Gary Rubinstein read an account by a recently fired teacher at Success Academy, and he was alarmed. He says that Success Academy should be investigated to determine if her allegations are true.
He writes:
The brave blog post by teacher Livia Camperi was titled ‘The Cruel Dystopia of Success Academy’and I highly recommend you stop reading my analysis and read the actual source for yourself and then come back here, assuming you’re not already sick to your stomach.
Of all the atrocities Camperi reports, the one that stuck me as the most worthy of a formal investigation was this one:
“SA is a data-driven institution, just like the entire rest of the American education system. This is not a surprise. What was a surprise, though, was the lengths the school goes to attain its desired data. For nearly three months leading up to the NY State English and Math tests (January to March), the students are not learning anything. I feel the need to emphasize that again before I explain: for three months, students attending a school are not learning anything in their time there. What they are doing, instead, is practicing taking multiple-choice tests, day in and day out. This is, ironically, called “Think” season.
“During Think, the students take practice tests for the state exams in every single English and Math class, every single day. For the last two years, halfway through February, when they realized the data was not good enough yet, the network canceled Science and History classes to do more English and Math practice tests. Those are their only four content classes. I say again: students are not learning anything during that time. All they are doing is practicing test-taking skills and hating every minute of it. This is not education. This is callous data-chasing.”HTTPS://LIVIACAMPERI.MEDIUM.COM/THE-CRUEL-DYSTOPIA-OF-SUCCESS-ACADEMY-53524CFC53D0
If this description is accurate, this, in terms of education, is a crime. To have students do mainly test prep for three months at the expense of all else is a type of cheating. Remember that these middle school students have been part of Success Academy since they were in Kindergarten. So if these middle schoolers need that much test prep in order to get 3s on the state test, then the ‘success’ of Success Academy is the mirage that I always have claimed.
In the comments of the blog post, this teacher has gotten a lot of support from her former students. If students are willing to corroborate her allegations about the test prep for three months, this could be a very big story.
Please open the link and read the rest of this alarming story.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Chasing data is the enemy of authentic education. Sadly, public schools, particularly diverse schools, are also on the data collection treadmill. While I don’t think they are as fanatical as Success Academy, I do know that my grandson will be in school this Saturday from 8 to 12 to prep for the math STAAR that will be administered next week in Texas. These high stakes tests weigh heavily on students, teachers, schools and districts, particularly in a political climate where a governor and his cronies are salivating over the prospect of privatizing the public schools.
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There are MANY public school systems that are on the data collection treadmill and they are just as fanatical, if not more fanatical than Charter Schools. It’s been going on here in MD for years now (!) and MD is a well funded education state with well/better paid teachers. This madness/cruelty only ends for students when parents pull their children out and pay for private schools which then leads to “voucher” talk. The one good thing is that the private schools will NOT accept vouchers (tax payer $$$$) because if they did, they would be beholden to the state of MD and have to adopt the testing madness, Common Bore/teaching to the test curriculum and the crazy data collection.
I’ll scream it until the day I die…..get rid of all the deforms, testing, CC, data collection, creepy SEL/surveys and the need for voucher talk and Charter schools will go away. Parents like teachers and the general idea of a good public education, but they don’t like what we have in public schools right now.
And I’m sorry that your grandchild has to go to school on a Saturday to test prep. That is just wrong! If I were the parent I would tell the school system to “shove it” and Opt-out/Refuse the test and all the test prep madness.
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Lisa,
The red states that adopt vouchers are not doing it to avoid the testing mania. They are doing it to privatize public education. They don’t oppose testing. They oppose public schools.
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Red state. Blue State, Purple State…it doesn’t matter. Parents want what is best/humane for their children. Most parents are unaware that this is a push to privatize education and suck away public education tax $$$$ into private hands (although its been happening since NCLB/RttT). You want the Dems to win?……tell them to fully fund public education and get rid of the “deforms” to do it.
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LisaM, I tried to find the text of MD’s 2016 voucher law online with no luck. I was wondering if the state does, as you claim, require voucher schools to abide by the NCLB-style stds & annual aligned assessments. Other state voucher programs I’ve looked into have no such reqts. But MD is not your run-of-the-mill voucher state. Its program is tiny and only for low-income kids. And I read where they withdrew funding from a voucher school because it discriminated [brazenly, right in school handbook] against gay families/ students. So that’s at least 2 state strings tied to the $.
