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The Price of Test Scores at Success Academy

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2019 //
31

 

Katy Crawford-Garrett is an associate professor at the University of New Mexico.

 

Success Academies, a network of 47 charter schools in New York City that serves a majority of Black and Brown youth from poor communities, has long been considered a star of the school reform movement, garnering accolades from politicians, philanthropists, and the media. Founded by Eva Moskowitz in 2006, Success Academies can claim some of the highest standardized test scores in the state of New York (often outperforming wealthy suburban districts), a metric which suggests that Success has done the impossible – figured out howto erase the achievement gaps that have confounded reformers, school leaders, researchers, and policymakers for decades.

 

At the end of a 7-episode podcast on Success Academiesdeveloped by Gimlet Media and featured as part of the StartUpseries, the host, Lisa Chow, weighs the pros and cons of Success’s controversial approach to educating poor Black and Brown youth by stating, “Maybe these emotional and social costs that families are paying, maybe those are the costs of catapulting across the vast achievement gap.” The “costs” that Chow is referring to — as articulated by parents, students, and teachers in vivid terms throughout the program — include the loss of humanity, dignity, and mental health, casualties, it seems, to achieving top scores on standardized tests. As a teacher educator and former elementary school teacher, I wondered if this was really where twenty years of aggressive educational reforms had brought us- to a place in which parents from historically-marginalized communities have to choose between their child’s scholastic success and their overall well-being.

 

The podcast offers a disturbing window into the approaches that Success uses in order to glean its unprecedented results including a disproportionate focus on test prep (sometimes up to 6 hours a day), harsh disciplinary practices (including record-high rates of suspension), and the revolving door of young,inexperienced teachers willing to work punishing hours and enforce strict policies, even as they have little to no formal preparation as educators.

 

We do hear some inspirational stories of students like Moctarwho earns a full ride to MIT and powerful accounts of children who thrive, at least initially, within the climate of academic rigor. However, like so many narratives of American education, the story of Success rests on the tired binary between innovative charter schools and status quo public schools, between lazy union employees and hard-working young idealists, and the familiar trope of the White savior and the Black and Brown children who need to be tightly controlled as they learn to dress and act more White and middle class.

 

Eva Moskowitz, Success Academies’ controversial founder, and the anti-hero of the podcast, counters these critiques vociferously throughout the program insisting that her schools not only teach children to read but to love reading and that beyond the robotic and stifling test prep, there exists a rigorous curriculum focused on critical thinking. It is often difficult to believe Moskowitz, earnest as she sounds, in the face of the mounting evidence that Chow and her fellow producers provide. A former teacher shares in heartbreaking terms how she found herself viewing students solely as numbers and colors- indicators of their performance on various assessments – rather than as individuals with ideas, thoughts and questions. A young Black student at the first Success Academy High School struggles with the ways in which her cultural identity is denied by the organization after non-religious head scarves are banned at the school. In the face of this critique, Moskowitz contends in a bewildered tone that all students at Success are the same,ignoring the complexity of her students’ racialized experiencesin and out of school and refusing to consider how the racist policies her schools enact actually undermine her espoused goal of ensuring student success. Throughout the podcast, I marveled at the notion that the kids are taught to master the assessmentsand adhere to the policies but never to question either.

 

In the Ethnic Studies movement, which has similar aims to Success but contrastive instructional approaches, posing critical questions is central to the curriculum. For over forty years, Ethnic Studies advocates have worked diligently and doggedly to foster rich educational experiences for Black and Brown youth in an effort to connect academic achievement to students’ cultural identities and to avoid the harsh disciplinary tactics and arcane policies that predominate at “No Excuses” charter schools. In Tucson, for example, a Mexican-American Studies program was introduced in 1998 as part of an effort to address endemic underachievement among Mexican-American youth. In the intervening years, literature and history courses were offeredwith an explicit focus on Mexican-American identity. By every measurable metric, the program was a success as participation in the program led to an increase in graduation rates, college attendance, and academic performance while simultaneously validating students’ cultural histories and sense of identity. Despite these laudable results, the program never had near the financial investment of Success Academies (Moskowitz spent $5 million alone on an advertising campaign when her school buildings were under threat by New York City Mayor BillDiBlasio), and instead of being scaled up, Mexican-American Studies was deemed illegal by the state of Arizona and shut down in 2011. The decision was eventually overturned after a costly and lengthy court battle; yet rebuilding the program will take years and, in the interim, countless Arizona youth were denied the opportunity to take Ethnic Studies courses. All of this exists in sharp contrast to the ways in which Success Academy has grown exponentially over the past decade, starting with one school in Harlem in 2006 and now counting 47 schools across New York City.

