Gary Rubinstein, teacher and blogger, reviewed state data for Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter chain. SA has been widely acclaimed for its high test scores. But Gary found that the attrition rate was astonishing. If low-scoring students leave, it boosts the overall scores.
Gary knew that the overall attrition rate was high but was surprised to see how high it is for students who enter ninth grade.
Over the years I’ve tracked the attrition at Success Academy. They are a K-12 program and I’ve found that generally when I compare the number of kindergarteners entering the school with the number of 12th graders that graduate 13 years later, they lose approximately 75% of their students over the 13 years.
Success Academy has argued that losing 75% over 13 years isn’t actually that bad since it equates to about 10% attrition per year, which is what district schools also have. One flaw in that reasoning is that district schools fill in those 10% of seats each year while Success Academy stops ‘backfilling’ in the 4th grade. Another problem with comparing attrition rates from Success Academy to district schools is that a student can pretty easily move from one district school to another and those schools won’t be all that different. But for Success Academy which are supposedly the best schools in the country, it is a major life change to leave Success Academy for a district school so if they really are as good as they say, you would expect their attrition to be less than the 10% per year that district schools have.
I recently got some data from New York State that puts the attrition of Success Academy in a different and scary context. Since Success Academy is a K-12 school and you can’t get in after 4th grade, any student who makes it to 9th grade there has been at the school for anywhere from 5 to 9 years. After making it that long, the last four years should be pretty easy. It’s like running a marathon and getting to the 25 mile mark, of course you are going to finish the race. But some new data I got reveals that this isn’t the case with Success Academy. In general, only about 60% of the students who become 9th graders there eventually graduate within 6 years. And with certain subgroups it is a lot less than that….
This data is really scandalous. Have you ever heard of a school that sheds almost half their students in a four year period from 9th to 12th grade even though those students have been in the school since kindergarten or maybe 4th grade at the latest? A question I wonder is why do so many students leave the school so late in the game after succeeding there for so many years?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Why do so many students leave the school after being there for so long? I wonder that too, so I checked the comments. I hope someone has the answer. Are the students “counseled out” if they aren’t performing academically or behaviorally? Are the consequences for inappropriate beavior unreasonable? A child of a teacher I work with was briefly enrolled in a charter school. The mom dis-enrolled him when he got Saturday School for saying ‘shut up.” Why so much attrition?
“I wonder is why do so many students leave the school so late in the game after succeeding there for so many years?”
Because that way SA can bring in the per student funding for all the lower school years and still maintain their claims regarding graduation rates and test scores.
Is Success still not “backfilling” open seats from students no longer at the schools?
We hear at Bob ‘n’ Darlene’s Real Good Flor-uh-duh School thot we mite try this, so I called up the local university n asked em to come give IQ tests to are students. Figured I’d then find excuses to throw the wurst of em out. So, we got the scores back, and they ranged from 55 to 73. I askd them, well, is 73 like a genius or something? And they said it was borderline. Borderline genius? I asked. Like Donald J. Trump? Nope, they said. Borderline congnitively im-paired like Donald J. Trump. (He rote that down, so I no I got it rite.) Fortunately, are students don’t have to take no standardized tests cause we is a private school using Flor-uh-duh scholarship money to provide the finest education anywheres. Located between Wild Warnos’s Adult Novelties and Bob’s Gun and Pawn on Don’t Say Gay Way in Clearwater. Come one down to our Steppin’ Up to Zion Enrollment Jubilee this Saterdie.
You throw out the wurst?
What’s yer beef with wurst? That it doesn’t contain any?
SomeDAM Poet……she makes “mincemeat” out of our children……she is the “Wurst”
King Donald the Wurst
Dumb Donald Trump
sat on his rump,
eating cheeseburgers all day.
He called for his Miller
and brownshirted killers
and hypocrite fundies to pray.
He called for his Barr
to make him a czar
and all rule of law to allay.
And to meet his requirement
that it trash the environment,
he neutered the EPA.
“To switch out democracy
for rank kakistocrasy,
I had but to bellow and bray.
I’ve drawn to my Trump
many millions of chumps
and given sweet Vlad complete sway.”
“I’ll call it a day,” the con man did say,
“I’m still president anyway.”
Then he farted and stood
and called it all good,
and went to a golf course to play.
The Seven Wives of King Donald the Wurst
Six wives had he, the Eighth King Henry.
Trump had but three, we’re told, but when he
was twixt and between those he made a great show of,
perhaps he swallowed some four we don’t know of,
for as you most certainly know or have guessed,
King Donald Doolittle must always Be Best.
Those are two of the wurst poems that I have read.
And probably the only two, now that I think of it.
For Pork U Pine
If you throw out the wurst
Then what will be left?
If pork is your thirst
Then schnitzel’s bereft
Make that three of the wurst poems I have read.
SomeDAM Poet, Your Wurst poems are tasting better the more BEER 🍻 I consume while reading the poems. 🍻 PROST
And the latter is the wurst poem I have written.
Wurst of all
Which is wurst?
Beef or ham?
Last or first?
Horse or spam?
Make that two of the wurst poems I have written.
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Don.
Don who?
Don we now our gay apparel!
What?!?!?!?! Don’t say gay.
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Lesbian.
Lesbian who?
Lesbian touch.
I’ll let you decide which is knock worst.
Glad you appreciate them, SomeDAM! I must point out, however, that your poem is quite weenie, to be frank about it.
The wurst of the wurst.
And the wurst of the verse.
Hanna
The times I have spent drinking in the beer gardens of Muenchen are among my finest memories. Also among my wurst memories.
Prost!
And the more I drink, the wurst my memory gets
The wurst of the Wurstiverse
The Wurstiverse is expanding
Gets wurster ever day
The verse of wurst unending
That’s wurst in every way
The perverse Wurstiverse
I’m not averse
To Wurstiverse
And, wurst, of course
Is quite perverse
OK, that’s enough of that. No more puns or obvious jokes. Just stop it! I can’t take it anymore!
The Wurst of History
This verse of wurst
Is not the first
And won’t be last —
The wurst of past
That makes five of the wurst poems I have written.
But I’ll stop now. Five is a good night number.
Bob started it. Blame him.
This is the wurst roll that I’ve ever been on.
Ok,no more puns. I promise.
No more buns either.
Bob is the wurst influence.
Your 🌭wurst poems and pondering punneries have my stomach in a pretzel 🥨
with laughter. Gee, I needed this today🤩
You guys are the worst. See? No pun needed. Sincerity.
You must be German, Greg.
Your sense of humor is the wurst.
Both Sides Now (sorry Joni, I really am)
Puns and buns and pretzel rolls
And pizza dough and donut holes
And sausage baked on campfire coals
I’ve looked at wurst that way
But now it it only blocks the gut
It makes me fart from out the butt
The buns and wurst I just should cut
But eyes get in my way
I’ve looked at wurst from both sides now
From win and lose, but still somehow
It’s wurst illusions I recall
I really don’t know wurst at all
There are no puns, jokes, or poems allowed in Success Academy, not the worst or the best humor, not the wurst or the hot dog of humorists is allowed. There are No Excuses. You must conform and be normal. Wipe that grin off your face or Eva Moskowitz will wipe it off for you.
Why do high schoolers leave Success Academy? It’s simple. Elementary school students make every effort to conform and be normal. High schoolers are mature enough to be insulted by micromanaging parents or teachers. High school students often need to be treated with more respect than being told to shut up and conform.
Success Academy has a high attrition rate because Success Academy does not treat people decently, the mark of a bad school.
Eva Moskowurst is the wurst.
The problem with these puns is, as every German knows that wurst is best (except those few weirdos who are vegetarian or worse, they’re the…).
