Alex Zimmerman wrote an article about Black teachers at Success Academy charter schools questioning what some regarded as racist treatment of children and parents at the charters. After reviewing their complaints, Zimmerman asked Robert Pondiscio his view of the controversy. Pondiscio wrote a book about the chain after spending a year observing it.You can read the article here. I summarized the article here.
Robert Pondiscio took to Twitter to denounce me as “shameful” for not making clear that he found the practices described in the article to be “repellent.” But he didn’t say that to Alex Zimmerman of Chalkbeat. I responded on Twitter, inviting Robert to write a post on my blog. He did not answer.
I heard today from Diana Senechal, who brilliantly edited my book “The Death and Life of the Great American School system: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.” Robert Pondiscio was an early reader of the book, and I think I introduced them. She wrote a comment today that defended Robert at length.
It was nice to hear from Diana, but still no word from Robert himself.
You can find Diana’s long commentary in the responses to the article.
I wonder why Robert doesn’t write me directly, offline or offline. If I got anything wrong, I would quickly correct it. I once again extend an invitation to Robert Pondiscio to write a post here about the disciplinary policies at Success Academy charter schools and the reactions to them by Black teachers. Are they “repellent” or are they a necessary element in producing high test scores? Or neither?
Here is my response to Diana Senechal.
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 white 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 Ravitch's blog 
In the last decade, I have learned the hard way that many if not all extreme-right, alt-right conservatives will shun someone they cannot bully with their one-sided, their way tactics.
I think Robert Pondiscio allegedly belongs to that segment of our population.
The Robert Pondiscios of the world will allegedly avoid debating someone like Diane Ravitch when they cannot control the platform for the debate and therefore cannot guarantee that their voice will be the last one everyone hears and thinks about so they can end up crowing they won that debate even if they didn’t.
Does that mean Robert Pondiscio is in reality a coward? I think so but that is only my individual opinion.
I agree. He was making his comments known publicly because someone is watching and he’s most hopeful that others will come to his aid.
All your points are well-made, Diane. He should denounce the practices, although my understanding from the article
is that these are touted as “past practices” now. I may have read it wrong, however, or perhaps it wasn’t 100% clear.
He needs to explain why he took to a public audience to be the consumers of his complaint. It appears that someone is buttering his bread.
We need to stop allowing the words of racist apologists to come across as legitimate. I am curious to hear if he responds to you.
LG,
He has an offer to write here. I’m very fast to admit error and correct the record if I’m wrong.
I understand why Pondiscio took exception. The original post insinuated he’s racist about as strongly as it’s possible to insinuate someone’s racist without actually typing “This guy is racist.”
I also understand why someone who’s upset about a public accusation of racism would respond in a public forum rather than through a private email.
If I were he, I would accept my invitation to respond on my blog.
I haven’t read his book, but would you say it is accurate that Pondiscio argues that “Black children need harsh discipline”?
I was hoping that Pondiscio would speak out against the harsh disciplinary no-excuses model that Success Academy exemplifies. I still hope he will.
FLERP!,
I thought that the one realization that the Black Lives Matters movement has taught us all is that there is a lot of racism in looking the other way when African Americans are characterized as violent to justify police shootings.
Eva Moskowitz defended her high suspension rates of kindergarten and first graders by publicly characterizing huge numbers of African American students as acting out violently only due to their violent natures and not because of anything that happened in their Kindergarten or first grade classrooms. If their parents complained publicly, she even went so far as to release private documents that characterize very young students in the most negative manner to “prove” that these children are abnormally violent. As you probably know, I never understood how anyone was treating those claims as if they were anything but absurd and racist. Those claims were painting a portrait of huge numbers of violent young children that was clearly a lie designed to hide all the problems with Success Academy’s so-called miraculous “teaching” methods that turn 99% of the students into high performing scholars. So much easier to say that those methods worked on all kids who weren’t violent and abnormal than to point out that they were clearly causing lots of children to act out and many children to leave.
There was no reason to push that lie unless the ultimate goal was to pretend a charter was working miracles when it was not.
If Robert Pondidscio remained quiet when he clearly knew about high suspension rates and heard Eva Moskowitz’ defense of them, then what does that say about what he believes about the violent natures of those students?
How many times over the years have I heard Eva Moskowitz defending her high suspension rates of 5 and 6 year old students by telling the SAME story of the child throwing a chair at the teacher. She intentionally wants the public to believe that there are huge numbers of students doing things like violently throwing chairs in their first grade class, and that is all due to their own violent natures.
