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Eva Moskowitz Cancels Pre-K Program with City Rather than Accept Regulation

By dianeravitch
June 1, 2016 //
14

Eva Moskowitz agreed to open a pre-K program on behalf of the City of New York. But she refused to sign the contract that other charter schools (and all public schools and facilities) agreed to sign. Eva said that the city was not her boss, even though the money for the program came from the city.

She refused to back down. She refused to sign the contract. She canceled the pre-K program, for the fall, which enrolled about 70 children at a cost to the city of about $700,000.

Success Academy Charter Schools Cancels Pre-K
After months of fighting with City Hall about a prekindergarten contract, Success Academy Charter Schools said Wednesday it was canceling its pre-K program for the fall.

For nearly a year the charter’s founder, Eva Moskowitz, has refused to sign a contract that New York City requires of providers who participate in its public pre-K program. She says it aims to exert too much control over her curriculum, daily schedule and field trips.

City officials have said that every other pre-K provider, including charter schools, signed the same basic contract, and doing so was a clear condition of joining the initiative. Expanding public preschool has been a key part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s agenda.

Ms. Moskowitz has said the charter oversight body at the State University of New York is the proper authority over her network. State Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia ruled in the city’s favor in February, saying pre-K is a state-funded grant program, rather than part of the K-12 levels overseen by SUNY.

Ms. Moskowitz appealed to the state Supreme Court earlier this year, but said Wednesday that the court’s decision would come too late to open doors in August, and families of admitted children must scramble to find alternatives.

“It is unbelievably sad to tell parents and teachers that the courts won’t rescue our pre-K program from the mayor’s war on Success in time to open next year,” she said in a news release.

“The state upheld our important standards to ensure all programs are high quality,” Department of Education spokeswoman Devora Kaye said.

Success Academy started a prekindergarten program for 72 children in four classrooms last August, and planned to expand slightly for the next school year. A spokesman said about 3,000 children entered an admissions lottery for about 100 seats for the coming year.

Ms. Moskowitz and Mr. de Blasio have clashed repeatedly over the city’s obligation to provide space for charters and other issues. She said she hopes for a court victory so she can reopen prekindergarten classes in August 2017.

A spokesman said she is still seeking $720,000 reimbursement from the city for the current school year.

Categories Early Childhood Education, Harlem Success Academy, New York City

The Latest News from the Privatization Sector

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2016 //
18

Politico reports on the latest news from school choice advocates:

 

 

 

STUDIES OF SCHOOL CHOICE: Two advocacy groups are out with papers today expounding on the benefits of school choice. The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice says in its effort that more than a dozen empirical studies have found that school choice improves student outcomes. And nine out of 10 studies say school choice can improve racial segregation, moving students from more segregated schools into less segregated ones. The report: http://bit.ly/1TiRZzn. The conservative American Legislative Exchange Council is introducing three tools – peer reviews, branding and consumer reports – that parents can use to optimize education savings accounts. The paper: http://bit.ly/1TeOVcP.

 

 

Don’t expect to learn from either the Friedman Foundation (so-named for libertarian economist Milton Friedman, a voucher advocate) or ALEC (the far-right corporate-funded group that promotes deregulation of every government function) to say anything about Milwaukee. Milwaukee has had vouchers and charters for 25 years. There is no evidence that the children of Milwaukee have benefited by their choices. Despite the failure of choice to improve education, Governor Scott Walker wants to expand school choice and eliminate public schools altogether. The irony is that the students in public schools repeatedly have outperformed the students in choice schools, even though the public schools have a disproportionate share of students with disabilities and others that are not chosen by the choice schools. Chances are that Walker and the legislature will keep some public schools to use as a dumping ground for the students unwanted by the charters and voucher schools.

 

 

– On a related note: The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools and The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation named the finalists for the 2016 Broad Prize for Public Charter Schools today: Success Academy in New York and IDEA Public Schools and YES Prep Public Schools in Texas. The $250,000 award will be given to the best-performing charter management organization on June 27 at the National Charter Schools Conference in Nashville, Tenn.

