Archives for category: Harlem Success Academy
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Mother of Girl in “Success” Video Speaks Up

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2016 //
53

The mother of the girl in the infamous Success Academy video told the New York Times that she withdrew her daughter as soon as she saw the video. 

 

 

“In two lengthy interviews, she said that she did not know what was happening in her daughter’s classroom before she saw the video. She said that she was so upset by what she saw — and by the network’s rush to rally around Ms. Dial, while showing little concern for her daughter or other students — that she took the girl out of the school in late January.”

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

George Joseph: The “Got to Go” List Goes International

By dianeravitch
February 24, 2016 //
31

Success Academy’s public relations firm (Mercury LLC) must be working overtime to try to outrun the stories about the charter chain’s tactics. While critics have alleged for years that the chain produces high scores by a combination of suspensions, attrition, and high-pressure test-prep, the mainstream media–led by the New York Times– is now all over the story.

 

George Joseph writes in the Guardian (U.K.) about Eva Moskowitz’s “got to go” list–the kids who need to be suspended and pushed out to protect the brand and the other allegations swirling around the high-test-score boasting charter chain.

 

Joseph writes:

 

A Guardian analysis has found that the school system loses children between the third and fourth grade, the first two years of New York state testing, at a rate four times that of neighboring public schools. Success lost more than 10% of its enrolled student population from grade to grade, compared to the average rate of 2.7% at public schools in the same building or nearby during the same years.

 

The analysis compared Success and traditional public school populations in high poverty neighborhoods and therefore excluded data from one Success Academy site on the Upper West Side where only about 25% of students were classified as “economically disadvantaged”. This school’s relatively well-to-do student population features the only example of a Success Academy class that grew in size from second to fourth grade.

 

According to Jeff Jacobs, a researcher at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, chance alone cannot adequately account for these enrollment drop differences. “Within testing years, the enrollment drop rate observed at Success Academy is greater than the enrollment drop rates at next door public schools 70% of the time. Furthermore, in 61% of these cases, this difference is so large that we can reject the hypothesis that it occurred due to random variation in attrition rates, at the 5% significance level.”

 

Eva believes that the media is piling on, but she has made herself and her charters a media sensation. Once you set yourself up as the sine qua non of “excellence,” a model of the perfection that can be attained by everyone, you also set yourself up as a target for skeptics. The biggest problem for SA is not its critics, who could be easily ignored, but the former teachers and parents and administrators who spill the beans.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy, Privatization

Jan Resseger: Dickens Described the First “No Excuses” Schools

By dianeravitch
February 21, 2016 //
20

Jan Resseger, a social justice activist in Cleveland, reminds us that “no excuses” schools are not a new idea. There is nothing innovative about harsh discipline. If you want to read about them in the 19th century, read Charles Dickens.

 

She writes:

 

“I am a great fan of the later novels of Charles Dickens—Bleak House, Great Expectations and Our Mutual Friend, but 40 years ago, when I read Hard Times, the fable seemed so overdone as to be far-fetched. When I picked up this 1854 novel again last week, however, I discovered that these days, its critique seems hardly over the top at all. Hard Times is Dickens’ critique of inequality in a mid-19th century English mill town, of authoritarian schools that drill utilitarian economic theory, and of the social Darwinist ethic that celebrates the individual and the success of the self-made man. Bounderby, Dickens’ bullying One Percenter, like Donald Trump, creates a fictitious story of a humble origin as a means of promoting the myth of his rise on his own merits. And Thomas Gradgrind, the proprietor of the novel’s school, prefigures his modern counterpart, Eva Moskowitz….

 

“Dickens’ second chapter, titled “Murdering the Innocents,” begins with a definition of utilitarian education, the children described as “little pitchers… who were to be filled so full of facts.” Never mind their hearts. “Thomas Gradgrind, sir. A man of realities. A man of facts and calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are four, and nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing for anything over… With a rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you exactly what it comes to. It is a mere question of figures, a case of simple arithmetic… Indeed… he seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts, and prepared to blow them clean out of the regions of childhood at one discharge. He seemed a galvanizing apparatus, too, charged with a grim mechanical substitute for the tender young imaginations that were to be stormed.”