Is that racist? I have been posting here for years that those claims are outrageously racist and clearly not true, and if there were 34 kindergarten and first grade children in a single small charter who were doing violent things like throwing chairs at their teacher, then something was wrong with the school. Eva Moskowitz pushed the narrative that there was something wrong with the 5 year olds who won her lottery.
I thought Robert Pondiscio’s book would point out the racism of that, but instead Pondiscio is still pushing the narrative that the students who thrive at Success Academy would not have done so at a school that did not treat other children so harshly, and thus justifies those tactics instead of calling them out as wrong.
If you can find me a citation where Robert Pondiscio called high suspension rates of the very youngest students at a few Success Academy charters that had almost no white students as “repellent”, then Pondiscio has a good defense. But he has always put his focus on the fact that some parents like the school, as if that justifies the horrible practices targeted at other students.
At any rate, we now know that Pondiscio finds the policies at Success Academy “repellent”.
Do we really know what it is that Robert Pondiscio finds repellent?
I suspect that Pondiscio, if pressed, would make the same “a few bad applies” argument that those who defend aggressive police tactics that disproportionately target African Americans make. I even doubt that he would include Eva Moskowitz as one of the “bad apples”, but I would love to be wrong about that.
Diane Ravitch has certainly offered him space to clarify his position, but I think he prefers the Susan Collins approach, never addressing the contradictions between what he will “tut tut” about and the actions he takes to empower the people who commit those actions that he “tut tuts” about.
As someone that taught mostly black and brown students for more than three decades, I believe there is a difference between firm discipline and demeaning discipline. Firm discipline upholds rules and consequences. It is not meant to undermine students’ self-image. Demeaning discipline is punitive without being reflective or instructive in any way. While it is true that some black and white parents accept harsh punishments because it is the way they were treated as children, it does not mean that demeaning discipline is a better way. Discipline should always include dignity. My black and brown students responded very positively to discipline with dignity.
By what authority does a billionaire- funded organization like Fordham assign itself a role in K-12 state policy? Ohio was established as a state not, a colonialist’s property.
Why hasn’t Fordham been held accountable for its privatization policy which led to the costly debacle- ECOT?
After learning of the NAACP’s request for a moratorium on charter schools, what explains Ohio state Sen. Steve Huffman (racist comments in a public hearing last week) and, his first cousin, majority House leader, Matt Huffman’s advocacy for EdChoice?
Does the benefit that Catholic schools receive from voucher policy (found ineffective in Ohio educational outcomes) factor into K-12 privatization advocacy by foundations like Fordham? If it does, it is an affront to separation of church and state, a founding national principle for which so many have sacrificed so much.
Could Diane Senechal please cite the page in Robert Pondiscio’s book about Success Academy where Robert Pondiscio writes about the practices that Success Academy uses that resulted in high suspension rates of kindergarten and first grade students and states that those practices are “repellent”?
I did see Robert Pondiscio writing in late 2016 about the Black Lives Matters offshoot that was expressing concern about those kinds of practices in charters. Pondiscio was most critical of BLM and not critical of charters CEOs who were still defending suspension rates of 18% (in a charter where the oldest students were 7) as being absoloutely necessary because the kindergarten and first graders in those schools were acting out so violently in their classrooms.
Can Diana Senechal please cite somewhere where Pondiscio condemned high suspension rates for the very youngest elementary school students as “repellent”? Because all I can find is Pondiscio insisting that what matters is whether enough parents are happy enough to fill the seats.
By not condemning those high suspension rates and by not condemning the white charter CEO who kept publicly telling stories about how violent so many of the (mostly African American) kindergarten students at Success Academy were, Pondiscio enabled it. He was complicit.
When John Merrow pointed it out, did Pondiscio defend Merrow? Because most of the education reform movement he is part of did to John Merrow exactly what Pondiscio did to Diane Ravitch. They changed the subject from the harm done to African American children and instead claimed that the real victim was white charter CEO Eva Moskowitz. Just like Pondiscio wants to present himself as the real victim, and he expresses almost no concern for all the children whose parents wanted the Success Academy education but learned the hard way that their child was not welcome and would be humiliated and punished for their academic and behavioral failings (at age 6!) and if that humiliation and punishment did not turn them into a high performing scholar, it would continue unabated until the child left.
If there is evidence that Pondiscio recognized the racism inherent in a white charter CEO excusing high suspension rates of the very youngest students as being necessary to keep the other students and teachers safe, then I hope someone will point it out to me.