Best thing I’ve read all day! Maybe Bob n’ Darlene can branch out to Ten-uh-see now that Hillsdale has egg on its face. Our gov would happily funnel tax dollars to 100 of their Real Good schools.
Sorry, Sooxie, but them peple in Tennessee is too librul for are liken! Tho Hillsdales definitly got the rite idea with its 1776 curriculums. Darlene rites most of ares, and they’s purty much the same. HIS-story from the Creation to Dimocrat Babylon to The Rapsure. Praise be. Like Hillsdale, we don’t have no Socialist CRT people at are schools teaching kids to hate America and to be transgendered. And best of all, you dont have to worry none about safety cause all are teachers is locked and loaded!
Gary seems like a smart and decent lad and good classroom teacher but on closer examination one finds that many of his analyses of charter school attrition have been innumerate, mistaken and/or silly.
For example, here as elsewhere he appears to assume that the K-4 elementary school in Washington Heights is one and the same school as the Success Academy High School on E 33rd St, close to an hour away by public transit.
I imagine many parents of NYC school children would roll their eyes at such supposition.
@Bob — YUr 2 Phuuneeyy. BuTt SKarreeey.
LOL
SA appears to be built on the “SURVIVOR TV SHOW” principal.
The students are VOTED OFF the longer they stay.
Follow the $M! It’s never about educating students. They figured out a way to benefit financially USING the easiest children to remain for the schools’ end game.
Many charters operate this way, SA maybe the most successful financially.
“Move-outs & still make MILLION$” is their Quality Control Mission.
Exploitation of our children is a HUGE INDUSTRY.
Heartbreaking for parents and children….because it is mostly done when they are informed THEY ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH. Lifelong rejection carried by thousands of children, after they endured the beginning of this rejection in the classroom, the principal’s office, Saturday detentions, parent meetings, ultimatums, repeated shaming, feeling set up…..and finally shown the door.
It’s a capitalistic INDUSTRY for the RICH.
All while PUBLIC SCHOOLS are squeezed, choked, lied about, teachers disrespected, underfunded, understaffed, filled with non-teachers to stop the bleeding. As a Nation we should be ashamed….but the $$$ is our shiny object “On a Hill”
!!!
Well said, Ms. Hurley!
Any school that loses so many students is not a viable model for the real world. It works if the school has “money to burn,” which, sadly this schools has due to so much billionaire and hedge fund support.
Unfortunately, nobody has studied the psychological impact from the harsh discipline and repeated rejection that students endure during their time at these schools. I can guarantee lots of students walk away with mental scars and loss of self-esteem from being repeatedly demeaned, and some teachers are scarred as well from the micro-management and hostile, authoritarian climate.
“It seems that some charter school chains have taken a page out of the military training manuals with their harsh performance standards for a no-excuses school. One such chain is Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy in NYC. The philosophy is shape up or ship out.”
https://huffpost.netblogpro.com/entry/military-boot-camp-and-no_b_8286902/amp
Since I know all about harsh military training (1965 – Marines at MCRD boot camp), I know how brutal it can be. I wouldn’t force that on anyone. When I went through that harsh, brutal training, I was 19 and I volunteered. No one forced me to suffer through that harsh training. My parents didn’t want me to do it, but they couldn’t stop me.
No child should have to experience that. That kind of harsh training is designed to turn children into potential future killers.
While my data is not current, I did keep track of the graduation rates for Denver’s version of SA, DSST (Denver School of Science and technology) from 2005 through 2017. 2223 entering freshmen, 1355 graduates = 61% graduation rate. Not much different from SA’s, certainly not “100%” which is a DSST rallying cry.100% of 61% is the truth, should that matter any more.
Yes, the ridiculous difference in size between Success Academy’s 9th grade classes and the much smaller size of the graduating class 4 years later has been a huge red flag for years. Not that there are any decent education reporters out there who thought it was important — they breathlessly report about the miracle results in every article without mentioning that the results are absolutely meaningless since attrition isn’t included.
What I find ironic is that most charter high schools love to blame their low graduation rates for incoming 9th graders on the supposedly lousy public elementary and middle school educations so many of their students had.
But in the case of Success Academy, the lousy elementary and middle schools that ill-prepared an extraordinarily high number of 9th grade students was Success Academy Charter schools themselves! Every single incoming 9th grader was educated in a Success Academy middle school. And Success Academy middle schools are for the students who come from Success Academy elementary schools.
Oops!
But no worries because it isn’t like the NYT or Chalkbeat reporters would notice that low graduation rate anyway since they are far more interested in amplify only the positive data from the Success Academy press releases. Apparently, it is not a NYT reporter’s job to do anything but present the miracle data along with a disclaimer that some biased source disagrees.
You can’t really expect an arrogant, connected education reporter like Eliza Shapiro to explain to readers that the folks she brushes off as “biased” have actually done the reporting that she has failed to do and looked closely at the numbers. My guess is that she and many other education reporters have little mathematical knowledge and numbers make them uncomfortable so they rely on what people tell them. A real science or medical reporter would have looked at the studies and statistics that gullible education reporters breathlessly write about as “miracles” and asked real questions about where the missing students went.
Given that Success Academy high schools is EXCLUSIVELY for students who came from the Success Academy middle schools that supposedly had some of the highest state test scores in the state, it does raise questions about whether the students were learning or just getting test prepped. Or if there was some monkey business going on. Those students should have breezed through high school with their many, many years of Success Academy’s supposedly stellar elementary and middle school education.
But the folks who this incriminates the most are the trustees and executive director at the SUNY Charter Institute whose job it was to make sure that Success Academy was teaching students and not just weeding out all struggling students and only keeping those who can be found in any honors class in almost every public high school in America.
I have also heard Success Academy defenders alluding to some of those missing students still being in their school but needing 5 or maybe even 6 years to complete 4 grades of high school. Which also begs the question of why an incoming 9th grade class where all students are supposedly performing above average would have so many students who can’t complete high school in 4 years. But no worries, since education reporters don’t like to ask questions that charter schools don’t want them to ask. And we already know the folks at the SUNY Charter Institute define oversight as not asking any questions about the missing students. The trustees should be sued for malpractice.
NYCPSP, you may not be surprised to learn that it literally took years to get these data from the State Education Department. The city Department of Ed would not release. The only reason SED did, reluctantly, was a direct and forceful request by a member of the Board of Regents.
As the saying goes, “Nothing to hide, nothing to fear.”
Conversely, something to hide, something to fear.
I just read Gary’s follow-up post and it is revealing and confirms some of my suspicions. He heard from a Success Academy parent given some of the patented Success Academy treatment.
Success Academy has a questionable “backfill” policy. The story relayed here is of a student who win lottery seats for older grades being barred by Success Academy from taking those seats and told their kid could only attend the school if they agreed to repeat a year (or perhaps even two if they really decide they want to discourage the parent from attending). I would like to see evidence that Success Academy has ever told a middle class white parent whose kid completed Kindergarten or first grade at a different school that their kid could n ot accept his attrition seat for the grade he won the lottery for but could attend only if they agreed to put the kid in a lower grade. But this is the 3rd or 4th time I have read a reference where it is casually mentioned that a parent whose kid won a lottery seat for an older grade was told by Success Academy that their kid had to repeat a grade — before even attending the school!! No doubt it allows Success Academy to fill all open seats in their older elementary school grades with the students who they desire — all the other students are told they have to enroll in a lower grade to attend. One reference I read years ago was a NY1 news story that (typically) focused on a public school — an out of zone parent was suing for their kid to be allowed to return to the public school. It turned out that the parent had unenrolled their kid at the end of the school year (I believe it was kindergarten) because their kid got a lottery seat for a Success Academy school’s first grade. But later they were told their kid couldn’t attend Success Academy unless they repeated the previous grade, so they tried to go back to their previous public school. The reporter at NY1 was as incurious as a NYT reporter and it never occurred to them about how odd it was that a charter school could tell a parent who won a lottery seat that their kid just didn’t belong in the grade even before the kid had been in the grade! It was clearly a way to discourage parents and not based in any real evaluation of the 6 year old.