Regardless, it’s refreshing that you haven’t lost your anti-stdzd-testing spunk! National interest around this seems to have faded, but hopefully just due to pandemic interruption, and will revive. I noted that in 2017 MD passed a limit of 2.2% testing time in pubschs, wonder if that helped…
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@bethree….. The state does indeed require voucher schools (most are religious parochial/Archdiocese schools) to adopt some CC nonsense and some “bubble” tests (as some of my mommy friends in the system like to call them!). The Independent faith-based schools do not accept voucher $$$ or they would be required to adopt the deforms and the testing/data madness. The Independents are now filled with former public school students and former public school teachers tired of fighting “the system”/Refusals/testing/data collection etc. I have not heard anything about the lawsuit in a while, but yes, that school did accept voucher $$$$ and I believe the funds were withdrawn by the state (as they should be!).
BOOST(our vouchers program) in MD is capped at 5 million although Gov. Hogan tried to get it raised to 10. The new Gov took some heat a few weeks ago when he tried to get rid of BOOST and then decided to leave it but capped at the current funding when there was a big protest at the State Capital Bldg.
As for the testing….yeah, it has a limit of 2% but that is only for the PARCC (I don’t know what it’s called now) test. It doesn’t account for the numerous other tests that are given throughout the school year or the fact that the curriculum is nothing but test prep (especially in Title I schools) which varies by county/district. And in MD, there is no Opt-out and Refusal is like jumping through hoops. It is ridiculous that kids need to pass 4-5 standardized tests in order to graduate HS. MD is a testing nightmare.
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Atrocities is the word! And the only way to get the everyday person to FEEL this, is with first person horror stories from teachers and kids.
Success Academy deserves to be shuttered. But so does most of the State of TX or OK or MS or FL. Because they are engaged in the very same behavior.
The kids know this is not education. The stark reality makes them sick, angry, rebellious and depressed. Not to mention robbed of life-long opportunities.
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Teachers are mandated reporters. I know they probably don’t want to lose their jobs, but they are legally required to report child neglect and abuse. We constantly hear horror stories about charters – kids not allowed to go to the bathroom when they need to and having accidents day after day (this happened to my friend’s son, she pulled him out in Feb.), kids being hungry and dehydrated because they eliminate snack time, etc. The neglect is clear. Why aren’t they reporting it?
The teacher who bravely spoke out seems to be calling for others to speak out and her readers, according to their comments, also have this goal. They believe that exposing the atrocities will result in rehabilitation and improvement. But, as we, Diane’s readers, know, that is an impossible goal. The greedy people running charters only care about their profits. Parents need to stop enrolling and let charters die. I know and hear of many parents who pull their kids out, but do not talk with other parents about it. They should band together. Maybe this is happening in some places, but I’m just not aware? (My friend did not tell her story or talk to others about why she pulled her son out although I encouraged her to do so…)
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I don’t know if any organization of disillusioned charter parents. It takes a lot of energy and resources to organize, and most parents just want their child in a good school. Also, they know the charter has more money than they do and can come after them.
There was a group of angry students and teachers called BlackAtKIPP, but I don’t know if they still exist. They exposed racist practices, and KIPP made major changes to its No-excuses approach.
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The comments are enlightening, too.
I noticed a Columbia Journalism Fellow commented, and if they are reading this, I hope they will closely examine the inexplicably and suspiciously high attrition rate data that Gary Rubinstein has cited – that data that education writers like Susan Edelman, Elizabeth Green at Chalkbeat (who wrote a fawning article declaring “Moskowitz has created the most impressive education system I’ve ever seen”) and Eliza Shapiro (who rejects all criticism of her “fair and balanced” amplification of pro-charter talking points) leave out of all their reporting.
I am positive that Joseph Belluck – one of Success Academy’s fawning admirers – who oversees Success Academy’s unlimited expansion as chair of the board of the SUNY Charter Institute – will ignore this as he ignores all criticism of the charter network he fawns over.
The Columbia Journalism Fellow should do an expose about the SUNY Charter Institute and their (so-called) oversight in which charters are rewarded for extremely high passing rates, and anything a charter does to achieve high passing is ignored, no matter how many parents complain.
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I read all the comments, most from her former students or other SA teachers. None disagreed with her. They thanked her for her courage in speaking out.