 

In the meantime, Ethnic Studies advocates have workedtirelessly, often without financial resources, investments from hedge fund managers, or the high-profile political connections enjoyed by Moskowitz to create curricula that honors students’cultural backgrounds, teaches critical consciousness, and fosters academic achievement without forcing students to make painful choices to abandon their heritage and humanity to adhere to White middle class norms.

 

I typically begin and end my teacher education courses with aquestion: What is education for and why does it matter? As much as we want to believe that education enhances social mobility, we know that it actually reproduces inequality- a phenomenon that Eva Moskowitz laudably seeks to address. My hope is that my students, who will all become teachers in one of the poorest states in our union, understand that asking and re-asking this question is foundational to our work as educators. If our answer focuses on educational access at all costs, then we end up with models like Success where kids learn to obey, sit with folded hands, and forsake their identities. But if our answer involves cultivating students capable of participating critically and humanely in our democracy, then we will conceptualize schooling differently and imagine new possibilities. As Moskowitz passionately argues, poor and marginalized youth deserve access to opportunity. They deserve challenge and rigor. They deserve an education that prepares them for college. But they also deserve an education that acknowledges their humanity – a process that makes all of us more fully human.

 

Sources:

https://gimletmedia.com/shows/startup/v4he75

 

https://scholars.org/brief/how-ethnic-studies-can-reduce-racial-achievement-gaps

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Discipline, Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy

New York Times: Charters in NYC Trying to Reform Themselves as Backlash Grows

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2019 //
30

 

Eliza Shapiro of the New York Times reports on the efforts of some charter schools in New York City to  reform their practices and repair their tarnished image in response to a backlash against them. 

If you can open the comments, you will see that most readers who comment understand the charter hoax. They know that charters are a rightwing ploy created by billionaires like DeVos and Broad to bust unions and divert funding from public schools.

The story has a factually inaccurate headline: “Why Some of the Country’s Best Urban Schools Are Facing a Reckoning.” The story itself does not call these schools “the best urban schools in the country.” Yet the story buys into charter marketing myths. Some, like Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy chain, achieve high test scores by exclusion, attrition, and test prep. Does that make them among “the best urban schools”? The story falsely claims that these schools have “long waiting lists,” but that is charter propaganda. If they have these long lines hoping to gain admission, why do they demand that the NYC Department of Education turn over their mailing lists for recruitment purposes? Even Success Academy puts advertising on buses and hangs posters in supermarkets; why advertise if there is a waiting list?

The story says that some charter leaders are responding to the backlash against them by taking the critics seriously and trying to reduce their harsh discipline, to accept students with disabilities, and to hire more teachers of color.

When the charter school movement first burst on to the scene, its founders pledged to transform big urban school districts by offering low-income and minority families something they believed was missing: safe, orderly schools with rigorous academics.

But now, several decades later, as the movement has expanded, questions about whether its leaders were fulfilling their original promise to educate vulnerable children better than neighborhood public schools have mounted.

The story perpetuates another myth: that the backlash against charters was created by teachers’ unions. But teachers’ unions are eager to organize charter teachers.

In New York State, the real backlash against charters occurred at the polls last fall, when voters ousted the “Independent Democratic Caucus” which caucused with Republicans in the State Senate, and replaced them with progressive Democrats, who opposed charter invasions of their neighborhoods.

The legislative victories of charters depended on control of the State Senate by Republicans, who collaborated with Governor Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo was the recipient of millions in campaign contributions from the charter lobby, especially hedge funders and Wall Street.

The story focuses on KIPP, the national corporate charter chain, and its national policy director Richard Buery, who previously was Deputy Mayor in the DeBlasio administration.

Mr. Buery, who is black and grew up in East New York, Brooklyn, noticed that black and Hispanic students in KIPP schools were sometimes being disciplined too harshly by their white teachers. The network’s high schools had impressive academic results and graduation rates, but their students then struggled in college. And KIPP executives’ relationships with elected officials were fraying.

In response, Mr. Buery adopted an unusual strategy: He publicly declared that some of the criticism of KIPP — and the charter movement in general — was merited, and announced that KIPP needed to change for it to continue to thrive.