It is sad for me to see how some parents seem so brainwashed that they don’t even realize how Success Academy has insulted their kids. I believe one example of this was during the press conference defending Success Academy’s highly acclaimed “model” teacher who got caught on video demonstrating her prowess that Success Academy loved so much — ripping up a child’s paper and berating and punishing her for no reason except not giving the answer the teacher wanted.
One dad got up and told what he believed was a praiseworthy story about Success Academy. His daughter’s PUBLIC Kindergarten teachers told him how well his daughter was doing and how strong she was academically. They won a lottery seat for Success Academy but the supposedly knowledgeable Success Academy staff informed him that his kid would have to repeat Kindergarten. He was surprised, maybe a bit reluctant, but said okay. And, voila, thanks to her Success Academy teachers, not long after his “academically behind” daughter ended up skipping 2 grades!
I thought it was sad that the dad could not even imagine that maybe it was the public school teacher who recognized how strong academically his daughter was, and the Success Academy folks who just automatically told him she wasn’t good enough to attend without repeating a year who simply judged her on her race instead of allowing her to simply enroll in first grade as she should have.
The real disgrace, as you have often pointed out, is that despite SA’s well-documented practices of attrition and exclusion, the mainstream media continue to report its test scores as a miracle.
Yes.
Colleges and universities have to publish their 4 year graduation rates for incoming freshmen. There is no “fudging” allowed. Colleges can’t cook the books by losing lots of their incoming freshmen and taking transfer students later years and claiming they graduate “100%” because those two numbers are the same.
Instead, colleges have to report specifically how many of the very same students who enrolled as freshmen graduated 4 years later, or perhaps 5 or 6 years later from that institution.
There are often reasonable explanations for disproportionately low 4 year graduation rates. But when a college gives generous financial aid to students, has a low percentage of extremely at-risk students, and does not admit any student who doesn’t already test at or above standards, and STILL has a very low 4 year graduation rate, then it is a huge red flag that there is something wrong with the college.
There has been a huge red flag that there is something wrong with Success Academy for many years. BASIS Charter Schools in the southwest also had high attrition rates, but since the students who left were often middle class and white, the media never tried to push the false narrative that BASIS turned all students who enrolled into high performing ones. They noted that BASIS was not interested in teaching any students but high performing ones. Because in those states it was LEGAL for a charter school to exclude students they didn’t want to teach.
Success Academy’s “success” is teaching students who don’t struggle academically (except very minimally like almost all high performing students do when learning a new concept). Which isn’t a success at all.
The most shocking thing about the high attrition rate is that the attrition rate would be even higher if it included all the lottery-winners who never enroll at Success Academy because during all the required pre-enrollment meetings and uniform fittings, scores of families drop out (or are drummed out) because they can’t meet those very high “family engagement” standards.
So given that the only students who even enroll are from the most engaged and motivated families, Success Academy’s attrition rate should be extraordinarily low. Not extraordinarily high.
And if education reporters were not implicitly racist, they would have immediately recognized that high percentages of motivated families would not leave a lavishly funded charter school without a good reason. But it certainly appears that because those parents are primarily Black and Latino, the education reporters simply decide that it’s because “they don’t like good schools” and they are absolutely positive no questions need to be asked since they already know the answer — to them, it is always the parents and kids fault and not that the charter school has no interest in teaching them. Why is it racism? Because the fact that these Black and Latino families were highly motivated to jump through hoops to get their kid in Success Academy is irrelevant to those reporters — it means that when education reporters excuse high attrition rates as unimportant, they believe without question the racist narrative that many highly motivated Black parents would of course frequently “change their mind” about wanting a good education for their kids and prefer their children get a substandard education instead. If those were middle class white parents who had jumped through hoops to enroll their kids in the charter school with the “best academics in the state” who were mysteriously disappearing, I suspect white education reporters would be asking questions. Success Academy seems to know exactly which kids can be mistreated without reporters like Eliza Shapiro noticing or finding it odd that their parents would pull them from the supposedly top notch school they jumped through hoops to attend. Her stories are written as if it is just as likely that parents left because they decided their kid only deserved a lousy school, and there is no special reason to believe that the charter school made it clear to them that their kid was not wanted.
Diane, I noticed that the SUNY Charter Institute Board of Trustees just recently added a real educator to the small group of white lawyers (plus Meryl Tisch) who have been complicit in legitimizing and amplifying and rewarding the lies of Success Academy.
Her name is Eunice A. Lewin. If you know her, maybe she will actually do some real oversight and ask the obvious question about why a charter school that takes only the most motivated parents would lose some many students along the way.
Maybe she will ask why so many students are being flunked year after year and why Success Academy teachers are such failures in teaching students from the most highly motivated and committed families if those students struggle to learn.
Success Academy gets away with these practices because too many people believe that there are almost no academically proficient and advanced students of color in NYC public schools. Reporters don’t understand math, and they don’t understand that even if “only” 1/3 of the Black and Latino students in public schools are proficient that is hundreds of thousands of students who are academically strong enough to do well in any school. The fact that Success Academy teaches a very tiny percentage of those students and refuses to teach any others is one of the great cons of this century, with folks like Eliza Shapiro who should know better acting complict in pushing the lies that reward Success Academy for that con.
Rubinstein: “In general, only about 60% of the students who become 9th graders there eventually graduate within 6 years.”
Not felicitously phrased.
If one wishes to understand Success Academy 4-, 5-, 6- year graduation rates via standard NY State Education Department methodology it can be helpful to go here:
https://data.nysed.gov/downloads.php
download the “Graduation Rate Database” https://data.nysed.gov/files/gradrate/20-21/gradrate.zip
unzip it and, in the included spreadsheet, look at column V in Rows 131968, 131982, 131998, and 133092 (finding figures that range from 81-95%).
While he’d be right to maintain a healthy skepticism of Success Academy public relations, it can prove helpful to imbibe Gary’s own charter school statistics with a pinch of salt… then choke, curse, plead for a nurse, upchuck ’em in a hearse, slam it in reverse, cop a plea, or wurst.
Gary is a teacher of advanced mathematics at a specialized high school and a computer expert. I trust his ability to read state data.
Most of the other 40% graduate, but just not from Success Academy. The post implies that they leave the school and graduate from elsewhere not that they drop out of school entirely. That’s why the title of this post has as the last two word “from there” The chart I include in my post is not something I made by collecting data from different sources, it is something that came to me straight from the state and it agrees with the enrollment numbers I’ve seen over the years. Are you saying that you believe 80 to 95 percent of students who get to 9th grade at Success Academy eventually graduate from Success Academy after 6 years?
Like Diane, I trust your capacity to “read data,” Gary. And greatly admire what I know of your teaching skills and commitment to your profession.
But don’t yet trust your capacity to interpret state data judiciously in respect to charter schools.