Again, the underlying message I got from Pondiscio’s writing was that as long as some parents didn’t complain and stayed at the school and were happy, Pondiscio did not care one iota about how damaging it was to public discourse for a charter leader to be given a huge platform to declare how violent the 5 and 6 year old children in her charters really were.
Pondiscio saw no need to call out that justification of high suspension rates for the very youngest elementary school students as a lie. Either that’s because he believed it was true that those very young students were disproportionately violent, or he just didn’t care about lies.
So I would like to see some evidence that Pondiscio found those practices “repellent” and stated that for the record.
If Pondiscio has been calling out the false claims about the disproportionately violent nature of Success Academy kindergarten lottery winners for the last few years and if Pondiscio has for years been talking about how repellent it is that Eva Moskoiwtz was pushing that narrative of violent young students publicly, then I will happily acknowledge I was wrong to criticize him.
Has he?
A most worthy exercise- clarification about privatization (1) as a means for profit taking by billionaires (2) as a means to introduce religion at every opportunity, echoing William Barr (3) as a means to quash civil disorder, repeating the role of the Catholic Church in Ireland during the great hunger when a million Irish died of starvation (4) as a means to administer the Biblical and colonialist rods of discipline (5) as a mens to starve common goods and/or (6) as a means to establish separate and unequal education.
A few things of interest to this crowd:
Eliza Shapiro’s twitter feed notes that a former SA employee has started a page on Instagram dedicated to complaints about SA.
Fabiola St Hilaire started a change.org petition that has over 3000 signatures.
I am a parent of school age children in NYC. I have seen some really troubling behavior from kids who attend SA and have heard some troubling stories. They all involve boys, and boys of all races. The demands SA puts on these children is inappropriate, which causes them to act out in all manner of ways.
Thanks for the comment.
YES and the same could be said across the nation where testing has taken over our youngest children’s classrooms: the demand put on these children is inappropriate which causes them to act out
Alex Zimmerman is now defending Robert Pondiscio and he seems like an advocate for charters instead of a journalist. Zimmerman’s article demonstrates no understanding of attrition rates or statistics. Zimmerman wrote: “Success’ students, the vast majority of whom are Black or Latino, typically outperform much whiter and more affluent districts on state tests” which is absolutely true but absolutely meaningless if the students at Success Academy who won’t do well on state tests are no longer in the school and not taking those state tests!
I do know that an education reporter who believes that attrition rates are irrelevant and it is only the performance of the students who remain that determines whether a charter is “outperforming” another school had better never become a science reporter! If he was, I’m afraid that Zimmerman would be touting how patients taking Trump’s favorite COVID-19 drug hydroxychloroquine were doing better than patients who weren’t, based on debunked and flawed studies that were once hyped as much as Zimmerman hypes Success Academy’s test scores. Those studies were hyped until real scientists pointed out that the study left out all the patients who weren’t doing well using hydroxychloroquine, which is why it was a meaningless comparison.
Note to Alex Zimmerman — Attrition rates are important. Ask any scientist. Trump’s favorite COVID-19 drug cured virtually all of the patients in a study that left out any patients who didn’t get healthy when they used the drug. And almost every Success Academy student who is still around to take the state tests does well. That doesn’t give you license to compare that drug or the Success Academy education with other treatments and other kinds of education and declare that those other options have been “outperformed”.
And as a reporter, Zimmerman should already know that.
Both Zimmerman and Civitas Institute (Art Pope’s spin tank) reported about research that correlated competition with improved schools. The research study’s author is part of the REACH team (Betsy DeVos’ largesse with taxpayer money)
Zimmerman’s report about the study, “Far from hurting existing schools, charter schools…actually helped their neighbors improve.”
Am I the only person who finds it utterly disingenuous for Robert Pondiscio to now acknowledge that Success Academy’s harsh discipline is “repellent” and now clearly state for the record that he does NOT believe that black students need those harsh tactics to thrive, but then turn around and defend those harsh tactics by implying that low income parents have “an appetite” for them?
Diane, perhaps you should tweet the following to Robert Pondiscio:
“Robert, I am very glad you clarified that you absolutely agree with me that black students at Success Academy do not need harsh discipline and would be thriving academically if Success Academy did not use the practices that you and I both agree are “repellent”. I would gladly write a post making it clear that you agree with me that using harsh discipline against the students in Success Academy Charter schools is not just repellent, but also absolutely unnecessary. May I quote you on that?”
