist?
Maybe you can explain why you would not conclude that a white guy who defends giving black children harsh discipline on the grounds that their parents have “an appetite” for it is not racist.
Do you read any articles about what white parents want? What ‘”flavor” of wanting feeds their “appetite.”
C’mon – if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck…
Pondiscio seems to be a coward.
Pondiscio clearly does not want to say whether he approves or disapproves of the practices that Success Academy is being criticized for because he is smart enough to realize how racist he would look if he insisted that all of those kids “deserved” their harsh treatment because of the awful and violent actions Eva Moskowitz publicly implies over and over again that those very young children keep doing. I believe that Eva Moskowitz could not get away with that if those kindergarten and first grade children had been middle class white 6 year olds.
I doubt very much that Pondiscio really believes that 18% of the children in a new Success Academy school acted out violently in their kindergarten and first grade classes. I am going to assume that Pondiscio recognizes how racist anyone would have to be to accept as true such a ridiculous claim about a group of 5 and 6 year olds. But he is much too cowardly to point out the racism inherent in the false narrative that Eva Moskowitz has been pushing about the violent nature of the the very youngest students who win her charter school lotteries and have parents willing to jump through hoops to get them a top notch education.
Pondiscio was also highly critical when an offshoot of the Black Lives Matters tried to address the harsh practices in charters (among other things) in late 2016. Pondiscio acted like everyone should shut up and let charters treat African American children however they wanted. As he did in the Chalkbeat article, Pondiscio alludes to parents being happy to have their kids treated that way, but when called out on what he is clearly implying with his defense of charter school’s harsh discipline, Pondiscio then denies that what he is implying is really what he means.
If Pondiscio isn’t defending the harsh discipline that led to extraordinarily high suspension rates for the very youngest students at Success Academy, then he should make that clear. He could have doe so, but instead he wants to change the subject to how it is white man Robert Pondiscio who is really the victim here.
Pondiscio could join you in pointing out the inherent racism of a white charter CEO who justifies suspending extraordinarily high percentages of kindergarten students who are almost never white on the grounds that they are acting out violently in their classrooms. But he won’t do that.
Pondiscio has only himself to blame.
Daniel Willingham it’s as plain as the nose on your face where RP stands. In the context of defending harsh no-excuses policy imposed on SA’s overwhelmingly black & brown students, resulting in their eyebrow-raising suspension stats, RP holds “There is no doubt in my mind that there is a significant appetite among low-income parents for exactly the flavor of education that Eva Moskowitz offers.”
Is there a difference between defending the policy because that’s what the customer wants*, and simply stating “black kids need harsh discipline”? Hair-splitting. Asked & answered by Diane, first go-round.
*whether the customer actually wants it is debatable, given attrition stats, as nycpsp points out. Yes, they still have customers lining up for this punishment, swayed by the chimerical brass ring of test stats; yes, they continue to have a hard time holding onto existing students once parents hang on for a few revolutions & get the picture.
bethree5,
Exactly. And I think the most incriminating thing is that Robert Pondiscio PIVOTED to talking about what he claims is the “significant appetite” for what is being criticized!
If that isn’t a defense of those abhorrent practices, then it is certainly a clear statement designed to justify why those practices being criticized should continue unabated.
Pondiscio isn’t the victim here. On the contrary, if he wanted to clarify his point of view, he has had ample time to do so.
I can only assume that he doesn’t want to and that speaks volumes. Why is he so frightened about really calling out these practices that he will only vaguely allude to as “repellent” without actually mentioning what they are. I’m guessing Pondiscio subscribes to the “a few bad apples” theory but he knows how discredited that is now so wants to remain very vague in his criticisms while claiming he is the real victim, not all the children suspended from their kindergarten classrooms who were publicly labeled as unaccountably violent by Eva Moskowitz.
The movement is a long time coming and sorely needed. I am thrilled to see Eva exposed as madam of schools where racial discrimination is the rule, not the exception.