That’s based on examples like:
1) You wrote in respect to the Harlem Childrens Zone: “For the second scandal, notice that in the 2007-2008 school year there were 88 6th graders but in 2008-2009 there are no seventh graders. This is because they also rid themselves of an entire class of 6th graders that year. ”
http://garyrubinstein.teachforus.org/2013/05/12/canadas-legend-ary-ted-talk-lie/
Given the context of other available data, that seemed an implausible interpretation. As I commented on your blog on a later occasion:
“Curious and checking into that, I learned that there in fact never had been any 2007-2008 6th grade class. The ’88’ was misplaced, apparently a clerical, typographical error at NYSED. If you were to scroll further down the page from where you saw the ’88’ on page 2 at https://data.nysed.gov/files/reportcards/archive/2007-08/AOR-2008-310500860864.pdf you’d see that no results can be found for that non-existent class on pp 12, 15 or 16). I was able to confirm that by sending an inquiry email to HCZ.”
https://garyrubinstein.wordpress.com/2018/01/04/the-hidden-attrition-of-success-academy/
Perhaps you missed that… you didn’t fix the error.
2) Chronically, you (and Jersey J, our local state teachers’ union here in Mass, and countless other charter school antagonists) calculated high school attrition by comparing the number of students in a 9th grade class with the number who graduate from the 12th grade class of three years later, ignoring potential impacts of front-loaded grade-level retention.
To your credit, unlike others, you did eventually recognize and concede: “I can see how this way of measuring attrition is not perfect, but…”
https://garyrubinstein.wordpress.com/2017/04/16/college-or-die/
3) In respect to Success Academy, you write: “They are a K-12 program and I’ve found that generally when I compare the number of kindergarteners entering the school with the number of 12th graders that graduate 13 years later, they lose approximately 75% of their students over the 13 years.”
To assume that a K-4 Success Academy school on Nameoke Street in Far Rockaway, Queens is, for purposes of properly understanding attrition, one and the same school as a High School an hour and a half commute away on West 33rd street is, to be kind, silly.
In respect to the current question you pose: “Are you saying that you believe 80 to 95 percent of students who get to 9th grade at Success Academy eventually graduate from Success Academy after 6 years?”
No. But I’m not certain that your analysis is fairly developed.
When I scroll down to the Success Academies, just past Stuyvesant, here:
https://data.nysed.gov/lists.php?start=83&type=school
I find two S.A. schools listed with High School data
Success Academy Harlem 1
34 w 118th street, #2nd New York, NY 10026
and
Success Academy CS – Harlem 3
410 E 100th St #4th, New York, NY 10029
while on the Success Academy web site map at https://www.successacademies.org/locations/
I find reference to:
The High School of the Liberal Arts – Harlem 9-10
509 West 129th Street #3 NY, NY 10027
and
High School of the Liberal Arts – Manhattan 9-12
111 East 33 St. 4th Floor
Before I attempted conclusions about S.A. high school attrition, I’d want to understand better the history there. And whether, for example, a kid transferring from one S.A. location to another might affect the cohort persistence rate figures you alluded to. That make sense?
Stephen, I’ll let Gary respond for himself, if he wishes.
As for confusion about data from Harlem Children’s Zone charter school, there is a reason, as explained by Paul Tough in his book about Geoffrey Canada called “Whatever It Takes.”
When Canada first opened HCZ, he accepted anyone who enrolled. He promised that all of them would go to college. His first class got poor test scores. Their scores did not improve. The HCZ board of Wall Street guys were very disappointed. Canada called the entire class to a meeting and ousted them. They were all told to find another school. That explains the missing data.
Diane: “They were all told to find another school. That explains the missing data.”
Actually, Gary had alluded to a second “scandal” apart from the situation you are alluding to. And I was trying to correct his misimpression in that respect. I will try once more in a fresh comment below.
Stephen,
I’m searching for a reference in the absence of having the book in my hands.
This should help. I debated Geoffrey Canada at NBC “Education Nation” in 2013. I asked him about firing the entire first class, and he said he did it and he was proud that he had the courage to do it.
https://dianeravitch.net/2013/05/13/geoffrey-canada-just-tell-the-truth/
I would indeed be interested in watching a video of that debate of yours with Canada, Diane, if anyone has a link to it.
This, which you now offer here:
https://dianeravitch.net/2013/05/13/geoffrey-canada-just-tell-the-truth/
in respect to Geoffrey Canada states:
“1. He boasted that his charter school has a 100% graduation rate.”
It continues: “Gary Rubinstein, the extraordinary detective of miracle-school boasting, checked the New York state website. Canada did not tell the truth.”
When I look at NYSED info from that era, I find such material as:
https://data.nysed.gov/gradrate.php?year=2014&instid=800000057519
4-year graduation rate of 100% for girls and 94% for boys
and:
https://data.nysed.gov/gradrate.php?instid=800000057519&year=2014&cohortgroup=5
6-year graduation rate for all students: 100%
Gary, rather than relying on the NYSED graduation rate calculations used his own system of manipulating NYSED data to assert a 64% graduation rate. His methodology was faulty as he acknowledged years later in such subtle manner that it may not have reached your attention.
Gary would have been correct to question to what degree attrition had occurred, but was not revealed in the NYSED graduation data undergirding Canada’s claim, but Gary erred in attempting an answer to that question.
Further, you wrote: “But there is an even dirtier secret that Gary discovered. Canada has TWICE kicked out an entire class.”
You recognize now, I hope, Diane, that the second of those was Gary prematurely leaping to a false conclusion.
Stephan,
Geoffrey Canada kicked out his entire first class. Paul Tough wrote about it (were the words deleted in your copy of the book?) As soon as I get back to Brooklyn, which won’t be soon, I will quote the passage to you.
Diane: “Geoffrey Canada kicked out his entire first class. Paul Tough wrote about it (were the words deleted in your copy of the book?) As soon as I get back to Brooklyn, which won’t be soon, I will quote the passage to you.”
When you write “kicked out his entire first class” you make it seem as if the class that you allude to was interrupted part way through a year and shown the door, “fired”, “ousted”. Is that what you think happened? If so, Tough will disappoint you. The class continued on right up to, and through, the graduation ceremony.
A re-reading will remind you though, that Canada et al did abruptly pull the rug out from under the students’ hopes to thereafter attend an HCZ High School as its startup was delayed. And also, perhaps, remind you why Canada, on balance, remains greatly worthy of our respect.
Perhaps we can agree to recommend the book to those who haven’t yet had the pleasure…
Canada called in his entire first class in May and told them they were fired. They had to find another high school for that September. He ousted them after promising that they would be prepared for college. He fired them because his board of trustees told him to. They were upset that the class had low test scores, lower than KIPP. This was not normal. It was a horrible thing to do to the students.
Stephen Ronan says: “Chronically, you (and Jersey J, our local state teachers’ union here in Mass, and countless other charter school antagonists) calculated high school attrition by comparing the number of students in a 9th grade class with the number who graduate from the 12th grade class of three years later, ignoring potential impacts of FRONT-LOADED GRADE-LEVEL RETENTION” [all caps is mine]
This is how desperate the folks defending Success Academy have become.
Success Academy 9th grade is EXCLUSIVELY for students educated at Success Academy middle schools (which are exclusively for students educated at Success Academy elementary schools). Those students are not promoted to 9th grade (or any earlier grades) unless Success Academy certifies that the middle school and elementary school education that Success Academy gave them means they are ready.
If indeed there is “front-loaded grade-level retention” in 9th grade and beyond, that is a failure of their middle schools and elementary schools.
Stephen Ronan is basically defending Success Academy High School’s low graduation rate by implying it’s because those students were failed by their Success Academy middle and elementary schools and flunked.
Desperation.
Stephen,
You haven’t really successfully contradicted any of my analysis. You are reminding me of the rigged election people. Yes, I did not realize that there were 2 success academy high schools now, the second one Harlem 3 just had their first class graduating in 2021. That school had the same persistence data numbers as the first school (I added it to the post). So, yes, it was possible that by only showing one of their schools, I was giving an inaccurate picture if the other school was better, but at least in this situation, it would not have mattered.