I think Robert Pondiscio is being a bit too cute. In his other writings I certainly got the impression that Robert Pondiscio does believe that the students at Success Academy benefit when the tactics that Pondiscio now claims are “repellent” are used. I think Pondiscio is trying to jump on you because you used the word “need” and Pondiscio wants to attack you instead of simply acknowledging that he believes that those students GREATLY BENEFIT from those harsh tactics.
That’s why I think you should call out Pondiscio, who seems to be trying to have it both ways. I strongly doubt that Pondiscio would ever let you post a “correction” in which you said that Robert Pondiscio has now gone on record stating that those tactics are “repellent” and that those tactics are absolutely unnecessary to have at Success Academy charters and do absolutely nothing for the students. But I will gladly acknowledge I am wrong if Pondiscio does allow you to post that.
One reason I respect Diane Ravitch is that she is always straightforward and makes her views clear and publishes corrections if necessary.
But it would be absurd for Diane Ravitch to publish a correction because she wrote that Robert Pondiscio believes black students at Success Academy need harsh discipline if what Robert Pondiscio really believes is that students at Success Academy greatly benefit from harsh discipline. And I don’t know of any adult who would really try to argue that something that greatly benefits a young child is not something that they need. It is parsing words and I certainly hope that is not what Pondiscio is trying to do.
We can learn about the “rod” and, “we are all sinners”, in an article posted at the Koch-linked Manhattan Institute. (“Catholic Schools and Truth Decay”.) Manhattan Institute is extremely conservative as is the Manhattan Declaration, signed by evangelical and Catholic leaders.
Colonialists who give themselves the power to exploit and discipline the powerless coupled with right wing religion’s debasement and belittlement of all people as sinners – what could possibly go wrong ?
The Manhattan Institute is not Catholic nor does it have any relationship to the Catholic Church. It is a rightwing, billionaire-funded advocacy organization that advances privatization and other conservative causes.
Are the waters muddied if conservative, religious belief compels the staff at conservative-funded organizations?
More muddy- The DOJ and DOE are funded by taxpayers but, a conservative politician appointed religion-driven Secretaries, DeVos and Barr. The Departments are not, on paper religious but, their policy development and implementation is.
Paul Weyrich’s life’s work reflects the blending of religion with political strategy, for example, parallel schools. He was founder of both ALEC and the religious right. IMO, descriptive separation between the two serves to undercut scrutiny and undercuts a significant argument against conservatism enacted as governance- separation of church and state.
“Manhattan” for use in both instances, may be coincidental. Commenter, SDPoet, highlighted the commonality of certain words in think tank titles which have similar agendas.
Robert P. George’s influence in the beltway and the funding for his activities, the organizations he’s linked to, etc. would likely make for an interesting article.
Sourcewatch about the Ethics and Public Policy Center in D.C. (paraphrasing) – according to its website, the Center reinforces the bond between Judeo-Christian moral tradition and the public debate over domestic and foreign policy issues.
While I don’t know if Harvard’s law professor, Vermuele, is linked to EPPC, he was the subject of a recent article in a New York magazine. Vermuele proposes that Catholics be given a place in the front of the U.S. immigration line.
Tom Barry’s view of EPPC is that it was the first neocon institution to break ground in the frontal attack on secular humanists …against progressive theology.
If Catholics were to go to the head of the immigration line, that would open the door to many Latin Americans. Trump wants to shut the Golden Door to all immigrants, unless they are from Nordic countries. No waiting line there.
Ed Whelan heads the EPPC. He took a leave of absence but has now returned to the Center. Whelan stepped aside after describing his twitter screed to bolster Kavanaugh’s nomination as, “appealing and inexcusable”. The PR firm responsible for the swift boat captain, campaign attack against Kerry played a part in the Whelan incident.
We should expect no bottom to the immorality of those who self proclaim to represent religion in their attempt to takeover government, including Trump photo ops at religious shrines
White make entitlement in conservative organizations has built in avoidance of job competition which is ironic given their mantra about free markets.
btw-GLAAD has listed Whelan quotes at its site.
Reportedly, EPPC’s President, Ed Whelan, .clerked for Scalia and is friends with Leonard Leo
The Right Diagnosis Is The Key to Proper Treatment …
Word cloud me if I’m wrong, but it seems the ongoing “Diagnosis” is the same.
Diagnosis: It’s what (fill-in) DOESN’T KNOW, that causes trouble.
Treatment: The “know-that” pill.
The “know-that” pill, could be the Proper Treatment, IF (fill-in) was
YOUR student.