Misspelling: it’s madame, as in, well, you know.
This is just the beginning. Success Academy fosters a culture of fear and intimidation. It needs to be halted. Supporters of no-excuses charters will fall back on their tired marketing line about parents choosing to enroll their children in the schools, claiming it is not oppression when it’s a choice. That is entirely false. It’s like saying police brutality is not oppression of New Yorkers because people choose to live in New York instead of Toronto. There is no excuse for police brutality and there is no excuse for no-excuses punishment. Teachers are supposed to be nurturing mentors, not terrifying task masters. Harsh punishment is not helpful to children; it’s none other than vicious cruelty, racist as can be.
“You can say that again.”
Yes. And that fear and intimidation are similar to the police. Eva Moskowitz releases personal information about very young students whose parents publicly complain in order to mischaracterize and smear those children as violent and dangerous 6 year olds who deserved their own punishment.
It is exactly the way that the police always mischaracterize the victims of police brutality. They deserved it. Just like all the students that Success Academy treats harshly deserved it. Even when they are in kindergarten.
The public knows that the children Success Academy treats harshly deserve it because Eva Moskowitz says they do.
And it is important to add that Eva Moskowitz had no problem finding lots of time in her busy schedule in 2017 when she wrote op eds, sat for interviews and gave speeches endorsing Betsy DeVos and used her public platform to educate the public about how important and vital it was that the Senate confirm Betsy DeVos to be the Secretary of Education.
Eva Moskowitz also had no problem finding the time to release the private records of some of the very youngest non-white elementary school students in order to mischaracterize them as violent and awful children who were a danger to other children when their parent publicly complained about the harsh treatment that their very young child was experiencing.
I always recognized the racism inherent in the fact that white education reporters like Eliza Shapiro never once looked at the high suspension rates in some Success Academy schools with virtually no white students, when those schools ONLY served Kindergarten and first graders, and thought, “something is wrong here, there children cannot all be as inherently violent as Eva Moskowitz keeps implying that they are, so why are so many young children being given out of school suspensions?”
Moskowitz got away with treating non-white children in the manner designed to get them out of their school because a lot of white people at the SUNY Charter Institute and in journalism never questioned the underlying presumptions of those high suspension rates for kindergarten and first grade students. And those underlying assumptions were racist. The excuses for the high suspension rates of 5 and 6 year old African American children were dependent on white people in power not even noticing how absurd and ridiculous it was to believe a charter CEO who was implying that the motivated families who won her lotteries jut happened to have raised violent 5 year old children in disproportionally high numbers.
Robert Pondiscio — who is white – spent a lot of time writing a book about Success Academy. Did he talk about how it was odd that so many of the 5 year old children who won the Success Academy lottery and whose parents jumped through hoops to enroll them just happened to be so inherently violently that only giving them out of school suspensions could keep the other children safe?
Did Robert Pondiscio look at disproportionately huge percentages of African American kindergarten and first graders at Success Academy “needing” to be suspended and question it, or did he simply accept it as necessary?
It is long past time for the SUNY Charter Institute Board members to step down and be replaced by people who ask questions when a white charter CEO’s new charter suspends 18% of the Kindergarten and first graders who win the lottery for that charter. And it is long past time for Eliza Shapiro and other education reporters to ask the head of the SUNY Charter Institute board whether he would have been so cavalier about believing that so many Kindergarten and first graders were acting out violently if those students had been white 5 and 6 year olds.
The attacks on John Merrow when he reported on the high suspension rates at Success Academy were made by people whose inherent racism did not ever lead them to question the obvious — that this white charter CEO was claiming a level of violence by her kindergarten lottery winners was was patently absurd and would never have been accepted by anyone if those very young students were white.
But the SUNY Charter Institute accepted it without question. And the NY education journalist establishment accepted it.
Hi, NYC public school parent,
You were right about Success Academy. I was wrong.