For sure, there are going to be details I will miss. Success Academy has 47 schools so it is not easy to keep track of all of them. Now that I know about Harlem 3, I can include that in my numbers.
As Diane mentioned, it is well documented that Geoffrey Canada ‘fired’ a cohort.
And it is a little confusing about ‘persistence rate’ vs. ‘graduation rate.’ I think graduation rate includes students who leave the school, that way you don’t get to benefit from students leaving the school and not graduating and those numbers not affecting your graduation rate.
If you want to do your own analysis of the data, I would be happy to see that. If it refutes what I write, I will put updates on my blog. But to say “you didn’t consider this” and “you didn’t consider that” is a bit lazy on your part. If you want to really re-calculate my numbers and yours are more accurate, that will be useful. I always encourage people to do their own analysis and I try to provide where I got the data from for people to be able to do that. But if you just say some vague things with no decisive conclusion and want me to do hours more of work, I can’t promise I’ll do that.
Excellent response and a challenge to Stephen Ronan, who often posts here trying to defend what other charter supporters should be criticizing if they didn’t value their own careers over actually creating moral and ethical charters whose priorities are students, not the careers and bank accounts of the people who run them.
Somehow Eva Moskowitz gets the kind of stellar results at Success Academy that the mediocre, poorly administrated charters that Stephen Ronan is associated with promoting in Massachusetts can only dream of.
Perhaps if every time Stephen Ronan posts to try to argue with your calculations, you can ask why the Massachusetts charters are so incompetent that they don’t come close to matching Eva Moskowitz’ supposed “success”? You can ask Stephen Ronan why Eva Moskowitz is so superior to every single charter operator in Massachusetts and why Massachusetts accepts that the people who run charters in their state are so wildly inferior?
Perhaps Stephen Ronan and his friends in the Massachusetts charter industry should start taking all of their marching orders from someone who will teach that incompetent band of Massachusetts charter operators what REAL competence is — Eva Moskowitz.
Does Stephen Ronan believes that it is their incompetence that prevents his beloved Massachusetts charter operators from matching Moskowitz’ supposedly stellar results? Or does Stephen Ronan believe it is due to the corruption of Massachusetts charter operators that they can’t match Moskowitz’ supposedly stellar results?
If Ronan embraces Moskowitz’ “success” as accurate, Ronan must believe that something has been very, very wrong with his own beloved Massachusetts charters for the last decade. Ronan must suspect that the folks who run Massachusetts charters want kids to fail, unlike Eva Moskowitz, whose results Ronan defends as true, but as unattainable for the incompetent charter operators in Massachusetts who just don’t care about kids like Eva Moskowitz does.
Did I get that right, Stephen? Is it the incompetence of Massachusetts charter CEOs and their administrators and promoters that causes so many students in Massachusetts charters to fail while Eva Moskowitz get such wild success with all her students who win the lottery?
Stephen Ronan insults all charters in Massachusetts here. It’s time to ask him why he keeps posting comments that make it clear he believes Eva Moskowitz gets such wildly superior results to the Massachusetts charters. Time for Ronan to compare apples to apples and explain why even the best Massachusetts charters appear to be so mediocre and inferior to Eva Moskowitz’ Success Academy.
I wonder if Stephen Ronan would be begging Gary to do those calculations when we point out those calculations also show that what appears to be lousy and incompetent Massachusetts charters run by folks who don’t care about kids the way that Eva Moskowitz does might not be true.
But hey, if Stephen Ronan still wants to push the narrative that the only competent charter CEO is Moskowitz, while Massachusetts charter CEOs are too incompetent to match her results, he should go right ahead. That’s basically what he is implying with all his comments.
Gary Rubinstein,
I urge you not to accept everything Stephen Ronan says at face value. There is no need for you to do any recalculations at all. The 2nd high school that Ronan brings up didn’t have ANY graduating classes because it just opened in 2021 with a 9th grade class only!!
The data for Success Academy students in this 2nd high school who finished 9th grade less than a month ago is entirely irrelevant to your calculations! I have no idea why Ronan even mentioned it except to distract from the truth.
If you look at the NYSED data for Success Academy schools, you will see that in 2020-21 – the last year for data – there isn’t a single Success Academy school that has 9th grade students. Except for Success Academy Harlem 1, which GAINS a huge number of students in 9th grade. That is because on the NYSED website data, the enrollment data for their High School of Liberal Arts-Manhattan is Harlem 1. That is why the 9th grade enrollment for Harlem 1 suddenly doubles or triples from the 8th grade enrollment.
In other words, Stephen Ronan’s made up out of thin air theory that the missing students who should have been graduating might have “transferred” to a different Success Academy High School is ridiculous because there was no Success Academy High School class for them to transfer to! In 2021-2022 there was a NINTH GRADE class in a new Success Academy High School for them to transfer to.
If Stephen Ronan is desperate enough to claim that a cohort of 17 and 18 year olds who were educated at Success Academy middle schools, elementary schools and at least 3 years of Success Academy High School were given such a lousy education during those many years, that Stephen Ronan believes they could be in a 9th grade class at the new Success Academy High School that just opened this past year, then far be it for me to argue with Stephen Ronan.
If Stephen Ronan believes the missing 17 and 18 year olds who were “lucky” enough to get many years of that patented Success Academy education in elementary and middle schools aren’t missing, but instead of graduating were in 9th grade in the new Success Academy High School, then that is a far worse indictment of Success Academy than their low graduation rate! 17 and 18 year olds in 9th grade and no doubt Stephen would blame their lousy middle school education – which just happened to be Success Academy!
lol!
Stephen says:
“Before I attempted conclusions about S.A. high school attrition, I’d want to understand better the history there. And whether, for example, a kid transferring from one S.A. location to another might affect the cohort persistence rate figures you alluded to. That make sense?”
if you disagree with my facts about the “new” Success Academy High School you cite only having a 9th grade class this past year, I am happy to be corrected. But I will take your silence as an acknowledgment that your attempt to push false narratives failed.
Gary, Stephen wants you to waste your time following his false narratives — anything but simply admit the truth. Why is it so hard for charter promoters like Stephen to be honest?
^^^I made an error in the above because the data for the graduating students at the ONLY Success Academy High School that had an 11th and 12th grade seems to be split on the NYSED data website with some students’ data part of Harlem 1 and some students part of Harlem 3.
But Stephen Ronan seems to be implying something false — that the 10th, 11th and 12th grade enrollment data for “Harlem 1” refers to students in one high school, and the 10th, 11th and 12th grade enrollment data for “Harlem 3” refers to students in a DIFFERENT Success Academy high school building. Since both schools had a rapidly declining 9th grade cohort with significantly smaller graduating classes, I have no idea why Stephen believes that transfers “between two high schools” even explains the missing students, but he seems to be grasping at anything to discredit Gary’s research.
Stephen Ronan says:
“To further clarify, imagine a hypothetical circumstance where xyz charter school network has 100 kids at HS1 and 100 kids at HS2. Over the course of four years 50 kids transfer in each direction.”
Why would Stephen tell us to IMAGINE something? We have the facts!
Success Academy’s own website states that there is a 2nd high school in Harlem that only had a 9th grade class in 2021 and will have a 9th and 10th grade class beginning in 2022.
Success Academy yesterday tweeted to boast about its 117 graduates this year. Those 117 graduates should be very proud of their accomplishments. But Success Academy should NOT be proud of all the missing 9th graders who disappeared from the cohort and didn’t graduate with those 117 students.
117 graduates, period. If there is a 2nd, super secret Success Academy High School that graduated additional students beyond those 117 that Success Academy keeps touting, then perhaps Stephen Ronan can explain why Success Academy never mentions them.