 

 

Isn’t that great news? I am rooting for Eva and Success Academy charters. If she wins, she can use the money to buy a four-year supply of beanies or T-shirts for future political rallies. The $250,000 won’t be enough to pay for both. Or she can hire a private investigator to track down the high-level official inside her organization who leaked important documents to the media, including the internal report that alleged cheating, teacher churn, and central staff turnover.

 

The spending included $71,900 for the beanies and $62,795 for the T-shirts, according to receipts submitted to Success’s board of directors.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Harlem Success Academy, Milwaukee, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers, Walker, Scott

Leaked: Internal Documents at Success Academy

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2016 //
58

Someone high-up on the staff of Eva Moskowitz’s charter chain leaked a treasure trove of documents to Politico NY. Among other things, the documents show that the charter chain spent over $700,000 to stage a political rally in Albany. Pretty unusual for a “public school.” Any superintendent or principal who closed the schools to take the children to a political rally would be fired in a New York minute. The leak included a risk assessment that describes challenges to the future of the organization, such as high teacher turnover and a $20 million investment in technology that didn’t pan out.

 

This is a bad hair week for Success Academy, and its PR firm will no doubt be working overtime. New York City’s Public Advocate, the #2 ranked official in the city, Letitia James, joined a lawsuit against Success Academy for bias against students with disabilities. This may be only a bump in the road, however, as SA has received permission to open another 8 charters in August.

 

Here is an excerpt from the story about the leak of internal documents:

 

The expressions of concern come as Moskowitz aims to harness tens of millions of dollars in public and private funds to expand the network from its current 34 schools, serving 11,000 students, to 100 schools and 50,000 students over the next decade. That ambitious plan is key to her broader aim of establishing Success as what the network describes as a “catalyst and national model for education reform efforts,” and a legitimate citywide competitor to the incumbent public school system….

 

The internal documents cited in this article illustrate some of the challenges that have already resulted from its early growth spurt to 30 schools, including considerable staff churn and uneven quality among schools within the network.

 

“Our network has mushroomed with giant departments, and yet we are always out of breath and can barely do the work to support 11,000 kids,” reads an internal memo on Success’s departmental goals for the 2015-2016 school year. “We certainly will not be able to support 50,000 kids in 100 schools unless we make dramatic changes and improvements.”

 

And in the risk assessment, a member of the senior management team expressed concern about at least the perception of a widening distance between management and teachers in the course of expansion.

 

“It is perceived that there is a lack of humanistic connections between upper management and employees,” said one of the interviewees.

 

“My colleagues and I would benefit from a better understanding of the rationale behind our strategic expansion,” a departing employee said in an exit interview, also obtained by POLITICO New York. “Do we want to prove that our model works across demographics? That there is high parent demand? That we are the solution for NYC? Knowing this will give authentic purpose to our work.”

 

But the risk most often cited by senior managers was the network’s ability to recruit and retain its existing staff, including school principals and top executives.

 

“We don’t have a qualified talent pool to fill the spots left by the departing school leaders,” said one executive in the risk assessment. “We are already in the territory of putting people in leadership role[s] who are not quite ready yet.”

 

“We are growing so quickly that it’s almost impossible to come up with a robust leader pipeline in order to ensure high-quality leadership for every new school,” said another.

 

Some of the comments in the risk assessment appeared to foresee an exodus from the organization’s top ranks.

 

“I am concerned about high-performing employees and executives being ‘poached out’ of this organization as we become more prominent in our branding,” said one senior leader. “It also leads to loss of tribal knowledge, creating a high stress environment.”

 

IN THE SIXTEEN MONTHS SINCE THE RISK ASSESSMENT was drafted, at least five high-level Success executives have left the network, out of 20 total “leaders” listed on the network’s website….

 

THE RASH OF EXECUTIVE-LEVEL DEPARTURES HOLLOWED out what could have been the network’s pipeline of future leaders. Even before the departures, some executives at the network worried about Moskowitz’s outsize role in all aspects of Success’s operations.