Hope you are well,
Tim
Tim,
Is this a joke? If not, what made you change your mind?
No, it’s no joke. It’s clear now that where there was smoke, there was fire; the suspensions and 911 calls and repeatedly holding kids back wasn’t isolated or “a few bad apples” but rather a systematic way of doing business for Success in the name of test score supremacy. They demoted 15 children from 12th to 11th grade several months into the school year this past fall!
You saw it; I couldn’t. Their model is based on doing actual tangible harm to kids who threaten their metrics and it is deeply wrong.
I too was surprised.
Tim,
I admire you posting that you have looked again at the evidence and had a change of heart. You didn’t have to do so, and I thank you for letting me know.
I know you and I spent a lot of time debating and arguing about this, and my very long posts could be annoying and boring, but if it wasn’t clear, one of the reasons I did that is because I thought you seemed like a reasonable person who would be swayed by facts if you only would look at them and give them a fair assessment.
“Their model is based on doing actual tangible harm to kids who threaten their metrics and it is deeply wrong.”
That is really insightful. I would change it in one way:
“Their model is dependent on having the white ed reformers, the white SUNY Charter Institute board members, and the powerful billionaires who fund Success Academy’s PR efforts not care at all about the actual tangible harm to kids who threaten their metrics.”
Every time I read another Robert Pondiscio pivot to how the families of students who remain at Success Academy adore their system, I recall all those people who kept defending stop and frisk because it kept crime down. Since when does the fact that some parents are content in an existing system justify it when other kids are abused by it?
I wish Pondiscio would stop pivoting to how many parents like the system and address whether he thinks the system is the problem, or if it is just a few “bad apples” as Success Academy and its defenders have told us whenever one of their practices is revealed.
NYCPSP,
The teacher referenced in the Chalkbeat article organized a Change.org petition.
Most who signed identify as former teachers or parents at SA.
Read the comments.
https://www.change.org/p/hold-the-ceo-of-success-academy-accountable/c
Alex Zimmerman of Chalkbeat unfortunately reflects the biases typical white education reporter who is still giving white CEO Eva Moskowitz the benefit of the doubt. He needs to check his biases.
For example:
“But Moskowitz has vigorously defended her network’s strict approach arguing that exacting behavior expectations that are consistently enforced provide a necessary condition for student learning. And network leaders argue it works: Success’ students, the vast majority of whom are Black or Latino, typically outperform much whiter and more affluent districts on state tests.”
Remember, that white reporter Alex Zimmerman’s certainty — which he report as absolute fact — that Success’ students outperform on state tests depends entirely on his ignoring attrition rates. The fact that Alex Zimmerman is not shocked and surprised that the so-called top performing charter in the state would lose so many students is absolutely racist.
Having a 99% passing rate on state tests is meaningless if a huge percentage of the students who won the kindergarten lottery are discouraged from enrolling or are simply flunked over and over again or drummed out before 3rd grade testing. But white reporters like Alex Zimmerman never question high attrition rates in top ranked schools that serve primarily African American and Latinx students.
An example of this double standard: BASIS Charter Schools in Arizona act similarly as Success Academy and also had high attrition rates. But since many of the students who enrolled in “the best charter in the country” and left were white, the reporters covering BASIS didn’t wrote story after story that were based on the premise that “BASIS works so well, those kids who graduate would be abject failures if they had attended a good public school and the kids who left clearly just had parents who didn’t care about their kids education and decided they preferred their children to be failures.”
Instead, the articles made it clear that BASIS was only interested in teaching the most highly motivated students who were already academically successful to begin with. It was clear that those children were not being “saved” from failing public schools and would have been perfectly fine in public schools, too.
But Moskowitz – and her white enablers like Robert Pondiscio – wants the public to believe that it is her harsh discipline that “saves” children who would otherwise be abject failures. It feeds into the racist notion that non-white students, especially African American students, need that kind of harsh treatment to be successful.