Mr. Buery is part of a growing number of charter school executives to acknowledge shortcomings in their schools — partly in an effort to recast their tarnished image and to counteract a growing backlash that threatens the schools’ ability to influence American public education…

KIPP’s internal reckoning has coincided with a moment in which New York’s elected officials and Democratic presidential candidates have turned decisively away from the charter movement. Both groups are eager to please their allies in teachers unions, which have consolidated power over the last year.

The threat to charters is severe in New York City, which is home to more than 100,000 charter school students and was once seen as an incubator within the movement.

Exactly why the charter sector faces a “severe” threat, when it enrolls 100,000 students, is not clear. Unless the reporter means that the sector’s growth is stymied by the loss of power in Albany. The charter industry wants the Legislature to raise the cap on charters in NYC, and the newly energized Democratic-controlled Legislature won’t do it.

Why do corporate charter chains have to grow? Why can’t they be content to own 10% market share?

Nowhere in this article does it explain why the public should underwrite the costs of two competing school systems, one of which is privately controlled.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Discipline, Education Industry, Education Reform, New York City, Privatization

EdWeek: Do Children of Color Need Harsh Discipline to Succeed in School?

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2019 //
15

 

This article in Education Week by two researchers—Joanne Golann and Mira Debs—ask why leaders of “no-excuses” charter schools think that children of color need harsh discipline. They interview parents and discover what they really want:

As researchers who have taught in and studied these schools, we found that parents’ attitudes were not that simple. The Black and Latino parents we interviewed in a no-excuses middle school valued discipline, but viewed it as more than rule following. They wanted demanding academic expectations alongside a caring and structured environment that would help their children develop the self-discipline to make good choices.

Recognizing the peer pressures their children faced, these parents told us that they did not want their children to become “robots” or “little mindless minion[s], just going by what somebody says.” Their concerns echo an earlier study that one of us (Joanne Golann) published in 2015, questioning whether the no-excuses model’s emphasis on obedience adequately prepares students for the self-directed learning skills they need to be successful in college.

What their children actually get is boot-camp discipline, where parents are called for the smallest infraction, like laughing during a fire drill.

No-excuses students are typically required to wear uniforms, sit straight, with their hands folded on the table, and their eyes continuously on the teacher. At breaks, they walk silently through the halls in single-file lines. Students who follow these stringent expectations are rewarded with privileges, while violators are punished with demerits, detentions, and suspensions.

The researchers say that Montessori schools get good results without harsh discipline in a climate that encourages creativity and collaboration.

I have always wondered where the no-excuses charters found bright young college graduates willing to enforce their harsh rules. Many of them presumably studied in progressive schools and colleges. How did they learn to enforce harsh rules? This “special” and harsh treatment of children of color smacks of colonialism.

Categories Charter Schools, Discipline, Harlem Success Academy, KIPP Charter Schools, Parents, Teachers

SPLC: Black Students, Students With Disabilities Most Likely to Be Victims of Corporal Punishment

By dianeravitch
June 14, 2019 //
15

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 
June 11, 2019
Contact: Owen Kilmer, SPLC
Owen.Kilmer@splcenter.org // (334) 956-8209
John McDonald, UCLA
JMcDonald@gseis.ucla.edu // (310) 206-0513

 

Report: Black students, students with disabilities among

most likely to be struck in schools practicing corporal punishment

 

Civil rights groups offer new insight into practice banned in majority of states

 

MONTGOMERY, Ala. – Children attending the small percentage of the nation’s public schools that allow corporal punishment face a much greater likelihood of being struck than previously understood, with black students and students with disabilities among the most likely groups to be struck, according to a report released today by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the University of California at Los Angeles’ Civil Rights Project.

 

The report – The Striking Outlier: The Persistent, Painful and Problematic Practice of Corporal Punishment in Schools – provides the clearest look yet at a practice outlawed in a majority of states and, even within states that legally permit the practice in schools, ban it in a host of other public settings for children and adults. The report includes a foreword by Derrick Johnson, president and chief executive of the NAACP.

 

The report found that at least one in every 20 children attending schools that practice corporal punishment were struck in 2013-14 and 2015-16. Black girls were more than three times as likely to be struck as white girls (5.2 percent vs.1.7 percent) during the 2013-14 school year. Black boys were nearly twice as likely as to be struck as white boys (14 percent vs. 7.5 percent).

 

Such racial disparities are trou­bling, because other research shows that black students do not misbehave more than white students. The report also found that in more than half of the schools practicing corporal punishment, students with disabilities were struck at higher rates than those without disabilities, raisingconcerns that they may have been struck for behaviors arising from their dis­ability.