Why can’t Ronan just admit that the Success Academy website wasn’t lying about there being NO second Success Academy high school except for the one that only had 9th graders this past year?
Why can’t Ronan just admit that his “hypothetical circumstance where xyz charter school network has 100 kids at HS1 and 100 kids at HS2. Over the course of four years 50 kids transfer in each direction” didn’t happen?
If Stephen Ronan is now asserting that Success Academy’s own website is wildly incorrect about there not being a 2nd high school with a graduating class, Ronan should just offer up some plausible explanation for why Success Academy won’t talk about the graduates of this mythical second high school that Ronan “hypothesizes” has been a place where for 4 years missing SA high school students “might” have transferred to!
Why is Stephen Ronan so fixated on attacking Gary for not considering his “hypothetical circumstance where xyz charter school network has 100 kids at HS1 and 100 kids at HS2. Over the course of four years 50 kids transfer in each direction.”
Why would Gary consider a hypothetical that isn’t true?
Gary: “As Diane mentioned, it is well documented that Geoffrey Canada ‘fired’ a cohort.”
If you review your posting at https://garyrubinstein.wordpress.com/2013/05/12/canadas-legend-ary-ted-talk-lie/
you’ll recall that you had added your discovery of a separate “second scandal.”
Let’s call them scandal1, which Diane alluded to, and scandal2, your unique invention.
In respect to scandal1 you had written:
“This is because Canada ‘fired’ the entire group of what would have been their first 9th graders and first graduating class.”
That’s only mildly defective. And I did not attempt to correct you. You’re alluding to a situation where HCZ had a 6-8 middle school that ran for all three years. The kids did graduate, after completing 6th, 7th, and 8th grades. As chapter 10 of Tough’s book concludes: “In unison, grins on their faces, they made a show of shifting the tassel on their mortar-boards from left to right. And then, with a shout, they all tossed their caps straight up in the air, as high as they could throw them.”
The school and students had previously hoped that the students could next attend a new high school that HCZ had planned to open. However the board of directors feared that the HCZ schools were expanding too quickly; they weren’t confident that they were sufficiently successful (partly reflected by test score analysis) and decided to hold back starting a High School until they were more confident in doing it really well. As it turned out the final official test scores when they arrived weren’t too shabby. In sixth grade, just nine percent of the “class had scored on grade level in math. In seventh grade, 34 percent of them did. Now, in eighth grade, the number had jumped all the way to 70 percent.” Overall, the city’s subsequent Report Card gave the middle school an A. Of course, without a clear understanding of attrition patterns (at least one kid had been expelled) it would be a mistake to put too much stock in test score gains.
Understandably, there was some serious disappointment at the failure to start the promised high school on time. So while I would class it as a plan ganged agley, you are welcome to consider it a scandal.
In regard to scandal2, however, you should have capacity to recognize and correct your error.
You had been certain that an errant 88 you noticed in NYSED data reflected that HCZ “also rid themselves of an entire class of 6th graders that year.” The proof you provided was unpersuasive, and when I checked with the school I was told:
“There is an error in the state’s data for 07-08, there never were any 6th graders that year. We were k-3 and 7th, and 8th that year. If you look at the charts, the 88 is an exact duplicate of the 6th grade enrollment from the previous year. I think it was a typo on the state’s part. If he wants proof – go here: https://data.nysed.gov/files/reportcards/archive/2007-08/AOR-2008-310500860864.pdf
“Which is the 07-08 report from the state. It has that mistake in the enrollment table, but if you scroll down to the test results on page 12, you can see that there aren’t any 6th grade results. If you scroll down to pages 15 and 16, you’ll see that there are only 6th grade results for the previous year. Not for 07-08.”
Perhaps, Gary, you can review security tapes seeking a set of pulsating suitcases being wheeled to the parking lot. Or correct yourself.
Stephen,
I am 100 miles away from my copy of Paul Tough’s book about Geoffrey Canada and his charter school. Tough is very clear that Canada called the entire class to a meeting and told them he was ousting the entire class. They would have to find another school for September. He fired the entire class. Sorry that you skipped over that part.
Stephen, I hope you weren’t on your high school debate team! I think what you are saying is that because I may have misinterpreted one thing about Harlem Children’s Zone ten years ago that nothing I ever find again can ever be trusted, even when I provide the state data to back it up. This is a post about how only 60% of students who get to 9th grade in Success Academy after being in the network for up to 9 years already and at least 6 years, end up graduating from Success Academy. It is a huge scandal and completely punctures any myth about how great Success Academy is. I admit it is possible that I’ve made a few mistakes over the years, but it’s hard to bat 1000. I try my best and I have a very high accuracy rate, certainly better than any of the deliberate lies that the reform heroes do so much.
Gary: “I think what you are saying is that because I may have misinterpreted one thing about Harlem Children’s Zone ten years ago that nothing I ever find again can ever be trusted, even when I provide the state data to back it up.”
No. Your “scandal2” mistake was just a subset of a substantially larger set of errors that I’ve alluded to in this thread. I’d be willing to recapitulate others of those, if you’d care to debate ’em.
But just as Diane may have a valid point about S.A. teacher retention, while not being willing and able to compare and contrast your attrition analyses with the methods normally adopted by state authorities and serious researchers, the frequent defects in your data analysis don’t preclude your offering useful insights at other times.
My comments on your blog have included:
“Thanks for addressing this important subject. I think you’re off to a good start and I look forward to enhancing my understanding of the key issues throughout the series..”
https://garyrubinstein.wordpress.com/2021/06/21/questions-about-the-specialized-high-school-admissions-process-from-a-specialized-high-school-teacher-part-i/
and
“To the extent I was able to grasp it (been a long time since I took the Regents), I was enormously impressed by your series on those exams. I truly hope that the powers that be take you up on your offers of assistance.
“Here, though, it seems to me that rather than offering helpful clarification, you’re muddling together different techniques for making these calculations… and encouraging use of a method, which is not in regular use by any reputable bureaucratic or scholarly authority that I’m aware of.” […]
https://garyrubinstein.wordpress.com/2017/08/08/the-alum-lie-spreads/
I continue to think you’re capable of good work, Gary, will likely produce some. And thank you for that.
Stephen,
Stop criticizing Gary for his straightforward presentation of state data. Why do you defend the charter chain with the harshest discipline policies in the state? The NY Times wrote about the SA’s famous “got to go” list. Do you think the Times was lying? How do you like SA’s rental policy, renting space they own and raising the rent to themselves?
In regard to understanding rates at which Success Academy freshmen graduate from Success Academy, I don’t argue that you are wrong, Gary, but think you may have achieved certainty prematurely.
I had written, “Before I attempted conclusions about S.A. high school attrition, I’d want to understand better the history there. And whether, for example, a kid transferring from one S.A. location to another might affect the cohort persistence rate figures you alluded to. That make sense?”
To further clarify, imagine a hypothetical circumstance where xyz charter school network has 100 kids at HS1 and 100 kids at HS2. Over the course of four years 50 kids transfer in each direction. According to the state, four year cohort persistence of each school could be 50%, with graduation from the school network at 100%. Or does NY state consider cohort persistence on a per network rather than per school basis?
NYC psp confidently asserts that “If you look at the NYSED data for Success Academy schools, you will see that in 2020-21 – the last year for data – there isn’t a single Success Academy school that has 9th grade students. Except for Success Academy Harlem 1”
Once again, NYC psp has introduced me to unfathomable mysteries.
When I take a gander at NYSED data, I find students listed in all four grades at both Harlem 1
https://data.nysed.gov/enrollment.php?year=2021&instid=800000059316
and Harlem 3
https://data.nysed.gov/enrollment.php?year=2021&instid=800000061084
More NYSED typos? Or some kind of optical illusion, where, if I stare long enough, half the figures I see will gradually transform into gold and/or blue striped zeros?