 

When you read this, you may be reminded of the developer of the Success Academy methodology, who said his goal was to turn the children into “little test-taking machines.” He succeeded.

 

 

 

 

Categories Discipline, Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy, Testing

Reformers’ React to Eva’s Latest PR Problem

By dianeravitch
February 19, 2016 //
68

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.

 

 

 

Categories Corporate Reform, Discipline, Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy

Suspense Builds Over Eva’s Contract to Provide Pre-K

By dianeravitch
February 16, 2016 //
5

Eva Moskowitz is in a fight with the City of New York over the pre-K program that her charters offer to 72 children. She says the city owes her $720,000 but she refuses to sign a contract with the city. She says she is supervised only by her charter authorizer, not the city. Thirteen other charters have signed the contract that Eva rejects.

 

Moskowitz says m she will terminate the program if she is forced to signed a contract. Imagine giving the city the power to inspect her schools! No way!

 

In light of the infamous video, should Success be allowed to offer pre-K? Does SA know what developmentally appropriate practice is? Will they teach toddlers to walk in straight lines, track the speaker, sit quietly, hands folded, never speak out of turn?

 

If she doesn’t want the accountability, she shouldn’t take the money. She should get it from her authorizer, the State University of New York.

Categories Charter Schools, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy

A Roundup of Commentary on the Eva Video: It Has Gone Viral

By dianeravitch
February 16, 2016 //
34

The video taken in the classroom of Success Academy in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, has gone viral. There are more comments on the Internet than I can gather in one post.

Here is one from Senegal.

Here is a story in the Daily Mail, UK.

Here is a story from India.

Russ Walsh, literacy expert, saw the Eva video and reacted with indignation.

He was even more surprised to read comments by parents who defended the harsh actions and comments of the teacher, tearing up a child’s paper and sending her to the corner with a reprimand.

Walsh cites professional sources that refute fear as a motivational tool for learning.

He concludes:

I believe that it is safe to say that many of the children who attend Success Academy schools come from neighborhood environments where fear and chronic anxiety are the norm. The Success Academy school, rather than providing a safe haven for these fragile young learners, doubles down on fear and anxiety and introduces it into the learning environment as well.

There is no excuse for using fear to intimidate or motivate children. It is simply unacceptable and abusive and ultimately counterproductive to learning. Success Academy can boast of its high test scores, but any serious educator must ask the question, “At what price this very narrow success?”

I cannot help but notice in the video that this white teacher is belittling a young African American child. I am put in mind of the plantation of the Antebellum south, where instead of ripping up a child’s paper, the master meted out forty lashes with the whip.

In Slate, Michelle Goldberg says that these tactics are financed by wealthy elites, but not for their own children. It is what they think is needed for children of color. Goldberg lives in Cobble Hill in Brooklyn, where the Success Academy charter in the video is located. She writes: The schools in my neighborhood teach some children to challenge authority, and others to submit to it.

Categories Discipline, Harlem Success Academy

Eva’s Video: It’s the Talk of the Nation

By dianeravitch
February 16, 2016 //
34

The Erik Wemple blog in the Washington Post wrote about the infamous Success Academy video, which has gone viral. Wemple interviewed the Metro Editor of the New York Times, Wendell Jamieson. Jamieson rejected Eva’s claims of media bias.

Wendell Jamieson, the New York Times’s Metro editor, isn’t in a ground-yielding mood. “I reject Eva Moskowitz’s criticism of our coverage,” he says in a chat with the Erik Wemple Blog. In October, Taylor stung Success with a story about a “Got to Go” list of students one of the schools. According to the story, “school leaders and network staff members explicitly talked about suspending students or calling parents into frequent meetings as ways to force parents to fall in line or prompt them to withdraw their children.”

Nor does the school’s talk of anomalies and bad days impress Jamieson. “It seems impossible to me that the one time she did it there was a video camera there,” he says. Speaking of the students assembled in the classroom, Jamieson continued, “You can see a sort of in their body language an accepting that this is the way they are treated.” Even if it is an exception: “These are first graders. You can’t have a bad day like that with a 1st grader — I don’t care,” says the Metro editor. As the father of an elementary school girl, the Erik Wemple Blog endorses the no-abusive-eruptions-ever school of pedagogy.