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Yes, the comments were excellent.
I was referring to this comment from someone (I won’t re-post her name or email here):
Hi Livia,
I’m a former teacher and current investigative journalism fellow at Columbia. I’d love to chat. Please email me at xxxx@columbia.edu.
There is a huge expose about the SUNY Charter Institute to be done by a real journalist (not one of the education journalists who rewrites boastful SA press releases and adds a disclaimer that “some union official disagrees”.
I think SUNY might be feeling the heat. The SUNY committee meetings are recorded, and in another post I am going to transcribe parts of the March 15, 2023 Charter Schools Committee meeting where the trustees spent all of 6 minutes (if that) rubber stamping four-year renewals for 8 Success Academy schools.
Journalists could be doing better job just from reporting what is right in front of their faces, and asking questions of the trustees and Charter Institute staffers.
They don’t.
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After the insane Test Mania was forced on public school districts across the country, soon after President Bush signed the No Child left Behind BS into law, the public district where I taught starting offering summer school classes that taught students how to become better multiple choice test takers.
For about 15 of the 30 years I was a teacher in that District, I taught summer school. In 2005, I taught my last summer school classes that ended soon after my 60th birthday when I retired from teaching.
One of the last classes I taught that summer was teaching students how to raise their test scores on multiple choice tests, without needing to study anything.
The lesson plans and worksheets were all handed to me in a packet. I was told to follow those scripts and use those worksheets. Most of the tactics I taught in tha tone class that one summer were ways to increase your odds of guessing an answer right when you didn’t know it.
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Now, that’s just part of the “education” that kids receive daily….in Charter schools as well as public schools.
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Great point. Once kids are familiar with test question formats, excessive practice on tests, rather than the material being tested, is an admission that teaching and learning was unsuccessful.
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Kudos to Livia Camperi for one of the most cogent, well-composed, and comprehensive critiques I’ve read yet of SA’s MO. The tone is judicious, emphasizing that she can only speak for the individual school in which she taught. But those of us who have been following SA’s issues for years find nearly all those threads represented here. And kudos to Gary R for featuring it on his blog, and to Diane for giving Gary a bigger platform.
My overall reaction was disappointment that despite the bad press over the years, SA appears to be carrying on exactly as they were a decade ago. At least KIPP took the strong criticism of its no-excuses policy to heart and made some changes.
Gary rightly highlights the most egregious practice noted in Camperi’s post: 3 months out of 9 devoted to nothing but practicing ELA & Math stdzd tests, all day every day, in advance of annual state tests.
My understanding is, these tests take max 5 school days (including make-ups). Three months of practice-testing adds on 35% of the remaining days in the schyr which are NOT devoted to new curriculum. So SA kids are getting a scant 2/3 of a yr’s curriculum, yet “scoring” [allegedly] well above peer-matched tradl pubschs.
Sure would be nice to have some studies to examine the questions raised by this phenomenon. As LisaM suggests, some degree of this test-prep goes on in many tradl pubschs– the poorer the school [i.e., lower scores, more threatened by sanctions], the more. It would be great to “prove” that overtesting, & hence over-test-prepping in poorer schools, robs those poorer kids of curriculum that could provide more learning [and increase interest in learning].
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The trustees who serve on the SUNY Charter Board which serves as the only authority with any real oversight are complicit. Their oversight of Success Academy is about as real as Rep. Jim Jordan, as head of the House Judiciary Committee, overseeing the actions of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. They are cheerleaders and their oversight is laughable.
SUNY Charter Board meetings are recorded, and on March 15, 2023, the SUNY Charter Board, led by Joseph Belluck, rubber stamped 8 Success Academy renewals – each for four years. (In a previous recorded meeting, Belluck fawned over a pretty young Success Academy administrator, making small talk about the location of their fancy new high school because apparently he had no real questions for her.)
In the video, it’s hard to tell who is talking, but it is possibly Meryl Tisch, who seems to have felt the heat and is trying to cover her butt, which ironically just proves how terrible their oversight is. Here is an incomplete transcription of the “oversight”:
SUNY Charter Institute staff person: “So this renewal for Success Academy Charter Schools is a four-year, full term renewal to align the education appropriation through July 31, 2027.
Belluck: OK So all of them are for 4 years? OK Great!