 

“These findings show that corporal punishment disproportionately affects the nation’s most vulnerable students,” said Zoe Savitsky, SPLC deputy legal director. “It also destroys a child’s trust in educators, which damages learning relationships. Quite simply, corporal punishment doesn’t belong in schools, and states should bring schools in line with the many other institutions, from foster care to juvenile detention, that already ban the practice.”

 

The report recommends that states ban the practice in schools and that schools use evidenced-based discipline programs as alternatives to corporal punishment rather than punitive disciplinary measures, such as out-of-school suspension. 

 

“If an adult hit someone with a weapon, it’s considered aggravated assault. An educator using violence to discipline students, however, is considered corporal punishment, and we found it’s still happening over 100,000 times every year in public schools,” said report co-author Amir Whitaker, researcher with the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at UCLA. “Like other forms of discipline and state-supported violence, it’s disproportionately used on black students. The legacy of slavery and racial terror continues through its use, and decades of research finds the practice is extremely harmful to students.”

 

The report’s methodology differs from previous studies, which typically examine student populations at the state or school district level where corporal punishment was practiced – even when corporal punishment was only used in a small fraction of schools in those jurisdictions. That approach skews corporal punishment rates downward. This report only examined data from schools where corporal punishment was used, relying primarily on data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection from the 2013-14 school year.

 

Within the schools that practice corpo­ral punishment, the report found about 5.6 percent of stu­dents were struck during the 2013-14 school year. The rates in individual states, however, were as high as 9.3 percent (Mississippi), 7.5 percent (Arkansas) and 5.9 percent (Alabama).

 

What emerges is a picture of a practice that remains deeply entrenched in the South. Ten Southern states account for more than three-quar­ters of all corporal punishment in public schools. Just four of those states – Mis­sissippi, Alabama, Arkansas and Texas – account for more than 70 percent.

 

“There are far more effective and safer ways to manage a classroom,” said report co-author Dan Losen, director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at UCLA. “That is why most public schools in the United States ban the practice.

 

“This report demonstrates how in most states that still allow corporal punishment of children of color and those with disabilities are frequently struck. They bear the brunt of this outdated and ineffective practice compared to their white and nondisabled peers. Our documentation of the uneven and heavy-handed practice suggests that the use of corporal punishment is likely violating the civil rights of public school children throughout the South.”

 

Mis­sissippi alone is responsible for almost one-quarter of all corporal punishment. And nearly half (43.8 percent) of all black girls receiving corporal punishment in U.S. public schools in 2013-14 were in Mis­sissippi (4,716 black girls). No other state came close to eclipsing Mississippi’s corporal punishment rate of black girls.

 

Despite corporal punishment’s ubiquity in the South, a review of the law in five Southern states that allow the practice in schools (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi) found that these states not only prohibit adults from striking children in most other settings – such as child care centers, foster care settings and juvenile detention centers – but often describe corporal punishment as inappro­priate, abusive and unethical in such settings, the report found.

 

“This data should shock our conscience,” the NAACP’s Johnson writes in the report’s foreword. He adds: “[T]he impact of corporal punishment can be devastating on a student’s ability to learn and succeed. There are much more effective ways to promote positive behavior, ways that keep students safe and in the classroom.”

 

Thirty-one states have banned corporal punishment in schools, according to the report. In the remaining 19 states, there are nearly 8,000 schools within dis­tricts that practice it. Of those schools, how­ever, almost 45 percent do not use corporal punishment. This means that children attending different schools in the same district can have vastly different experiences when it comes to discipline. One school may use evidence-based practices that provide pos­itive, corrective consequences for students. But, at a nearby school, children engaging in the same mis­behavior may be struck despite research showing the practice to be ineffective and unsound for education.

 

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The Southern Poverty Law Center, based in Alabama with offices in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi, is a nonprofit civil rights organization dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry, and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society. For more information, visit www.splcenter.org.

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Discipline, Education Reform, Racism, Special Education

U.S. Department of Ed Says Eva Violated FERPA Privacy Right; Eva Will Appeal

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2019 //
21

 

The U.S. Department of Education criticized Eva Moskowitz for releasing the private disciplinary record of a student whose mother repeatedly criticized the school. This comes soon after the ED awarded Success Academy $10 Million to expand.

 

Leonie Haimson, advocate for student privacy,  comments:

This press release is also posted here.