 

“How about succession planning for Eva?” one employee asked in the risk assessment. “There may be a plan, but I am not clear where it is.”

 

That issue — labeled “Key Contributor” in the risk assessment — was classified as a “critical” threat to the network, meaning it could have “potentially irrecoverable impact” to Success, thereby resulting in “significant loss of stakeholder confidence,” and an “inability to continue normal operations across the enterprise.”

 

There was also considerable concern expressed about the public relations appearance of the huge donations to the chain, especially given Moskowitz’s salary of nearly $600,000 and the chain’s 15-year lease on a Wall Street headquarters at a cost of $30 million.

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy

Bombshell! Former Staff Member at Success Academy Alleges Cheating on Tests

By dianeravitch
May 10, 2016 //
99

Politico reports that a former central staff member of Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter chain alleges widespread cheating on tests, as well as high staff turnover and demoralization.

 

 

“Success Academy CEO Eva Moskowitz did not approve of the finding — made by an “ethnographer” she hired to study her rapidly expanding charter school network — that some teachers at the high-performing network might be responding to the enormous pressure placed on them by cheating.

 

 

“So Moskowitz, Success’s combative founder, deployed senior managers to inform the staffer, Roy Germano, that he was banned from visiting schools for the remainder of the year. Moskowitz disparaged Germano to other employees, according to a memo written by Germano in July 2015 and obtained by POLITICO New York, and he was told to halt his research projects immediately.

 

 

“Germano was fired last August, approximately a month after the report was completed, and is now a research scholar at New York University.

 

 

“Germano’s reports and memo, along with a trove of other documents obtained by POLITICO — a separately commissioned internal draft risk assessment report, a compilation of exit interviews, and internal Success staffing records, among other documents — paint a picture of a growing enterprise facing serious institutional strain in the form of low staff morale, unusually high turnover, and the kind of stress that could drive teachers to exaggerate their students’ progress.”

 

Success Academy is the highest scoring charter chain in New York, possibly the nation. It is also very controversial, due to its no-excuses policies, it’s attrition rates, and its claim to have cracked the code of raising test scores of low-income minority children. At its last fundraiser, last month, it raised $35 million in one night, including a gift of $25 million from one of its hedge fund admirers.

 

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Harlem Success Academy, Testing

Gary Rubinstein: How Did Success Academy Students Perform on New York Regents’ Exams?

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2016 //
16

Gary Rubinstein has been tracking the progress of Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter chain. They get very high test scores. They have small percentages of students with disabilities (only the mildest disabilities allowed) and students who are English language learners. They have high attrition rates. They have high suspension rates, even for children of 5 and 6. But the hedge fund managers love the schools because results are all that matter, not how they are obtained.

 

So Gary decided to find out how SA’s high school students performed on the state Regents exams.

 

That turned out to be a challenging quest.

 

Gary writes:

 

Reformers are all about ‘outcomes’ and that’s why they love Success Academy charter schools. Year after year Success Academy students outperform the rest of the state on the 3-8 ELA and math tests.

 

For sure if there was a hospital out there that was claiming to have the ability to cure Cancer or something like that, there would be all kinds of independent investigations and different tests to see if their claims were for real. But when it comes to education, we don’t see this so much.

 

The oldest Success Academy students are now in 10th grade. They have had two different cohorts of 8th graders take the specialized high school test for admission into one of the 8 specialized New York City high schools. Amazingly, none of those students made it into any of the specialized schools. That is pretty unusual that a group of students does so well on one standardized test but does so poorly on another. Aside from knowing that none of their 8th graders made the cut score on that test, there are no other details about their specific scores.

 

But there are other tests those students have taken, namely the New York State Regents exams. Most advanced students take the Algebra I test in 8th grade and then various Regents in 9th grade, maybe Geometry and also a few others like Living Environment, Earth Science, and Global History.

 

I had not heard about how they fared on the Regents exams for the past two years so I went over to the revamped New York State data site. I went to the page for the school, Success Academy Harlem I, but could not locate the Regent scores. I did take notice of their enrollment by grade, however.