Meryl Tisch(?): I would like to move from the table…(Belluck makes joking aside)….I’m not sure why we’re doing it, I’m not sure what the dates are, I’m not sure what we’re doing, NO ONE EXPLAINED IT TO ME. I ASKED ABOUT THESE RENEWALS, NO ONE BRIEFED ME, I’M UNCOMFORTABLE. If anyone would like to brief me I’d love to understand, I’d love to move forward, I love Success, but I want to know what schedule is here, who’s getting an early renewal [NOTE: in past SUNY would give SA early renewals], what the issues are with the school, etc. etc.
BECAUSE I DON’T WANT ANYONE TO SAY THAT WE, ONCE AGAIN, WENT OUT OF OUR WAY TO DO SOMETHING FOR SUCCESS THAT WE WOULDN’T DO FOR EVERYONE. SO LET’S BE VERY CLEAR HERE.”
That SUNY Trustee (Meryl Tisch?) is told that the renewals are all on time, none of the renewals are early, so she is thrilled!
Then she asks:
“ARE THERE ANY PROBLEMS WITH ANY OF THESE SCHOOLS?”
SUNY staff member says “No! They are all academic successes…”
She asks: “ARE THERE ANY RED FLAGS ABOUT ANYTHING? TEACHER CERTIFICATION?”
SUNY staff member says “they meet the teacher certification requirements…”
Tisch (or whoever that is) goes on:
“SO THERE ARE NO ISSUES? I JUST WANT TO BE ON THE RECORD BECAUSE WE KEEP GETTING ACCUSED OF GOING OUT OF OUR WAY TO DO SOMETHING FOR SUCCESS..I JUST, WE HAVE NOTHING TO HIDE HERE, THESE ARE JUST GOOD SCHOOLS…”
SUNY staff member tries to move it along, “anything else?”
Tisch says:
“If someone were looking to criticize something about this, what would be the criticism?”
Charter Institute person says “One of the criticisms…teachers’ certification is removed from the table.”
Tisch(?) says: “So they’ve come into compliance, THERE’S NO ISSUES, GREAT! THEN I’M HAPPY TO MOVE FORWARD”
(FYI, the ENTIRE exchange from the SUNY trustee who I believe is Meryl Tisch took 2 1/2 minutes. She states that she was not provided with the briefing she requested before the meeting, but in 2 1/2 minutes her oversight is done!)
a bit later the same trustee asked a couple perfunctory question about whether SA is holding onto some of their charters they aren’t using, and the difficulty of finding co-location space for their schools.
The fact that at a public SUNY meeting, the SUNY Charter Institute staff and SUNY trustees basically implied that the ONLY red flags were teacher certification (solved!!!) and NOTHING ELSE is a prime example of rubber stamping in action.
There is no oversight about attrition, and as far as I can tell they have never done proper investigations of anything. Their method of investigation seems to be: Ask Eva Moskowitz. Accept her explanation at face value. Oversight complete.
It clearly doesn’t matter whether 50% or 99% of the students who enroll then disappear from Success Academy – the SUNY Board meeting reflects that the trustees don’t care. Their view of excellence is a percentage passing rate on state tests of the REMAINING students (regardless how few are left) or percentage of the REMAINING students who graduate and go to college (regardless of how few remaining students there are) — and they don’t care how many students go missing.
Meryl Tisch – or whoever that was asking questions – seemed to be only concerned about getting answers to issues that OTHER CHARTERS complained about — like whether Success Academy was using their charters. She specifically asked whether there were any issues, and when she got the answer “No”, she immediately accepted it as gospel. It demonstrated her complete disregard for the many students who leave Success Academy, and why so many of them leave AFTER their parents jumped through hoops to get them into the school.
Even Success Academy cheerleaders like Robert Pondiscio have acknowledged that Success Academy makes parents who win the lottery jump through a multitude of hoops and required meeting before they can even enroll their child. So when the SUNY trustees ask about red flags, and the staff at the SUNY Charter Institute tell them that Success Academy has absolutely no red flags, you know that there is something very rotten in Denmark. The SUNY trustees are complicit and the entire Charter Schools Committee needs to be fired. If the Governor needs evidence of the trustees’ negligence, she only has to watch the trustees rubber stamping approvals in that video while they ignore the attrition rate that is a HUGE RED FLAG, and ignore what SA parents or students say unless it is unqualified praise. And many of these rubber stamping trustees are the same ones who rubber stamped whatever Success Academy wanted years ago, when trustee Pedro Noguera resigned in disgust.