If Alex Zimmerman had bothered to look at the statistics, he would see that last year, there were 90,000 African American and Latinx 3rd – 8th graders who scored well on the state ELA exam — all of them in NYC public schools.
But instead, Zimmerman never questions a charter that had 146 11th graders last year but fewer than 100 are graduating this year. Where did the other 46+ students go?
A good education reporter who didn’t let racism affect his journalistic sense would actually understand that all his stories about how grateful the parents at Success Academy are don’t address all the parents who aren’t grateful. Those parents don’t matter because the white CEO at Success Academy has made it clear which parents matter and which don’t ad the white SUNY Charter Institute board members have made it clear which parents matter and which don’t matter. And since the ones that don’t matter didn’t stay at Success Academy, why shouldn’t Alex Zimmerman assume that those parents wanted their kids to get a terrible education instead of a great one.
Zimmerman has not yet checked his biases and he will continue to give great credibility to Robert Pondiscio, the man who doesn’t question the violent nature of Success Academy’s lottery winning kindergarten children when Eva Moskowitz wants the public to believe that those kids needed those suspensions because they were violent.
“There is no doubt in my mind that there is a significant appetite among low-income parents for exactly the flavor of education that Eva Moskowitz offers,” said Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow at the conservative-learning Fordham Institute who spent a year observing a Success elementary school in the South Bronx and wrote a book about it.
Alex Zimmerman never bothers to point out that so many of the parents who Pondiscio claims have a “significant appetitive” for this kind of school are leaving it. Apparently they don’t matter and only the opinions of parents of children that Success Academy allows to remain count.
key words which have haunted the aggressive implementation of school reform invasions for years: the biases typical to White education reporters
Where and when did Robert Pondiscio argue that black children need harsh discipline? Where and when did Eva Moskowitz argue that? Please cite your source.
Please read the Chalkbeat article that is cited. I assume you did not.
This is a direct quote:
“The posts describe calling 911 on students with behavior problems, policing Black students’ hair by banning certain headwraps, and a culture where white educators are comfortable dressing down parents of color for minor issues like arriving late to pick up their children. Half of the teachers and principals at Success are white, 27% are Black, 13% are Hispanic and 5% are Asian. Meanwhile, 83% of the network’s roughly 18,000 students are Black or Hispanic and most come from low-income families.
“This is all long overdue,” a current Brooklyn Success teacher told Chalkbeat on condition of anonymity, referring to the debate about some of the network’s practices. “I’m hoping that if we get enough people to rally from within, something can actually be done.”
Isn’t it harsh to call the police to respond to behavioral problems in school? Should black children be punished for their hair styles? Should young white teachers chastise black parents?
After describing this patronizing and punitive attitude toward black children and black parents, the article quotes Pondiscio:
“There is no doubt in my mind that there is a significant appetite among low-income parents for exactly the flavor of education that Eva Moskowitz offers,” said Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow at the conservative-learning Fordham Institute who spent a year observing a Success elementary school in the South Bronx and wrote a book about it. “It just does violence to reality to pretend that this is some kind of pedagogy that’s being imposed on families of color.”
So black parents have “a significant appetite” to have teachers call the police when their children act up in school? Black parents want young white teachers to chastise their children’s hair style?
“He’s somebody who has done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I notice.” Donald Trump talking about–wait for this–Frederick Douglass.
“I made Junteenth very famous. It’s actually an important event, an important time. But nobody had ever heard of it.”
–Donald Trump
sorry about the typo, folks
Diane, I would not choose to teach in a school with an extremely strict, punitive, and minutely detailed discipline policy. But I think Robert Pondiscio is saying, through his writing overall, that some of these schools help certain children–not all black children, not all children of any group–and that this help comes at a great cost (which, by some counts, could be too great). His book is full of doubts and questions.