Wemple writes about the power of a 1:16 minute video:

Video rules accountability journalism in a way that all the interviews in the world with “current and former staffers” will never manage to. Success Academy defenders may take issue with the emphases of the New York Times story, its presentation, its thrust, its language, whatever — but they cannot refute that videotape. Nor did they try: Moskowitz made clear at the press conference that neither she nor Dial condoned the teacher’s classroom behavior. Though thus busted, she and other Success proponents found plenty of reasons to bash the outlet. Asked about the academy’s record of media refutation, Jamieson responds, “They make it a bigger story every time they do it.”

We read recently that Success Academy is represented by the super-duper PR firm, Mercury LLP. It is hard to believe that Mercury advised her to escalate her battle with the nation’s most powerful newspaper. As the old axiom goes, when you are in a hole, stop digging.

Categories Discipline, Harlem Success Academy, Media

Alan Singer: Close Down Success Academy, Now

By dianeravitch
February 15, 2016 //
55

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?

 

 

 

Categories Corporate Reform, Discipline, Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy

What Do Eva Moskowitz and Governor Snyder Have in Common?

By dianeravitch
February 15, 2016 //
14

This is not a trick question.

 

What at do Eva Moskowitz, the CEO of the controversial Success Academy charter chain, and Michigan Governor Rick Snyder have in common?

 

They both hired the same public relations firm, Mercury LLC, to handle their image and communications.

 

Here is Eva Moskowitz. Here is Rick Snyder.

 

Interesting.

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy, Michigan

Mercedes Schneider: Another Parent Sues Eva Moskowitz Success Academy for Denying Required Accommodations

By dianeravitch
February 15, 2016 //
10

Mercedes Schneider read here about Eva Moskowitz’s threat to sue the city of New York for threatening to withhold funding for her pre-k program, as a result of her refusal to sign a contract with the city. Why did she refuse? She wants the money from the city but she does not believe the city has any authority over her schools or operations. Mercedes began looking for a copy of the suit, but couldn’t find it. What she did find, however, was that another parent from the “got to go” list is suing Success Academy charter schools, and the details are astonishing.

The child in question (“I.L.”) needed special education services. He did not get them. He had difficulty adjusting to the strict behavioral demands of SA. His father began accompanying him to school to find out what was happening. After the father left, the child was again subject to SA’s rigid discipline.

This is an excerpt from the suit, which is quoted in the post:

In or about December 2014– after being repeatedly subjected to disciplinary consequences, including early dismissals, and only after the Lawtons expressed concern to Success Academy staff about the impact that the discipline was having on I.L.– Success Academy Fort Greene began to evaluate I.L. for an individualized education plan (“IEP”)…. Success Academy failed to notify the Lawtons of their rights, or I.L.’s rights, under IDEA [Individuals with Disabilities Act].

In the course of the evaluation, I.L. was observed in the classroom, where it was noted that he had difficulty focusing when working independently. Teachers reported, among other things, that I.L. had difficulty responding to behavioral corrections, that he was hyperactive, anxious, and depressed. Staff reported that I.L. had difficulty focusing and with receiving corrections. The observation also noted that his attention could improve when he was allowed to play with something in his hands.

While this evaluation was underway, and just before school had closed for the December break, Defendant Candido Brown met with the Lawtons. Broen told the Lawtons that they should remove I.L. from Success Academy Fort Greene because I.L. was not a “good fit” for Success Academy.

At that same meeting, Brown said that Mr. Lawton would no longer be allowed in I.L.’s classroom. As Mr. Lawton’s presence in the classroom helped I.L. comply with the Code of Conduct and complete assignments, barring Mr. Lawton from the classroom had an immediate negative impact on I.L.’s ability to function at Success Academy Fort Greene. …

Brown prohibited Mr. Lawton from sitting in I.L.’s classroom only after learning that Mr. Lawton had met with Success Academy Fort Greene employees to voice his concerns about the toll that SA’s policies were taking on I.L.

It gets worse. Read the post.

This treatment of a child would never be permitted in a public school. It proves yet again that charter schools are not public schools. They are private schools that operate with public funding and are able to make their own rules, to admit whom they wish, to exclude whom they want, and to ignore legal mandates that are required of all public schools.

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