 

For immediate release: June 4, 2019

For more information contact Leonie Haimson, leoniehaimson@gmail.com; 917-435-9329.

 

 

US Department of Education finds Eva Moskowitz and Success Academy repeatedly violated a child’s privacy according to FERPA

 

On Monday, June 2, 2019, Fatima Geidi finally received a response to a FERPA complaint she filed more than three and half years ago with the US Department of Education. The Student Privacy Policy Office of the Department of Education found that her FERPA complaint against Eva Moskowitz and Success Academy charter schools was justified and that they had indeed repeatedly violated her son’s privacy rights.  The official findings letter to Ms. Moskowitz, dated May 31, 2019, is here.

 

On October 31, 2015, Ms. Geidi filed a complaint detailing how Eva Moskowitz, CEO of Success Academy charter schools, had revealed details of her son’s disciplinary records to the media and on her website.  Ms. Moskowitz made these disclosures in order to retaliate against Ms. Geidi and her son after they had appeared on the PBS News Hour to report how he had been repeatedly suspended at one of her schools.  Her original FERPA complaint is posted here.

 

Yet the US Department of Education waited more than two years to even launch an investigation into her complaint.  In the meantime, Ms. Moskowitz included many of the same exaggerated charges against Ms. Geidi’s son on several pages of her memoir, The Education of Eva Moskowitz, that was published in September 2017.   When Ms. Geidi noticed these passages in a bookstore, she filed a second FERPA complaint on December 20, 2017.

 

Last week, the US Department of Education refused to accept the weak rationalizations offered by the Success Academy legal staff about these disclosures and found that in both cases, they were flagrant violations of FERPA.

 

Yet in order to address these violations, Frank Miller, Deputy Director of the Student Privacy Policy Office, wrote that Success Academy must merely ensure that  “school officials have or will receive training on the requirements of FERPA as they relate to the issues in this complaint.”  He refrained from imposing any penalties or demanding that the offending passages be deleted from Eva Moskowitz’ book – a book  that is still for sale on Amazon and in bookstores all across the United States.

 

As Fatima Geidi said, “While I am glad that the US Department of Education agreed that Ms. Moskowitz and Success Academy repeatedly violated my child’s privacy by disclosing trumped-up details of his education records to the media, on the Success website and in her book, I am furious that they failed to fine her, or at the very least, demand that she take the offending passages out of her book. Because the Department of Education waited over two years to respond to my initial FERPA complaint,  Eva Moskowitz illegally put the same information (false by the way) about my child in a book where it may remain forever.  This is unacceptable, and I demand that the illegal passages from the book be deleted.”

 

Leonie Haimson, co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, said, “Ms. Moskowitz and Success Academy have repeatedly violated FERPA in order to retaliate against parents who dare reveal how she abuses children and pushes them out of her charter schools.  These illegal disclosures happened again just last month, in the case of Lisa Vasquez and her daughter, as reported in a Chalkbeat article.  On May 9, 2019, Ms. Vasquez filed a FERPA complaint with the US Department of Education and the NY State Education Chief Privacy Officer.   Her FERPA complaint is posted on our blog, where we point to other privacy violations by Success charter schools. Simply asking for Success staff to receive privacy training  will likely prove no real deterrence to Eva Moskowitz.  Instead she and her staff will likely continue to flagrantly violate their students’ privacy with impunity in the future.” 

 

The  US Department of Education has provided more than $37 million in discretionary grants to Success Academy since 2010, including nearly $10 million awarded in April 2019.  Its officials should be required to explain why they chose not to withhold any federal funds from her schools, and worse, will allow the offending passages in Ms. Moskowitz’ book to remain in perpetuity. The unacceptable delay of more than three and a half years in responding to Ms. Geidi’s initial complaint and the lack of an meaningful response by the Department provides further evidence as to why parents should be able to sue for damages under FERPA when their children’s right to privacy has been violated.

 

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Categories Discipline, Harlem Success Academy, Privacy, U.S. Department of Education

Have You Heard: What Do Parents Think About “No Excuses” Charter Schools?

By dianeravitch
May 13, 2019 //
40

 

Jennifer Berkshire and historian Jack Schneider conduct a very interesting discussion with scholars who have written about no-excuses charter schools and public Montessori schools. 

They interview Mira Debs of Yale and Joanne Golann of Vanderbilt about their research.

They wonder, what do parents want? The answers might surprise you.