Stephen Ronan,
Thank you! I didn’t see Harlem 3’s data and thank you for confirming that Gary’s calculations don’t even begin to tell how bad Success Academy’s attrition rate is!!
In 2020-2021, the data you so helpfully provided a link to certified that there were a total of 218 students who were – according to Success Academy’s own records – were in 11th grade. (103 students in Harlem 1 and 115 in Harlem 2).
There were 218 students in 11th grade last year between the two schools and how many graduated this year?
Thanks to a helpful tweet from Success Academy YESTERDAY! we know exactly how many:
Success Academy@SuccessCharters
6:00 PM · Jul 20, 2022
“Our 2022 high school graduates made a lasting impression at SA through their accomplishments and hard work. Take a look at some of the achievements and characteristics that made up the HSLA Class of 2026!”
You can see it for yourself — there were 117 graduates. Does it matter to you that 101 missing 11th graders aren’t graduating the next year? Or are you so impressed with the “100% acceptance rate to 4 year colleges” statistic in yesterday’s tweet?
Which of the mediocre Massachusetts charters whose administrators apparently need to be replaced by the young folks Eva Moskowitz trains send 100% of their graduates to 4 year colleges?
Stephen Ronan, maybe you can come up with a new theory in which you tell me that you believe Eva Moskowitz is utterly ashamed of the senior class in this supposed “second” high school you believe exists where all the missing Success Academy seniors transfer to and that’s why she keeps their graduation super secret.
Stephen Ronan, I suspect you know that your theory to explain why you are certain Eva Moskowitz runs charters that are so superior to those in Massachusetts doesn’t hold up. Your theory that the students who graduated from Success Academy in 2022 and 2021 might have transferred to this second Success Academy High School doesn’t hold up. And if both enrollments are declining, why would that be relevant anyway?
There is no evidence that there were high school seniors in some non-existent second Success Academy High School that accounts for all the missing graduates. Although in a few years, when that second high school has grades 9-12, if one high school gained students while the other high school lost them, that might be a reasonable assumption. If both high schools lose students, then it is absurd.
But why would you criticize Gary when it is clear from the link you provided above that the data looks even worse for Success Academy?
In the helpful NYSED link you provided, Harlem 3 had 61 12th graders in 2020-21. But 4 years previously, in 2017-2018, their very first 9th grade class cohort was 104 students!
More than 50% — 63 students! — went missing from the first Harlem Success Academy 3 9th grade cohort in the 4 years between 9th grade and 12th grade.
During that same time period, Harlem Success Academy 1 had a 9th grade cohort of 130 and only 86 when that cohort should be in 12th grade.
I truly don’t understand why you could possibly cite “transfers” to account for 63 missing SA 9th graders who didn’t graduate 4 years later according to the Harlem 3 data you link to, and 44 missing 9th graders who didn’t graduate 4 years later according to the Harlem 1 data you link to.
Stephen Ronan, why are you so determined to make Success Academy look good, at the expense of the supposedly mediocre Massachusetts charters?
Why make Massachusetts charters look so bad by grasping at non-existent straws to “prove” that Gary is wrong and Success Academy really is far, far superior to Massachusetts charters because the attrition Gary cites doesn’t really happen?
What is your real agenda? To make Massachusetts charters look bad?
Stephen,
If I stare at the Success Academy website long enough, will it suddenly mention this mythical 2nd high school where “Over the course of four years 50 kids transfer in each direction.”
Because Success Academy’s own website informs me that aside from the high school Gary cites because it had such extraordinarily high attrition rates, the second SA high school just opened in 2021 and only had a 9th grade class this past year.
Is Stephen Ronan misleading the public, or is Success Academy misleading the public about this mythical 2nd high school where Stephen Ronan hypothesizes that “OVER THE COURSE OF FOUR YEARS” the missing SA students have been transferring?
A top secret “second” Success Academy high school that SA students have been transferring to and from for the last 4 years??
Really, Stephen, that’s your hypothesis?
Stephen’s hypothesis is that charter schools are spectacular and any criticism of them is fraudulent.
Diane: “Stephen’s hypothesis is that charter schools are spectacular and any criticism of them is fraudulent.”
Actually, my position has consistently been that they vary greatly in quality. I mostly don’t tend to think of the criticism as fraudulent, though there are possible exceptions that I could elaborate on if you wish. More often I think of criticism I see in an environment like this as originating in honest mistakes. What is mystifying and disturbing in the charter-critic community is the, not omnipresent, but all too frequent, incapacity or unwillingness to admit and correct errors…
Stephen,
You always make excuses for Success Academy charters, despite their staggering attrition rates and the highest teacher-turnover rates in the city, possibly the state. You discredit yourself, at least among New Yorkers. We know the game that is played. Are you okay with SA renting space in a building owned by SA and charging the city top dollar to pay itself?
Stephen, from my interactions with you, I judge that you are a really nice guy and a charter apologist.
Diane: “You always make excuses for Success Academy charters, despite their staggering attrition rates and the highest teacher-turnover rates in the city, possibly the state.”
Diane, I’d encourage you to, at the least, insert the word “allegedly” before “staggering” in such statement unless you, yourself, can thoroughly persuade a sensible, mature audience that the analysis here is staggeringly invalid:
https://www.successacademies.org/education-blog/doing-the-math-on-success-academys-first-graduating-class/
I’m unfamiliar with the rental arrangement you allude to.
Stephen,
I won’t do your research for you. Gary Rubenstein has detailed the staggering attrition rates at Success Academy schools, based on state data. Quoting a press release from Success Academy is not evidence.
Leonie Haimson wrote about Success Academy’s practice of renting space in buildings it owns and charging top dollar to the city and state.
Please note this paragraph:
“In one example, the rent for the two Success Academy charter schools housed at Hudson Yards increased from approximately $793,000 to over $3.4 million – more than quadrupling – despite the fact that the space is owned by the Success Charter Management Organization. This increase in rent allowed Success Academy to charge the DOE $3.02 million in rental subsidies in FY 2020, an increase of 38 percent from the previous year.”
https://dianeravitch.net/2021/03/26/leonie-haimson-nyc-overspent-on-charter-rentals/#origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F&cap=swipe,education&webview=1&dialog=1&viewport=natural&visibilityState=prerender&prerenderSize=1&viewerUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Famp%2Fs%2Fdianeravitch-net.cdn.ampproject.org%2Fc%2Fs%2Fdianeravitch.net%2F2021%2F03%2F26%2Fleonie-haimson-nyc-overspent-on-charter-rentals%2Famp%2F
Here is a key excerpt:
New York, NY (March 25, 2021) – Today, Class Size Matters released a new report, posted here, showing that the DOE has overspent on rental subsidies to charter schools by many millions, and underspent by many millions on the legally required matching funds for public schools co-located with charters.
The new report, DOE Overspending on Charter School Facility Costs and Underspending on Matching Funds to Public Schools, includes updated information provided by the DOE in response to a letter sent by the New York City Comptroller’s Office about the findings of an earlier report produced by the nonprofit organization.
“We were surprised to find that the DOE confirmed many of the findings of our earlier report to the Comptroller, either directly or indirectly, and did not dispute any part of the report’s analysis, which showed that the DOE overspent by many millions on charter leases and underspent by many millions on matching funds to public schools,” said Leonie Haimson, the Executive Director of Class Size Matters.