The questions posed by the trustee at the March 15, 2023 meeting and her laughably gullible and embarrassing acceptance when she was told that there was not a single red flag(!) is actually the most oversight I have ever seen the trustees do! Which tells you how lousy their oversight has been. Usually they don’t even bother to even ask questions.
But what kind of hack does a trustee have to be to actually believe that 2 1/2 minutes of asking questions and simply accepting someone telling her “no red flags” is going to keep her out of trouble when some REAL investigative journalist like the Columbia fellow actually writes a story? The trustees are going to be seen the way as they are in the video – willingly complicit cheerleaders whose definition of “oversight” is a joke. Or worse.
The discussion of SA begins at 2:15:00 in the meeting video and ends at around 2:21:00. Just watch those 6 minutes to see a classic example of rubber stamping oversight that should be used as a case study in unprofessional oversight by a state board.
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^^^link here:
https://sysadm.mediasite.suny.edu/Mediasite/Play/c45060ed27a2457b9a9c30ee564d5cb81d
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Disgusting that Tisch is more concerned about how the board will look than actual reality.
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I read Livia’s account of her experiences with absolutely no shock. My ex-husband could have written her article based on his experiences as a teacher at Bronx Prep some 20 years ago. The culture hasn’t changed—only the years have.
The system of racism, punishment, impossible expectations, lack of any understanding of child development, and total disregard for any sense of humanity is the common thread of management in these places. My ex dared to speak up against their unfair policies, and he was not only fired instantly but was escorted out like a common criminal and ordered not to speak to any student or staff member during his “perp walk” out of the facility. And let’s not forget the scandal of a popular Bronx Prep teacher sexually abusing the students for his own kicks—that story made it in the news.
Livia made an effort to qualify that she only can speak to what happened at DPMS, however this template is followed far and wide in the charter industry. The charter school culture writ large is abominable, yet after decades no one has been able to stop the atrocities and crimes against humans that occur there as a matter of operation. That is what shocks me.
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It’s funny how Eva thinks that she has all the answers, and that what goes on in her schools should be the model for all schools nationwide, as she states in this op-ed in which she trashes traditional university schools of education — you know … “the old failed” institutions where unfortunately, teachers have been trained for generations. It’s interesting how Eva’s description of her schools and what goes on in them is the mathematical opposite of the whistleblower Livia’s account:
https://www.the74million.org/article/eva-moskowitz-student-performance-is-a-mirror/
EVA MOSKOWITZ:
“To achieve this high level of education, Success Academy provides intensive teacher training during the summer, continued professional development once school starts – the equivalent of 13 weeks every academic year – and frequent collaborative planning sessions so no teacher feels she has to sink or swim. It was a program developed out of necessity, because the fact is, our education schools are failing to produce capable, effective teachers who are ready to deliver high student outcomes the moment they enter the classroom.
“If we want to truly reform education in the United States, we must fundamentally reform how we train America’s teachers. Innovative approaches like those employed by small organizations such as Success Academy to create better teacher training programs should be viewed as a model for achieving this important goal.
“We all know that strong teachers make a tremendous difference – maybe the greatest difference – in educational outcomes for children. As a country, we need to abandon the old, failed methods and instead foster programs that are improving teacher preparation and producing dramatic gains for children.”
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Hubris. Pride goeth before a fall.
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Former employee here also- can confirm they were “cheating” in kindergarten in regards to test prep and tests that went to network.
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Hello Gary I would really love to touch base with you as my child has only been in this school for 3 days and he already was suspended because they said he broke a pencil and leaned back on his chair. I told the principal of the school staff has no compassion, empathy, or patience for a new student to adjust to a whole new way of learning than I’d like to give him at the least some time to adjust like a month or so and the principal said oh I know it won’t take you that long to come to that realization. So basically I got the impression that my son just made the got to go list and is currently in first place on that awesome children black list. I also felt the lack are compassion from just her voice and responses. Very cold and callous. If I am wrong then I will admit I’m wrong but honestly I’m usually very good at spotting out insensitive people. If this is the impression that I’m getting on the third day I’m almost certain things won’t get any better as far a the humiliation of my child and me continues. Please feel free to contact me as soon as you possibly can. I have fear for the future of my child at SA.
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