The video of a teacher at Success Academy humiliating a first-grade student for failing to write the correct answer went viral. Scores of blogs around the world posted the video.

How did reformers react to the dilemma of their superstar?

Derrell Bradford defended Eva and agreed with her that the event was an insignificant anomaly. He is a member of her board and leader of NYCan. Before that, he led NJ4Kids on behalf of two billionaires. He agreed with Eva that her critics are “haters” who are jealous of her success.

Bradford wrote on Campbell Brown’s blog (Brown is also a member of the Success Academy board)

“So for all the Success haters out there I have some advice. If you want Success, or other “no excuses” schools to go away because you think your own brand of education is superior, because you don’t respect that other parents like it and seek it out, you don’t value the structure, or you want your kid to be a grass-fed open-range child, then you just have to, counterintuitively, do one thing: open more charter schools.”

But another reformer broke ranks. RiShawn Biddle wrote in his blog that it was no longer possible to defend Eva.

He reviews the numerous examples of the harsh disciplinary methods of SA, then concludes:

“The most-damning evidence that Dial’s misbehavior is no anomaly became clear last October when Moskowitz released the school discipline record of one of the operators former students, the son of Fatima Geidi, a parent interviewed by Merrow for his report on Success, as part of the operator’s crisis management campaign against the piece. By doing this, Moskowitz likely violate the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, the federal law that governs the privacy of student records, which bars Success from releasing discipline records without the permission of families. Even worse, by citing the discipline record of Geidi’s son, Moskowitz betrayed the school reform movement’s mission of nurturing and protecting the lives and futures of children. She used the life of a child who may be in need of real help as ammunition against a negative media report.

 
“But again, this is nothing new. Over the past five months, Moskowitz has shown that she will always choose to preserve the institution she founded over being a champion for children and their families. In that time, she has shown that she is more-willing to protect the teachers and school leaders that work for Success than be defenders of the young lives who sit in its classrooms. And over and over again, like a traditionalist superintendent in a failing district, Moskowitz has demonstrated that she will explain away any incident as an “anomaly” instead of acknowledging that there may be some deep-seated issues within the institution and its model of educational practice.

 
“At a certain point, either Moskowitz or Success Academy’s star-studded board, must acknowledge that when the institution has several incidents of educational malpractice, they are no longer anomalies. They represent the norm for the institution itself. Success Academy no longer merits a defense, especially from school reformers who, like Born-Again Christians, know better and should no longer tolerate its malpractice.”
Biddle is a reformer with principles.

Alan Singer, professor at Hofstra University in New York, wrote a column in the Huffington Post calling for the closure of Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter chain.

He writes:

This is about a charter school network that systematically terrorizes young children to maintain total control over their behavior. This is about the Success Academy Charter School Network that should be investigated by state educational officials and the local district attorney’s office and probably shut down — permanently….

What stands out for me as I watched the video is the other children. It is a first-grade class. The children are probably six-years-old and all appear to be children of color, either African-American or Latino. During the math lesson while this little girl is being berated by the teacher, who is White, twelve children are seen sitting attentively, backs upright, hands folded in their laps, in a tight circle. Every child is in uniform. They do not smile or giggle. They are not allowed slouch. They are not allowed to squirm. They are not allowed to be children. They are terrorized into obedience fearful of being the next child targeted by a White authority figure.

The teacher, shown in the video, is what Success Academy considers a model teacher. Not only does she teach first-grade students, but she mentors other teachers in the Cobble Hill, Brooklyn school. After the incident surfaced, the teacher was suspended temporarily, but was returned to the classroom and her role as a mentor in less than two weeks. Success Academy CEO Eva Moskowitz dismissed the teacher’s behavior in the video as an “anomaly.”

Like many Success Academy personnel, this teacher has questionable teaching credentials. She is a 2009 graduate of Butler University in Indiana with a degree in sociology and political science, but without teacher certification. [CORRECTION: Reader David Kennedy says the teacher has a master’s degree in early childhood education, which means she should know that humiliating a child in front of her peers is inappropriate.] Online, including Success Academy webpages, I found no reference to how she was trained as a teacher.

Meanwhile, Chalkbeat NY reports that Eva Moskowitz convened a press conference, where she defended the teacher in the video and held a sign that says:

“New York Times:

#stopbashingteachers.”

“I’m tired of apologizing,” Moskowitz said at a press conference. Calling the video “an unfortunate moment,” she said, “Frustration is a human emotion. When you care about your students so much … and you want them to go to college and graduate, it can be frustrating.”

In the comments that followed the article, one commenter pointed out (like Singer) that the teacher who humiliated the first-grader was not certified. This, the writer said, was more evidence that charter schools are not public schools. Teachers in public schools must be certified.

I can’t help but wonder what the billionaires who fund Success Academy think of the bad press the charter chain has gotten recently. They created the group called “Families for Excellent Schools” to demand unlimited, free public space for charter schools, despite the overflowing coffers of Success Academy. They are now in Boston lobbying to lift the cap on charters in Massachusetts. What is it about the rigid discipline in SA charters that appeals to them. Is it the spirit of colonialism, masked as benevolence?