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Gary Rubinstein: Success Academy Whistleblower Makes Startling Claims

By dianeravitch
April 21, 2023 //
24

Gary Rubinstein read an account by a recently fired teacher at Success Academy, and he was alarmed. He says that Success Academy should be investigated to determine if her allegations are true.

He writes:

The brave blog post by teacher Livia Camperi was titled ‘The Cruel Dystopia of Success Academy’and I highly recommend you stop reading my analysis and read the actual source for yourself and then come back here, assuming you’re not already sick to your stomach.

Of all the atrocities Camperi reports, the one that stuck me as the most worthy of a formal investigation was this one:

“SA is a data-driven institution, just like the entire rest of the American education system. This is not a surprise. What was a surprise, though, was the lengths the school goes to attain its desired data. For nearly three months leading up to the NY State English and Math tests (January to March), the students are not learning anything. I feel the need to emphasize that again before I explain: for three months, students attending a school are not learning anything in their time there. What they are doing, instead, is practicing taking multiple-choice tests, day in and day out. This is, ironically, called “Think” season.
“During Think, the students take practice tests for the state exams in every single English and Math class, every single day. For the last two years, halfway through February, when they realized the data was not good enough yet, the network canceled Science and History classes to do more English and Math practice tests. Those are their only four content classes. I say again: students are not learning anything during that time. All they are doing is practicing test-taking skills and hating every minute of it. This is not education. This is callous data-chasing.”

HTTPS://LIVIACAMPERI.MEDIUM.COM/THE-CRUEL-DYSTOPIA-OF-SUCCESS-ACADEMY-53524CFC53D0

If this description is accurate, this, in terms of education, is a crime. To have students do mainly test prep for three months at the expense of all else is a type of cheating. Remember that these middle school students have been part of Success Academy since they were in Kindergarten. So if these middle schoolers need that much test prep in order to get 3s on the state test, then the ‘success’ of Success Academy is the mirage that I always have claimed.

In the comments of the blog post, this teacher has gotten a lot of support from her former students. If students are willing to corroborate her allegations about the test prep for three months, this could be a very big story.

Please open the link and read the rest of this alarming story.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Cruelty, Discipline, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy, New York City, Standardized Testing

Gary Rubinstein: Attrition at Success Academy Worse Than Ever

By dianeravitch
April 14, 2023 //
44

Gary Rubinstein has been following the attrition rates at Success Academy for years. His interest was piqued by literally unbelievable claims issued by the public relations team at Success Academy. The charter chain, a favorite of former Mayor Bloomberg and Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, has very high test scores. It has also been in the news for high attrition rates. It is a truism that the best way to get high test scores is to get rid of kids who don’t get high test scores.

Gary looked at the latest boasts and did some new checking of Success Academy’s claims:

On April 5th The New York Post published their annual ‘100% of Success Academy students get accepted into four-year colleges’ editorial. The class of 2023 will be the sixth graduating class of the infamous charter chain and according to the first paragraph of the editorial, Success Academy has accomplished this feat six years in a row.

I’ve been fact checking claims like this for about 12 years now and if you follow me at all you know that of course the 100% four year college admission statistic is a lie, but you will want to know how much of a lie it is this time.

What I usually do to check these claims is go to the New York State Education portaland go through the different schools. The quickest calculation is to simply compare the number of Kindergarteners who started the school twelve years earlier to the size of the graduating class. This is not the most accurate thing to do since Success Academy only used to ‘backfill’ students who leave up until 3rd grade, but it is still a pretty informative number. As I’ve reported in previous blog posts about four of the first five graduating classes, this led to senior to kindergarten ratios of 2018: 16/73=22%, 2019: 26/83=31%, 2020: 98/353=28%, 2021: Pandemic so I wasn’t able to do this one, and 2022: 137/538=25%.

Success Academy complains that this way of doing is makes the attrition seem worse than it is because it is equivalent to about a 10% attrition per year. But these numbers are actually inflated because they don’t account for the number of students who left and then were replaced in the early years. I once got data on this from the State and was able to use it to get a more accurate number of 22% for the class of 2021.

Looking at the year to year attrition, the thing that always jumps out at me is how almost half the students who are in 9th grade will graduate on time four years later. For this years analysis I found one of the most bizarre examples of short term attrition I think I have ever seen.

So The New York Post editorial mentions that 100% of the 117 students at Success Academy got into 4 year colleges. Looking back at the 2010-2011 school year, there were seven Success Academy schools that had a combined enrollment of 726 students. (For five of the schools I found Kindergarten stats for 2010-2011 but for the Harlem-5 school I used the 78 1st graders in 2011-2012 and for Bronx-2 I used the 93 2nd graders in 2012-2013). So this quick calculation leads to the lowest ever senior to Kindergarten ration of 117/726=16%. And remember, this is an overestimate since it doesn’t count all the students who left but were replaced.