One argument (made by many) is that some children from poor backgrounds are surrounded by noise, chaos, despair–and need to learn, detail by detail, how to structure their lives, particularly at school, since they lack the build-in structures and expectations that children from more affluent backgrounds may take for granted. In addition, they need clear, literal communication. Whether one agrees or disagrees with this, it is not a specifically white perspective. I have heard it from people of a range of ethnic, economic, and cultural backgrounds–in teacher education classes, professional development sessions (in public schools), and other contexts.
But someone making this argument would still concede that it applies to some students and not others–no matter what their race, economic background, etc. There are many factors that influence how much built-in structure a particular student may have (or need).
Even if Robert sees some value in extremely strict and detailed discipline codes–and my understanding is that he does, though with misgivings–I do not think he has said, or meant, that this is what “black children need.” Rather, I hear him saying that this is what some parents (not all) want for their children. And he wrestles with the issue of attrition, which cannot be brushed off.
A separate question is: How do you address students’ widely different needs while also helping them build a foundation for their lives–a foundation for understanding the world, working with others, and coming into their own? One problem with strict/detailed discipline systems (a problem that Robert discusses in his book) is that they do not prepare students for situations–such as college seminars–where the expectations are implicit. Students drilled in the SLANT technique, for instance, may have trouble in a situation where they are simply expected to “participate thoughtfully.” Students accustomed to extremely specific homework tasks may be unprepared for challenges like reading a 300-page book and preparing to discuss it or writing a paper on it.
Another question is: To what extent are the strict discipline codes actually clear in their expectations, communications, and consequences, and to what extent do they lead to tragic misunderstandings? A rule that seems crystal-clear may actually be a setup for children whose so-called “misbehavior” is not what it seems. There is a difficult balance between consistency and flexibility, between treating everyone equally under the established rules and taking the trouble to find out what is actually going on with each child. Robert’s book takes up this issue too.
In everything I have read by Robert, and in my conversations with him, I have always known him as someone who distrusts fads and sweeping solutions in education. Moreover, I don’t see him generalizing about any racial groups. I have not read any statements by him along the lines of “Black children need X or Y.” Instead, I find an argument (offset with many questions and doubts) about how schools can help some children who have been badly set back by poverty. I don’t agree with all of his views, but this comment isn’t about agreement or disagreement. It is about what I believe he is and isn’t saying.
Funny, we have been discussing here how important it is for children to learn to build structure in their lives by having more unstructured free time. It’s important to take the toxic stress out of the lives of young people, stress that can be traumatic and permanently harmful. The stress isn’t “noise and chaos”, it’s often racism. It’s worrying about being murdered for just walking down the damn street. It’s pressure to do things a hundred times better and still have the tech company reject your application. It’s waking up to nooses hanging from the trees by the lake. Creating prison-like structure in school is will not overcome racism, and in many ways is racism. It’s time to stop looking the other way about racism, stop telling people to cross over, and start being anti-racist, all of us, including Eva Moskowitz and her followers.
That’s the problem with charter schools and high stakes testing being promulgated as “reform”, it tacitly accepts inequality and places the blame and the onus to change on the people instead of on the powerful. It allows billionaires to say to themselves, “I deserve everything because I got it with merit,” and lobby for deregulation and privatization instead of progressive taxes. It’s time to change.
Diana,
I was not writing a review of Robert Pondiscio’s book. I was writing about an article in Chalkbeat whose main point was that Black teachers and other staff were complaining about racism at Success Academy charters. Their complaints began because Eva Moskowitz was silent for four days after the murder of George Floyd. Her prolonged silence prompted them to complain about other practices at Success Academy that they consider racist, such as calling 911 when children behave badly or monitoring black hair styles or suspending disproportionate numbers of black boys or young write teachers hectoring Black parents.