Incidentally, I communicated to Berkshire and Schneider that the origin of the term “no excuses” for strict schools was not the book by Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom with that name, which was published in 2004, but a small book by a writer named Samuel Casey, which was called “No Excuses: Lessons from 21 High-Poverty, High-Performing Schools.” 

The publication date on the paperback copy is 2000, but I remember going to a dinner at the Heritage Foundation where Mr. Casey presented his findings, and it must have been in the late 1990s. Conservatives were thrilled to learn that the answer to the education of poor black children was not more money, but strict discipline. It fit their preconceptions.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Discipline, Education Industry, Education Reform, Parents

Gary Rubinstein: Episode 6 on Success Academy, Its Political Campaign to Get Free Space, and Its Teaching Strategy of “Rip and Redo”

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2019 //
14

Gary Rubinstein deals in this segment with two controversial sagas in the brief and tumultuous life of Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy Charter Chain. 

The first came about because Mayor DeBlasio declared that he would rein in Eva Moskowitz when he was elected (under Bloomberg and Klein, she got whatever she wanted). Eva’s billionaire friends promptly put up a kitty of millions to run emotional television ads claiming that her students were about to be tossed out into the street, when the reality was that she was trying to claim extra space and push out children with serious handicaps. Her campaign was skillfully managed, and she ended up with legislation guaranteeing that the city would give her the space she wanted or pay her rent. Governor Cuomo embraced the charter cause,and the mayor suffered a defeat.

Then there was the infamous video, leaked to the New York Times, showing a teacher ripping up the paper of a first grader and sending her as punishment to a corner to calm down (although the teacher seemed to be more agitated than the child). Most people thought the teacher humiliated the child, but the practice seems to be commonplace at SA.

The next segment is the last.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Discipline, Harlem Success Academy, New York City

Gary Rubinstein: Episode 5 Spills the Beans about the “Success” of Success Academy

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2019 //
17

identifies episode 5 as the crucial reveal about Success Academy,

Gary Rubenstein identifies episode 5 as the crucial reveal about Success Academy, where even a supportive reporter notes the behaviors that shows the central message of Success Academy: Control.

Star Wars fans know that Episode 5 — The Empire Strikes Back, was the best of the Star Wars saga.  And of Beethoven’s nine symphonies, the most famous is surely his fifth.  Likewise, of the seven episodes of Startup’s podcast about Success Academy, the fifth (found here) is the most powerful and the most important.

To say that this episode has the ‘smoking gun’ would be an understatement.  This episode has not just the smoking gun, but a video of the culprit firing that gun.  I’m not sure why this episode hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves.  Maybe because it is so many hours into the podcast and most people don’t listen to all the parts.  Or maybe there are so many Success Academy excuses and talking points weaved into all the other episodes that this episode just seems like a small blemish on a generally favorable portrait of the controversial charter network.  Whatever the reason, I’m hoping that people will take the time to listen to the whole podcast and to share it, along with my summary, widely.

This episode is entitled ‘Expectations’ and it explores whether or not the expectations Success Academy has for it’s students and for the parents of those students are something that the students and parents rise to meet or if they scare away potential families and families who struggle to keep up with those expectations.

They play a tape of Eva Moskowitz speaking to families who have been accepted into Success Academy:

EVA: Hi everyone, I’m Eva Moskowitz the founder and CEO of Success Academies. It’s very nice to meet you in this large auditorium.

LISA: Eva paces across the stage in stilettos, a fitted blue dress and leather bomber jacket, her standard attire. She’s speaking to a couple hundred parents, near Success Academy Union Square. That’s one of 30 Success elementary schools offering spots to new students.

EVA: First of all, congratulations for those of you who have won the lottery.

LISA: This year Success Academy had a little over 3000 spots for about 17000 applicants. That means through a random lottery, only about one out of every six kids got a spot.

Eva tells the audience that she designed Success Academy with the hope that kids would fall in love with school. They have science labs in kindergarten, kids learning chess early on. She touts the school’s high academic standards. But she is also clear about some of the things that parents might not like.

EVA: We believe in homework. A lot of it. So if you feel really strongly that that is not something you like, you probably shouldn’t come to Success. Cause we’re going to be arguing for 12 years about homework and we’re gonna win.

LISA: Want small class sizes? We don’t have that. And, of course…

EVA: Tests. Anyone against tests? Anyone want to be part of the opt-out movement? Great, thank you for your honesty. Success is not the place for you.

LISA: Success is not the place for you. Parents start hearing that line early on. Eva makes it clear at this meeting that they’ll expect a lot of parents.