But the craziest statistic I think I’ve ever come across in this type of research is the number of 11th graders that were in the school just one year earlier. It is hard to get this data sometimes because I had to look at Harlem-1 and Harlem-3 schools even though I think there is just one high school, it is kind of confusing. But it shows that Harlem-1 had 89 11th graders in 2021-2022 and Harlem-3 had 81 11th graders in 2021-2022. So this is 170 eleventh graders in 2021-2022 and now ‘100%’ of them are 117 students. But of course 117/170=69%. So where did 31% of the eleventh graders who were at Success Academy last year go? Well it is doubtful that so many would transfer out. It would be like dropping out of the marathon with 100 yards to go. Though it is possible that some transferred out when they were told that they would have to repeat 11th grade

Please open the link and read the rest of this important post.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Cheating, Data, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy, New York City

What Caused the Layoffs at a Successful Tech Company?

By dianeravitch
March 11, 2023 //
30

As you probably know, there have been many layoffs across the tech sector in recent months. At the same time, unemployment is close to a 50-year low, at 3.2%. Employers are raising wages to attract employees for low-wage jobs. Why is the tech sector in trouble? I’m no financial or corporate expert, so I can’t explain what is going on.

But something caught my eye as I read a story about Salesforce, which was both very successful and yet laying off 10% of its employees.

The company has been dogged by five activist investors in recent months, and is being pressured to cut costs, but the layoffs continue in spite of a stellar quarter. In fact, Benioff bragged to Swisher in bombastic fashion: “We had a great quarter. Yeah, it’s probably I think, it’s probably the best quarter of a software company ever.”

I clicked the link to see who those five activist investors who were demanding more cost cutting, no matter how it hurt morale at the company.

The first was Elliott Management. It rang a bell, but at first I didn’t remember why. More googling and soon I see the name Paul Singer.

Singer is a billionaire. Singer is a big supporter of charter schools. Singer is a rightwing Republican. Singer loves Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter chain; in addition to giving SA millions, he served on its board.

An article in Mother Jones a decade ago called Singer a “vulture capitalist” and a “fundraising terrorist.”

A few years back, the U.K. Independent said that Singer had destroyed Peru’s economy and was threatening Argentina’s. Again, “vulture capitalist.”

Singer has been called a “doomsday investor.” When he takes over, he sucks out the lifeblood.

This guide to “vulture funds” was published only a month ago.

I have been trying to understand the connection between vulture investing and the aggressive charters that suck the lifeblood out of their host, the public school system.

What do you think?

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Cruelty, Disruption, Economy, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy

Leonie Haimson: Success Academy Spends $13 Million a Year on Marketing and Recruitment

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2023 //
7

The pro-charter media, especially anything owned by Rupert Murdoch (e.g. The New York Post), continually boasts about the long waiting lists of students hoping to enroll in charter schools.

New York City’s Success Academy charter chain, which posts extraordinarily high test scores, supposedly has a long waiting list. The tale was first told in a movie called “The Lottery,” which showed hundreds of parents entering their child’s name in a lottery in hopes of winning a coveted seat in the school. The documentary was made by Madeline Sackler, yes, of the same billionaire family that marketed opioids to the nation and became insanely rich.

Leonie Haimson reveals in a recent blog post that Success Academy has an enormous operation to market its schools, augmented by a division whose job is recruitment of students.

She writes:

One of the political weapons that charter chains & their hypesters in the media like the NY Post repeat like a mantra to support the push to expand their schools and eliminate the NYC cap on charters is their dubious claim that there are thousands of kids on their waiting lists.

For many reasons one should doubt the reality and relevance of these claims. As Chalkbeat points out, 58% of NYC charter schools lost enrollment over the past three years; and 45% lost enrollment in the last year. This includes the most aggressively expansionist charter chain in NYC, Success Academy, whose enrollment has fallen by 7.7% in the last year.

Moreover, as our charter school presentation and draft resolution explain, the claims of high demand and long waiting lists at charter schools are unconfirmed by any independent audits and likely include many duplicates.

As to Success Academy, a research study revealed that only about 50 percent of the students who win the lottery to attend one of their schools choose to enroll, making the significance of what it means to be on one of their waiting lists even more dubious.

In addition, the network was still desperately urging more families to apply to their schools through October of the current school year, revealing a shortage of students. They also recruit students outside the city for their charter schools, suggesting a lack of demand in NYC.

Perhaps one of Success’ biggest problems in keeping their seats full is their high rates of attrition, with 75% of students leaving from Kindergarten on; and about 50% of those students who even make it to high school departing before graduation, according to analyses done by Gary Rubinstein.

In any case, in their determined effort to persuade as many families as possible to apply, whether or not they really intend to enroll, Success Academy has a whole team focused on recruitment. See this job posting for a “Scholar Recruiter” to join the “Scholar Recruitment Team,” managed by the “Lead of Scholar Recruitment” and “reporting to a Senior Scholar Recruiter”.:

…. the Scholar Recruiter will execute field outreach programs and promotional activities in individually assigned New York City regional markets. A Scholar Recruiter will often be the first touchpoint to Success Academy for prospective families, making this team a critical contributor toward reaching our enrollment goals.