The new report finds that in FY 2020, the DOE paid approximately $108 million for charter school rental subsidies with the state reimbursing about $65 million, amounts that are likely to increase rapidly each year, as enrollment and rental costs increase. Despite this, Governor Cuomo has proposed eliminating all state reimbursements for charter school rental assistance in his Executive budget, which is estimated to cost the city $100 million in FY 2022 and significantly increase in cost over future years.
“As this report makes clear, New York City is the only district in the state and the nation obligated to help pay for charter school rent and the costs are rising sharply every year,” said New York City Council Finance Chair Daniel Dromm. “Now Governor Cuomo is threatening to eliminate any state reimbursement for this spending, which would cost New York City an additional $100 million in lease aid for FY22 and even more thereafter. We cannot allow this to happen, especially in light of the fact that the state still owes New York City $2 billion in Campaign for Fiscal Equity funding. We cannot allow the Governor to shortchange the city’s most needy students.”
The report also finds that in FY 2019, the DOE appeared to overspend on lease payments for 39 charter schools through overpayments totaling $21 million over the schools’ base rents, and that by holding leases totaling $13.4 million directly for eight buildings that house charter schools, the city made itself ineligible to receive an estimated $9.6 million in state reimbursements in FY 2020.
In addition, the DOE paid $11.6 million in rental subsidies for eight charter schools whose Charter Management Organization (CMO) or affiliated organization owned the space in FY 2020. In many cases, the base rents of these charter schools and the DOE payments increased sharply from FY 2019 to FY 2020, raising questions about whether the rents were fairly assessed and whether there is evidence of self-dealing by the charter schools.
In one example, the rent for the two Success Academy charter schools housed at Hudson Yards increased from approximately $793,000 to over $3.4 million – more than quadrupling – despite the fact that the space is owned by the Success Charter Management Organization. This increase in rent allowed Success Academy to charge the DOE $3.02 million in rental subsidies in FY 2020, an increase of 38 percent from the previous year.
The report also analyzed new data sent by the DOE to the City Comptroller’s Office that revealed millions of dollars in matching funds were owed to public schools for facility enhancements and repairs, compared to the cost of the renovation of their co-located charter schools. These matching funds have been legally required since 2010.
According to the new DOE data, only four public schools out of 812 cases received matching funds equal to the amount spent by their co-located charter schools in the same year, and not a single public school received the same cumulative amount as its co-located charter school spent over the six-year period from FY 2014 to FY 2019. Over this period, 127 co-located public schools were owed a total of $15.5 million. A searchable database is posted here.
I hope you’ll forgive me a raised eyebrow, Diane, as you write:
“Quoting a press release from Success Academy is not evidence” (in respect to an analysis far more conventionally rooted in legitimate NYSED data than Gary’s assertions). And then not skipping a beat you quote from a Class Size Matters press release to prove your point on DOE charter school rent subsidies.
While confessing an absence of expertise in the subject, the first of these successive sentences in the latter press release seems sensible to me, not the second:
“The City Comptroller should also analyze closely whether the rents charged to charter schools by their CMOs or allied organizations are fairly assessed on an annual basis so that the city is not forced to expend excessive amounts on rent subsidies.
“Finally, the New York State Legislature should eliminate the DOE’s obligation to pay for any charter facilities where CMOs or related organizations own their spaces.”
The story about Success Academy rent is not fabricated.
Nor is the fact that its CEO is paid close to $1 million.
An article from 2018 about the teacher turnover rate in Success Academy charter schools:
https://thechiefleader.com/stories/is-this-the-way-you-spell-success-70-teacher-turnover-at-high-school-free-article,7223
A quote from that article:
“Success Academy has the highest turnover rate among charters in the city, at 42 percent, according to the state Department of Education. The turnover rate at charter schools across the city was 39 percent, compared to 14 percent at public schools.”
Maybe high teacher turnover is an ingredient in success?
Read what Success Academy teachers say:
https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Success-Academy-Charter-Schools/reviews
https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Success-Academy-Charter-Schools-Reviews-E381408.htm#:~:text=Success%20Academy%20Charter%20Schools%20has,positive%20outlook%20for%20the%20business.
The positive reviews are about 40%.
Stephen,
I acknowledged (and thanked you!) for pointing out that the data for Success Academy’s high school with a graduating class can be found in Harlem 1 and Harlem 3 on the NYSED data website. Both places show unusual attrition between size of beginning 9th grade and size of the graduating class 4 years later. However, you did not correct your false innuendo about that data proving that there was a second SA High school with grades 9-12 that also had a graduating class in 2021 and 2022.
Why didn’t you retract your cockamamie theory of this “second” SA high school that you surmised had students transferring in and out from the other SA High School? Are you really that desperate to hide the high attrition rates that Gary cites? Are you really that desperate to excuse them that you are inventing theories?
Presumably you have figured out by now that the only Success Academy graduates have been from their one SA high school that goes through 12th grade. While IN THE FUTURE there will be graduates of a second SA high school, presumably you already know that it would have been impossible for graduating seniors to have transferred to a 2nd SA high school that only had a 9th grade class.
You still have not apologized nor corrected your error where you theorize that Success Academy high school students “could be” transferring between their high school whose 117 graduates Success Academy just proudly acknowledged in twitter, and this second, non-existent SA High school that also has grades 9-12 and a graduating class that Success Academy doesn’t talk about. Even worse, you have the chutzpah to chide Gary for not including your theory of this invented second SA High School that also had graduates.
Are you really that desperate? Why not just admit your error? Accusing others of doing what you do is right out of the right wing playbook.
I don’t think nice guys lie. I have seen a few charter apologists who tell the truth, but too many are like Stephen Ronan and the Republicans in Congress who can’t defend what they believe with truths, so they simply lie.
Saying that missing Success Academy High School students were not missing but instead were transferring between two Success Academy High School is no different than saying the election was stolen from Trump with voter fraud.
It’s presenting a theory that you know isn’t true to convince people of a big lie. Nice guys don’t have to lie. And nice guys who aren’t liars would retract evidence-free theories, not double down on them the way Stephen Ronan and the Republicans who are still screaming about “voter fraud” do.
Ronan should admit there was never a 2nd SA High school with a graduating class, but he seems to be more like one of the Republicans who refuse to admit the voter fraud they kept shouting existed never did.
Stephen Ronan – in his mystifying attempt to prove that Massachusetts charter operators are inferior to Success Academy’s Eva Moskowitz – uses a Success Academy PRESS RELEASE (!!!) as his source to “prove” that Success Academy’s attrition isn’t a huge red flag.
But Success Academy’s own press release about the high attrition in its first graduating class shows that there were 38 students in 9th grade in 2013-14.
From the press release:
“23 students remaining, 16 of them graduating seniors.”
“There are 7 students from this cohort who were held over and are thus not seniors.”
Fifteen of those 38 students left the school, and 7 out of those remaining 23 students needed at least one (or possibly even 2) extra years of school??
Stephen Ronan is defending a charter where 30% of the students remaining AFTER many struggling students are counseled out had taxpayers funding an extra year of their education?
It’s sad – but revealing – that Eva Moskowitz didn’t go around the country lobbying to slow down the curriculum and provide extra years of education. Instead she simply crowed about how superior her schools were to the public schools because of a curriculum that she ALWAYS failed to mention can’t be completed by 30% of her remaining students without flunking them at least once. And she starts with the most motivated families willing to jump through hoops to support their kids’ education. Public schools do not.
I find it revealing that Stephen Ronan accepts the vague Success Academy press release (!) analysis without question, but attacks Gary Rubinstein for not considering Stephen Ronan’s evidence-free theory that the missing Success Academy students were simply transferring back and forth between a mythical 2nd SA 9th – 12th grade high school with a second graduating class of 12th graders.
That press release raises a lot more questions than any of Gary’s analysis.