EVA: We’re very very strict on kids getting to school on time. School starts August 20th and you must be here the first day of school, no exceptions. We expect at a minimum for you to return our phone calls. I had a parent who was refusing to meet with the principal. God forbid. No no no no no.

About half of the families that get into Success Academy after winning ‘the lottery’ choose to not go there, maybe because of messages like this.

The devastating part in this episode follows a 5th grader at Success Academy named Nia.  Nia had been at Success Academy since kindergarten and had passed both sections of the 3rd and 4th grade state tests.  But she was getting about a 70 average in 5th grade so the school said that she was at risk of repeating 5th grade.  According to the podcast, this is something that is said to hundreds of families each year.

Getting ‘left back’ is a big deal.  It has major consequences that can affect the rest of a student’s life.  From then on, that student will be a year older than her classmates, always having to explain why she is a year older, that she was ‘left back.’  The school said she would have to get her grades up, which she did, to about an 80.  But the school said that it wasn’t enough.  It didn’t matter that she was now comfortably passing.  It also didn’t matter that she had passed the state tests the previous years and that she was likely to pass the state test again this year.  They said that when they took it all into consideration they decided not to promote her.  However, they would promote her if she would transfer out of Success Academy.

The amazing hypocrisy here is that Success Academy is saying that the fact that this girl passed the state tests was not enough.  They are actually admitting that passing the state tests — the thing that the entire reputation of Success Academy is based on — is not an accurate measure of achievement.

The podcast goes on to compare SA to a regular public school. Gary finds the comparison shallow and disappointing.

Categories Cruelty, Discipline, Harlem Success Academy

Gary Rubenstein: Episode 4 and the Infamous “Got to Go” List

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2019 //
11

 

Gary Rubinstein continues with episode 4 of the podcast about Success Academy. This episode attempts to explain away the embarrassing revelation of the “got to go” list, which was reported in the New York Times. You see, getting rid of “bad” children assures the greatest good for the greatest number. Once ejected, where do these children go? The only place that will take them: the public schools that Eva Moskowitz loathes.

Gary writes:

Part four of Startup’s seven part podcast about Success Academy (found here) is centered on the ‘Got To Go’ incident where a principal was found to have created a list of students he wanted to oust from his school.  This episode explores whether or not the ‘Got To Go’ list was an isolated infraction by a rogue principal or if it is something that is part of the culture of the school.

Episode 1 was about the state of public schools in NYC that would make it ripe for a network like Success Academy to emerge.  Episode 2 was the story of Eva Moskowitz and how she rose to power.  Episode 3 was about the emphasis the network puts on standardized tests and questions whether the high test scores come at some greater cost.

Episode 4 — Growth — is the most critical so far.  The ‘Go To Go’ list was a major story in the New York Times and it corroborated what many families said about Success Academy, that they push out students which, as a side benefit for them, raises the test scores of the school.

The narrator, Lisa Chow, though, got some talking points from Success Academy about how to spin this story.

Candido Brown was a new principal, put in charge of a Success Academy elementary school in Fort Greene, a neighborhood in Brooklyn. The school had already gone through two other principals in a year. The place did not represent the Success ideal of quiet classrooms and well behaved kids. It was chaotic, teachers were demoralized, and kids were defiant. Candido had worked at Success for six years but never as a principal before. He was under pressure to turn the school around. But he said drawing up the list was his own idea.

So we are to believe that this was a huge anomaly at Success Academy because that school was in turmoil so he took it on himself to resort to such extreme measures.  But how likely is it that there was actually a Success Academy that was in the chaos that Lisa Chow describes?  Looking at the state data, this school, Success Academy — Fort Greene, had test scores (100% Math, 85% Reading) on par with the other Success Academy schools.  So if they can get such test scores even when the school is in turmoil, perhaps the strict discipline there as described in episode 3 as so critical to their success, is not so important after all.

The next part of the podcast shows the level of control that Success Academy requires at their ideal schools, especially ones that have many inexperienced teachers.

LISA: That silence is the result of Success’ system of behavioral management. For that system to work, teachers need to build strong relationships with their students. Then, on top of that foundation, teachers do three things. Step 1: Set clear expectations… even for the simplest things.

For example, when kids at Success Academy are sitting on the rug, they need to be in what’s called magic five: hands locked, feet crossed, back straight, ears listening and eyes tracking the speaker.

Step 2 is to point out when kids are following those instructions — to narrate good behavior.