 

The first Success Academy cohort began as kindergarteners in 2006-2007 ago with 83 kindergarteners and 73 first graders. That group of 73 first graders had been whittled down to 26 ninth graders last year and who knows how many of those 26 are now tenth graders this year. So they have lost about 2/3 of them so far so we’d expect the Success survivors to be pretty strong academically.

 

So how did the SA students fare on the Regents exams?

 

I won’t give you the answer. To learn more about Gary’s search for the SA high school students’ performance on the New York Regents exams, read his post.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy, New York, New York City, Privatization, Testing

Hedge Fund Manager Gives Eva Moskowitz $25 Million

By dianeravitch
April 13, 2016 //
40

Hedge fund manager Julian Robertson gave Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter chain $25 million to help it expand. The chain picked up another $10 million from its friends at a fund-raising event.

 

Clearly, the 1% has not been disturbed by the stories of students humiliated by their teacher or students with disabilities pushed out to keep the scores high.

 

Even with all this additional funding, Moskowitz still demands that the city give her free space (taken away from existing schools that enroll the students she pushes out) or pay her rent in private space. When a Success Academy school co-locates with a public school, it refurbishes its rooms, separates them from the other school whose building it was, and creates a separate-and-unequal situation.

 

Nice work, billionaires!

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

Parents Call on Governor Cuomo to Increase Oversight of Success Academy Charters

By dianeravitch
March 26, 2016 //
11

The Gotham Gazette reports that five former and present parents of students in the Success Academy charter schools called on Governor Cuomo to cut funding and increase accountability of Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter chain.

 

The story reads, in part:

 

In an open letter to the governor, four parents of former Success Academy students, and one whose child is still enrolled in the network, criticize Success Academy’s disciplinary policies and say its practices are “discriminatory against students with special needs.”

 

The letter is being hand-delivered Friday morning to the governor’s office in Albany, it was shared with Gotham Gazette in advance. It is the latest in an ongoing, intense public debate over the practices of the controversial charter network, which has seen a series of troubling incidents come to light amid longtime concerns over its strict approach to discipline, suspension rates, and focus on test preparations.

 

Success Academy was founded by former City Council Member Eva Moskowitz in 2006. It is the largest charter school network in the city, with approximately 11,000 students in 34 schools across the city, in each borough except Staten Island. It also has seven new schools opening in August. Success students, or scholars as they are known in the network’s parlance, perform remarkably well on standardized tests, leading to many accolades and repeated questions about Moskowitz’s “secret sauce.”

 

But, the network has also faced much criticism for its harsh discipline policies and heavy emphasis on testing. Last year, the New York Times reported that a Success Principal had created a ‘Got to Go’ list to push out underperforming students. Then, last month, the Times released a video that showed a Success teacher scolding and publicly humiliating a first-grade student in front of the rest of her class. The network is also the focus of at least two federal lawsuits that were filed recently.

 

In face of this criticism, Moskowitz has time and again cited the network’s high performance on standardized tests compared to traditional district schools. While apologizing she has said reported incidents are isolated and not indicative of network-wide problems. She has worn the lawsuits as a badge of honor and said she is tired of apologizing.

 

The parents who wrote the letter disagree about whether there are systemic problems at Success Academy. “Despite what CEO Eva Moskowitz says, the targeting and pushing out of students, specifically our own, is not an anomaly within this organization,” their letter states.

 

The parents cite instances where their children were routinely suspended, singled out, and shamed or excluded from field trips. They say Success often called them midday to pick up their children without reporting these events as suspensions. And, they claim Success Academy retaliated by calling the Administration for Children’s Services on them when they spoke out against these practices.

 

“Because of this ongoing mistreatment of our children, several of us have lost our jobs or had to drop out of school,” they write in the letter. The missive and its demands to Gov. Cuomo come amid budget negotiations when funding for charter schools is being debated. Recent state budgets have been good to the charter school sector, which Cuomo has been allied with for years. Cuomo has appeared to distance himself a bit from charters, but is still seen as an ally.