Chalkbeat contacted Pondiscio to ask him about the complaints of racism. His response was:
“There is no doubt in my mind that there is a significant appetite among low-income parents for exactly the flavor of education that Eva Moskowitz offers,” said Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow at the conservative-learning Fordham Institute who spent a year observing a Success elementary school in the South Bronx and wrote a book about it. “It just does violence to reality to pretend that this is some kind of pedagogy that’s being imposed on families of color.”
“At the same time, he isn’t surprised that some employees may be increasingly uncomfortable with the responsibility of enforcing strict behavior expectations on students of color, even if they are designed to foster student achievement.
“A lot of those techniques — rightly or wrongly — may feel oppressive to a new generation of young people, and I think that’s a vulnerability for high-performing charter schools,” Pondiscio said.”
I wish he had said that it is wrong to call 911 (the cops) when a child acts out. I wish he had said that it is wrong to punish children for their hair style. I wish he had said it is wrong to suspend disproportionate numbers of black boys as a disciplinary tool. But he didn’t. His response was an “eye of the beholder” defense of these racist tactics.
Furthermore, instead of writing to me directly—he has my personal email, as do you—he went to Twitter to denounce me as shameful. I twice invited him on Twitter to write for this blog to clarify any misunderstanding, and he did not answer or accept my invitation.
Did he ask you to defend him?
Why doesn’t he come out himself and say he deplores the disparate and harsh treatment of Black boys in Eva Moskowitz’s charter schools? If it’s repellent to him, as he claimed on Twitter, why doesn’t he say so to Chalkbeat or here?
The Black teachers at the SA chain risked their jobs by speaking out against racist treatment of Black children and their parents. Why doesn’t he speak out too? He has nothing to lose.
Diane
Diane,
No, Robert didn’t ask me to say anything. I found myself missing the days of Bridging Differences, Eduwonkette, and the Core Knowledge Blog–and was sad that things had come to this point. I don’t idealize the “old days.” They too were fraught and only barely preceded the state where we are now. But there was some rich and nonvitriolic dialogue (both serious and witty, both urgent and playful).
The current situation is bigger than any of us individually, but everyone has a part in it. The country is fractured and dealing (or not dealing) with severe problems–racism, unemployment, poverty, the upcoming election, the coronavirus, and much more. The problems are real. But the divisions are seeping into language in a destructive way. People cast others as the enemy before hearing them out. For any true solutions, something different will be needed. I hope we can pull it together.
As far as Robert is concerned, even given what you said just now, I don’t see the translation into “black children need harsh discipline.” Granted, he does not condemn the Success schools as others do. But that does not mean that he touts the schools’ disciplinary practices as a necessity for black children.
I will write to you by email soon (within the next week or two). I don’t have any particular insights besides what I have said here, but I would like to say hello.
Well said.
Hi, Diana,
Thank you for writing. I always appreciate your thoughts.
Your 2nd para thumbnails the pedagogical theory to which RP may be referring in the cited Chalkbeat comments defending SA behavior policy. That was the implication I took. And – just reporting here as a layman observer (unlike yourself or Diane) – why I objected. SA applies their policy across the board. They apparently believe all their students, by virtue of being poor, fit that narrow category of being raised “surrounded by noise, chaos, despair.”
You address that point in the next para, & also note the theory underlying “no excuses” behavior policy is about [some] poor kids, not necessarily black children.
Gotta say, all this strikes me as weasel-words requiring a reality check. Regardless of nuances expressed in his book, RP is defending SA behavior policy in the Chalkbeat article. SA treats all its students as needing “to learn, detail by detail, how to structure their lives, particularly at school, since they lack the built-in structures and expectations that children from more affluent backgrounds may take for granted.”
Which is quite a stretch, considering the intention and organization required of families to even to apply. More likely, parents are looking to reinforce their own values and insulate their kids from street culture. And/ or looking for a leg up with test scores. Either way a bad fit, as suggested by attrition stats. And as to whether or not SA’s policy is racist, the fact is, their students are predominantly black and brown (like most poor kids in NYC), so it’s de facto if not de jure. Take it a step further: move SA schools into Appalachia & you’ve got an arrogant, presumptive policy “correcting” local [white] culture.