TEACHER: Liam is still in magic five. Chastity is silent. Malia’s hand are locked Kalia’s hands are locked, Kalia’s eyes are right on me. Liam is sitting up straight and tall, Sam is sitting up straight and tall. Kalia is tracking Hendrick, Amari is tracking Hendrick

LISA: And, as soon as teachers see a student who’s not following the instructions, they call out the behavior. That’s Step 3: Issue corrections.

TEACHER: Colin is sitting up super tall. Eliany hands in your lap. That’s a correction.

LISA: A correction is basically a warning to the student. The teacher here says it so matter of factly that you barely notice. That’s the point — discipline is woven into the fabric at Success. And if a student gets too many corrections it can land them in trouble — a timeout, a phone call home. For more serious infractions, they’re suspended.

This ‘behavior narration’ is something I had seen on some of the Success Academy training videos (before they took them all down from public site).  It is touted in ‘Teach Like A Champion’ and is also something that Teach For America advises their teachers to do.  Basically, the teacher talks for the almost the entire time the students are working, saying that this student is sitting properly and this other one isn’t.  I find this quite irritating and I would, personally, not be able to concentrate if I was a student and the teacher chattered for the entire time like this.

Open the link and read the rest.

Categories Accountability, Discipline, Harlem Success Academy

Today Is Dedicated to Gary Rubinstein’s Review of Success Academy Podcasts

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2019 //
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Teacher Appreciation Week begins today. How better to launch it than by devoting the day to Gary Rubinstein’s review of podcasts about Success Academy?

Gary began his teaching career in TFA, but turned into a sharp critic of TFA and a dedicated career teacher.

Gary Rubinstein came across a trove of podcasts about Success Academy, and he suspected theyheld the key to the “success” of Success Academy in New York City. SA is the quintessential “no excuses” charter chain. It’s rules are strict, even draconian. The chain is driven by a philosophy that black and brown children must be disciplined and surveilled closely. No error must go uncorrected. Every infraction must be swiftly punished.

I debated whether to publish Gary’s posts as they appeared or all at once. I decided on the latter course of action. So today is devoted to podcasts about Success Academy. Though it is based in New York City, its impact is national. The chain presents itself as a model for American education. Nonsense.

Here is Gary’s first report.

Of all the charter school networks in the country, there is none that is more controversial or more secretive than Success Academy.  If ‘success’ is defined as high 3-8 state test scores, then Success Academy has earned its name.  But critics charge that this ‘success’ comes at the expense of other, more important measures of success.

This past November, a seven part podcast was published by a production company called startup.  Soon after it was released, there were some excerpts of some of the most negative parts of the podcast printed on some blogs, but generally it seems to have came and went.

I was very interested in this podcast for a lot of reasons.  I’ve been following Success Academy for years and have been piecing together evidence about all the different wrongdoings that this network engages in.  Over the years I’ve probably written twenty different blog posts with my findings.  I was also interested because last summer I was interviewed by one of the producers of this podcast while they were gathering material.  Besides an hour or two of interviews, I also had several follow-up emails with this producer where he asked me to clarify certain arguments.  I was curious to see how balanced the eventual product would be.

The podcast runs about seven hours and I listened to it a few months ago for the first time.  What I found was a bizarre mix of about six hours of puff piece and one hour of devastating expose.  Throughout the episodes the producers generally gave Success Academy the benefit of the doubt any time they could — until eventually even they couldn’t near the end.  But then at the end it went back to being a puff piece.

Over the next few blog posts, I’m going to write commentary about the different parts — episode 5 is the big one — though I need to work my way up to that one.

Episode 1 is called ‘The Problem’ and can be found here or on iTunes.  It begins with an interview with a parent of a Success Academy student who is recalling her own schooling in New York City in the 1980s where she was bullied and even arrested for getting into a fight at school.  For her son she wanted something different.

It is here that the narrator gives the first hint about her biased point of view.  At 4:28 the narrator says about this mother’s choices.  “Their neighborhood public school was not an option.  It was bad.”  With these three words — “It was bad” — and without elaboration since we all must know what she means, I definitely was concerned that this was not a great start to a seven hour podcast series.  In what way was it “bad”?  Were there bad teachers?  Does it have bad test scores?  Is the safety bad?  We don’t know.  This oversimplified and unfair one word condemnation of the school is unfortunately too typical.  After getting through episode 5 I think most will agree that a three word summary of Success Academy could also be “It was bad.”

Categories Accountability, Discipline, Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy
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