It’s most obvious, they are NOTyour students.
Giving the same “cure” over and over again, and expecting a change is…
Diane, I am so glad that you replied to Pondiscio and Alex Zimmerman’s tweets.
I hope you and everyone else noticed that either Robert Pondiscio or Alex Zimmerman is lying in their tweet-love fest, because Pondiscio claims to have said one thing and Zimmerman’s quote actually contradicts what Pondiscio claims he said and actually supports you and not Pondiscio.
Here is Pondiscio’s denial tweet:
“I did not say “there is a significant appetite for discipline.” I said there was a significant demand for no excuses schools — the model as a whole — not “discipline.”
But either Pondiscio is not telling the truth, or Zimmerman is not telling the truth, because Zimmerman’s article does NOT quote Pondiscio as saying that the appetite was for “no excuses schools”. Let’s all read Zimmerman quoting 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,” said Robert Pondiscio…”
Pondiscio has now gone on record as saying that “the flavor of education” that Eva Moskowitz offers is “repellent”. So I certainly can understand why Pondiscio would be very upset with Zimmerman since Zimmerman quotes Pondiscio saying that low-income parents have a significant appetite for “exactly” that repellent flavor!
Will Alex Zimmerman apologize to Robert Pondiscio for wildly misquoting him because Pondiscio is now tweeting that he believes low-income parents do NOT have an appetite for those repellent tactics that Eva Moskowitz’ uses and Alex Zimmerman’s quote certainly says exactly the opposite.
Which one of them is telling the truth?
NYCPSP:
This explains why I cannot “correct” whatever “error” I made, because I have no idea what Robert thinks is “repellent” to him. Is it calling the police when a child misbehaves that is repellent? Is it chastising a child because of their hair style that is “repellent”? Is it suspending huge proportions of black boys so that the graduating class is heavily weighted towards girls? Is it young white teachers chastising black parents that is “repellent”? I truly don’t know what part of the “no-excuses” regimen he applauds and what part he finds “repellent.” I have repeatedly invited him to write a post for my blog explaining what I got wrong and what he truly believes in, but he has not responded. He has my personal email but no answer.
It is increasingly clear that Pondiscio doesn’t want to say what part he finds repellent and that speaks volumes about how dishonest he is being.
I used to think charters were a perfectly good idea until I watched Eva Moskowitz being just as disingenuous as Robert Pondiscio is being.
Either Robert Pondiscio or Alex Zimmerman is lying about what Robert Pondiscio said when Pondiscio was given the opportunity to either condemn or praise the repellent practices of Eva Moskowitz’ Success Academy charters.
According to Alex Zimmerman, when he interviewed Robert Pondiscio for a story he was writing about the “repellent” things that Success Academy did to its students, Robert Pondiscio said:
“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…”
Now Robert Pondiscio has tweeted a very ugly innuendo about Alex Zimmerman which implies that Zimmerman made up a quote that Robert Pondiscio never said. Pondiscio has gone on the record denying that he ever said that low-income parents wanted EXACTLY the flavor of education that Eva Moskowitz offers.
What Pondiscio claims he really said was that those low-income parents wanted no-excuses charters in general, which leaves all of us with no choice but to believe that Zimmerman invented that quote and Pondiscio never said it.
Shame on Alex Zimmerman for inventing a quote that Pondiscio wants readers to believe he never said. There was no reason for Zimmerman to misquote Pondiscio as specifically referring to Eva Moskowiz’ “flavor” of education when Pondiscio had made it very clear that he was not talking about Eva Moskowitz’ “repellent” form of education, but about the general model of “no excuses”.
I am certain that Alex Zimmerman will be issuing an apology for inventing that quote very soon.
Does it advance the fight for racial equality to have knowledge about the voting and attitude differences within segments of a nation like the U.S. that is largely made up of immigrants and their descendants?
If positive change is desired, does ignoring greater incidence of racial intolerance in segments, serve to smooth while simultaneously facilitating harm?
If racial intolerance has had greater staying power in segments concentrated by national origin, in geographic regions, in religions,
I’d certainly find it advantageous to know if I was a person of color.
And, I’d resent those who want it hidden.
Being called out as a segment with a high number of bigots might put the segment on the defensive and make them act to prove they understand the importance of assimilation into a democracy with equality as a guiding principle. Making it harder for the group’s leaders to remain silent seems like a wise course of action for change. Eroding the racial bigots’ acceptance within their own community also seems like positive direction.