Forgive me for preaching to the choir!
I am so terribly sad to see our country in such pain. It’s not like we didn’t see this coming. Trump just spills gas on all our open wounds….every day.
We must make change.
Many of us who have been career educators in predominantly black and brown community schools and charter schools, for decades have seen a clear difference of how children of color have been disciplined. In my experience, 40 years, the harshness, frequency, severity of consequences, communication with parents in poverty, higher numbers of special education referrals, discipline tribunal referrals, OSS, ISS, police involvement….were a daily occurrence, reflected in our data and daily observations.
Public schools were closely monitored by county and state education departments when discipline data and special education referrals were outside of acceptable standards. Charter schools are not supervised, accountable, not evaluated, are run by corporate companies, hire non-educators, limit special education, and select/dismiss children routinely.
I am saying all this to share how hard it is to observe the discrepancies and the long term impact of such different practices. Systemic Racism has been part of my entire career as an educator in poor urban and rural schools in the US.
I always found myself pointing out to others:
We would never treat white children this way.
We would not call cops on white children for specific issues.
We would not refer white kids for EB/D for certain behaviors……
This country has so much work to do.
I have more Hope now – once the President & Co. are gone.
Charter schools’ increased danger to children is strongly connected to the MILLION$ made by charter opportunists & do-gooders, private consultants, corporations, realtors, and the timed starvation of our public schools. Killing our neighborhood schools, killing neighborhoods, increasing poverty, ignoring poor families…..the well maintained killing of urban areas…..only to send in MILLIONAIRES to “Rescue” poor black & brown children for $$$$$.
Of course, parents are drawn to the lies, hype, promise of these corporate slick advertisement and promise of college tracks. All parents love their children, but their love & desperation is a known trade off: harsh discipline, unrealistic parent involvement, unrealistic test scores and the punishment to reach those corporate goals. Parents fear what is left in gutted or shuttered public schools.
Sophie’s Choice.
Black & Brown children deserve to be treated with respect, decency, care, LOVE, kindness and hope….just like our white children. It’s not happening!
No Excuses charters are horrible for all kids – the kids who witness harsh discipline AND those who are rejected, mocked, shamed, pained.
We act surprised when children feel rage in those settings, act out, hate school, hate teachers and learning….we taught it to them.
PUNISHMENT ALWAYS WORKS to change behavior!
Avoiding PUNISHMENT also changes behavior.
STOP PUNISHING OUR CHILDREN!
We communicate that poor children have to be punished, as an acceptable discipline, because they were born into a poor family.
Sick! Harmful! Lifelong trauma!
Whites need to STOP treating black children this way.
Charters MUST BE CALLED OUT & EXPOSED for the MILLION$ they make on poor children.
What a racket!
Systemic Racism!
Our nation’s children can only thrive if we treat them well every day.
We can only do so if it is ALL ABOUT RAISING healthy children.
My heart is heavy….I saw this coming decades ago and felt helpless with a cliff ahead.
We have millions of loving and caring teachers who make a difference in children’s lives, in spite of America’s bashing and undermining of those career educators
Thanks for listening….dear choir.
RP’s Tweets make it clear to me….follow his $$$$$ loyalty trail.
He will not engage or touch the hot stove issue of PUNISHMENT at SuccessAcademy.
Where else can a journalist rise up to become a highly paid so-called education specialist? Only in starve public schools, push CHARTER WORLD & remain among other so-called eduSpecialist. MILLIONAIRE$ hover in educating poor black & brown children in the US. Those children are worth MILLIONS to CorpProfiteers.
Go the COMMENTS section of this old article about SA … if you want a good laugh:
https://dianeravitch.net/2017/10/10/new-york-civil-rights-group-threatens-to-sue-if-suny-charter-committee-lowers-standards-for-charter-teachers/