 

 

Poor Andrew Cuomo: He will have to choose between the parents and the hedge-fund managers who underwrite political campaigns. Will it be a tough choice?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Cuomo, Andrew, Education Industry, Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy, Parents, Privatization, Resistance

Peter Greene: The Secret Memo That Success Academy Does Not Want You to See

By dianeravitch
March 26, 2016 //
19

Peter Greene writes that the Success Academy charter chain proves definitively that charters are not public schools. 

 

It is a private business funded with public tax dollars.

 

They have previously gone to court to argue that they are not accountable to any elected officials or the state government itself. And now their team of lawyers has sent out a memo to remind staffers that they are not in any way accountable to anybody outside Success Academy walls.

 

Politico got its hands on that memo. It’s the latest in a string of damage control attempts at the charter chain, which has suffered one bad PR moment after another, from a got-to-go list of students to be forced out , to video of teacher cruelty to a child. They’ve drawn the unwelcome attention of veteran journalist John Merrow. Eva Moskowitz, who is paid more to head up her private chain of 11,000 students than Carmen Farina is paid to manage the entire New York City school system, has been ineffective in beating back the problems, and mostly seems alternately confused and outraged that she has to bother. Moskowitz is a woman who always seems one bad lapse of impulse control away from barking, “Do you know who I am!!??” Most recently the chain hired the same PR firm that has tried to paper over the Flint water crisis.

 

The legal memo that Peter Greene refers to says the following, according to Politico, where it was first published:

 

Under the header “top 20 mistakes schools make,” the advisory team writes that one of them is “providing information to lawyers/press/electeds/government reps.”

 

“Leaders must call advisory if these individuals are requesting information or are in their buildings. Lawyers and press/government may appear to be asking simple questions, but there can be broader implications,” the document reads. “Leaders must not provide sensitive information, such as demographic info or projected enrollment, to third parties without consulting with advisory.”

 

Stefan Friedman, a spokesman for Success, told POLITICO that what the memo outlines is important to keep staff on the same page. “With 11,000 scholars and 1,700 staff/faculty, these common sense procedures ensure we have a coordinated way for responding to inquiries from important members of the community,” he said in a statement.

 

The memo also specifically instructs school leaders not to allow parents to become the sources of leaks to journalists or government officials.

 

“Letting parents get away with threats to go to the press/police/elected official” is listed as number eight on the list of twenty mistakes.

 

“If a parent makes this threat, contact advisory. Advisory can help diffuse this situation,” the memo reads. “But we cannot let parents ‘get away’ with these threats. Feel confident in pushing back on these and telling parents that threats are not a productive way to resolve conflict or build the relationship….”

 

Staffers should not, according to the memo, take videos of “scholars in crisis.”

 

Teachers should not “physically restrain” students, except when they are in imminent danger.

 

And employees should not prevent students from using the bathroom, according to the memo.

 

Success’s legal team also instructs staff to keep clear documentation of student suspensions. Suspensions have been particularly publicly contentious for the network, following reports that Success suspends children as young as Kindergarten and that it suspends students at a higher rate than district schools or other charters do.

 

There are many other reasons to recognize that Success Academy charters are not public schools. Public schools are not permitted to close for a few hours or the day to send their students to a political rally. But Success Academy does it whenever its leader wishes. If a principal of a public school closed for the day and put students and parents on a bus to Albany to lobby for funding, she/he would be fired.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Harlem Success Academy

John Merrow: Eva Goes on the Offense

By dianeravitch
March 19, 2016 //
24

John Merrow reports that Eva Moskowitz is going on the offensive to counter bad PR of the past few months:

 

 

“After many months of intense scrutiny and criticism, Dr. Eva Moskowitz, the founder and CEO of Success Academies Charter School Network, has gone on the offensive. In this effort, she has the help of an expensive PR firm, her traditional ally the Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Club of New York, and–surprisingly–WNYC reporter Beth Fertig.

 

 

“The recent criticism began last October, when the PBS NewsHour exposed her practice of multiple out of school suspensions of 5-, 6- and 7-year-olds. (My last piece for the NewsHour before I retired.) Later in October Kate Taylor of the New York Times revealed that one of her schools had a ‘got to go’ list of students to be dropped. Moskowitz did not fire the principal. In an electrifying report in February, Taylor wrote about a video of a Success Academy teacher humiliating a child.

 

“Dr. Moskowitz has retained Mercury LLC, the same PR firm that is advising Michigan’s embattled Governor, Rick Snyder. She emailed her staff accusing the New York Times of a ‘vendetta’ against her. On Monday, March 14, the Wall Street Journal published her op-ed, “Orderliness in School: What a Concept”. “Over the past year the Times’s principal education reporter has devoted 34% of the total word count for her education stories, including four of her seven longest articles, to unrelentingly negative coverage of Success,” Moskowitz wrote.

 

“But her main point was that she and Success Academies represent the last line of defense against violent and disruptive behavior in our schools. Did the PR firm suggest she tar her critics with the old reliable “commie-pinko” brush? (Making it parenthetical was a nice touch.)

 

 

[She wrote:]

 

“The unstated premise is that parents are susceptible to being duped because they are poor and unsophisticated. (Once upon a time, this view was known as “false consciousness”—the Marxist critique of how the proletariat could be misled by capitalist society.)”

 

Merrow writes:

 

“The Harvard Club of New York is, perhaps inadvertently, also helping Moskowitz. It has scheduled an evening presentation on Monday, March 29th , to be followed by a panel discussion. The blurb describing the event makes no mention of any criticism. Here’s a sample:

 

 

“Eva Moskowitz founded Success Academy Charter Schools in 2006 with the dual mission of building world-class schools for New York City children and serving as a catalyst and a national model for education reform to help change public policies that prevent so many children from having access to opportunity. Firmly believing that inner-city students deserve the same high-quality education as their more affluent peers, and convinced that all children, regardless of zip code or socioeconomic background, can achieve at the highest levels, she opened the first Success Academy in Harlem and today operates 34 schools in some of the city’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods. Success Academy continues to grow at a rapid pace and will be hiring more than 900 teachers and other personnel before the next academic year.

 

 

“After Moskowitz’s presentation, a discussion will be moderated by a ‘Senior Reporter’ from The 74, which is not a journalistic organization but an advocacy group. The panelists are James Merriman, President, New York City Charter School Center; Michael Petrilli, President, Thomas B. Fordham Institute; and Charles Sahm, Director, Education Policy, Manhattan Institute, all strong charter school advocates who have publicly supported Moskowitz and Success Academies.

 

 

“What do you suppose they will ‘debate’? How about this for a tough question: The New York Times: Threat or Menace?”

 

Read the rest and view the links. Merrow is still reporting although he claims to have retired

Categories Discipline and Suspensions, Education Industry, Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy

Eva Moskowitz Loses Demand Not to Sign Pre-K Contract

By dianeravitch
February 27, 2016 //
175

Mayor de Blasio of NYC vastly expanded pre-kindergarten across the city. Thirteen charter schools provide pre-K programs. Twelve of them signed contracts with the city. Only one, the Success Academy charter chain, refused to sign a contract with the city on grounds that the city has no authority to supervise charters. Eva Moskowitz threatened to close her pre-K programs rather than signing a contract.

 

Moskowitz appealed to MaryEllen Elia, the state commissioner of education. Elia rejected Eva’s appeal.

 

“In her decision, Ms. Elia noted that the city’s request for proposals to run prekindergarten programs clearly stated “no payments will be made by the D.O.E. until the contract is registered with the N.Y.C. comptroller’s office.”

 

“She also ruled that there was nothing contrary to state education law in the city’s oversight of the program.

 

“Taking Success’s argument “to its logical conclusion,” Ms. Elia wrote, “would mean that D.O.E. would be required to provide charter schools’ prekindergarten programs with public funding without any mechanism to ensure” that they were meeting quality requirements, and that “public funds are being spent in accordance with the requirements.”

 

Eva Moskowitz promised to go to state court to appeal Elia’s decision.

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy
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