One of the many responsibilities of this “Scholar Recruiter” is to ” Identify, initiate, and maintain relationships with community based organizations (CBO’s) to develop CBO-to-Success Academy pipelines, identify Success Academy as the premier educational choice in the community, and cement Success Academy as a member of the community.”

The following metrics will be used to evaluate their performance:

Scholar Recruiters will be measured against individual performance indicators including but not limited to:

  • Gross application volume generated among families who reside in their regional markets
  • Gross application volume generated to schools in their regional markets.
  • Yield of regional applicant pool that is converted to enrolled status.
  • Retention of enrolled families through the first 60 days of each academic year.
  • Volume of applicant leads generated in their market.
  • Number of new and continuing community-based contacts established and maintained, segmented by type (e.g. social service, faith-based, childcare, business, etc)
  • Conversion rate of event attendees into applicants or long-lead applicants.
  • Regular submission of performance and market data reporting.

Success Academy also spends millions on advertising and marketing efforts to lure more applicants onto their waiting lists, with ads running on TV, bus shelters, YouTube and Facebook concurrently. They send repeated mailings to families, sometimes as many as 10-12 times per year, after being given free access to DOE mailing lists despite vehement parent protests. (DOE is the only district in the nation to share this info voluntarily.)

As evidence of their huge marketing efforts, they also have an internal marketing firm, called the Success Academy Creative Agency:

The SA Creative Agency is a full service brand strategy, marketing, and creative division within Success Academy Charter Schools (SACS). Aligning business goals and creative and cultural trends, we partner with internal clients to define the value proposition, develop strategic insights and create marketing campaigns and other creative content to help redefine what’s possible in K-12 public education.

SA Creative Agency itself advertises many openings, including senior copywriter, creative director, and Leader of Growth Marketing, “responsible for the design and execution of integrated demand strategies across our paid and organic channels.”

According to her Linked in profile, the Success marketing office is headed by someone named Amanda Cabreira da Silva, who came from Revlon, and as of Success Academy’s 2017 IRS 990 was paid over $200,000 per year.

Open the link to continue reading.

Does this sound like a school or a consumer product?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Fake, Harlem Success Academy, New York City, Students

NYC: Big Charter Chains Lose Enrollment

By dianeravitch
February 24, 2023 //
10

Governor Kathy Hochul wants to lift the cap on charter schools in New York City, but, Chalkbeat reports, the big charter chains are losing enrollment.

When Gov. Kathy Hochul unveiled a proposal to abolish the cap on the number of charter schools that can open in New York City, she said the policy is a matter of common sense, noting that children of color have experienced waitlists to enroll.

“I don’t think we should be telling them they don’t have a choice,” Hochul said in an interview on NY1 earlier this month.

The city’s charter sector has long been defined by its explosive growth and lengthy waitlists while enrollment has sagged among the city’s district schools. But preliminary state enrollment data suggests that demand for charter schools may be cooling — including among the city’s largest networks — complicating arguments for lifting the charter cap.

The city’s charter sector grew slightly this school year, by 0.42%, compared with a 2% decline among traditional public schools. But that masks important variations among charters: About 45% of them enrolled fewer students this year, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of state data. (The official statistics sometimes group multiple campuses under the same charter school.) About 60% of traditional public schools enrolled fewer students.

Meanwhile, the city’s most established networks enrolled fewer students this year than they did last year, including Success Academy (down 7.7%), Uncommon Schools (6.5%), KIPP (5%), and Achievement First (3.9%).

The governor’s proposal would abolish the local cap on the number of charter schools and release so-called “zombie” charters — essentially making New York City operators eligible for just over 100 new charter schools, which are privately managed and publicly funded.

But experts said there are trade offs of opening new schools in an environment where school leaders are struggling to fill all their seats. Since public dollars follow students, more schools vying for the same or shrinking pool of children would lead to smaller budgets or could even prompt closures, possibly affecting existing charters and district schools alike.

“The charter sector has grown substantially over time,” said Aaron Pallas, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College. “But opening new schools at a time when you’re seeing these signs of contraction strikes me as something that requires a fair amount of thought.”

Pallas pointed to evidence that competition from nearby charter schools boosts student learning among district schools, an argument in favor of lifting the cap. But he also worries that the new charters, which educate over 14% of the city’s public school students, may not be viable long term or could threaten other schools by drawing funding away from them. “I don’t think it’s good for kids for there to be that kind of instability,” he said.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, Harlem Success Academy, KIPP Charter Schools, New York, New York City

NYC Turns Down Three Success Academy Co-locations

By dianeravitch
January 25, 2023 //
22

At ex-Governor Cuomo’s urging several years ago, the Legislature passed a law requiring the New York City Department of Education to provide free space to charter schools, and if no space was available, to pay their rent in private space. This requirement gave rise to the dreadful practice of “co-location,” in which a new charter school was crammed into an existing public school. The public school typically lost space for class size reduction, performances, special education services, and everything else that was not designated as a classroom. Meanwhile, the charter school got fresh new furniture and the best of everything. There was no collaboration between the schools under the same roof.

A few days ago, charter advocates were stunned when the Department of Education rejected three requests for co-location by the rich and politically powerful Success Academy charter chain. The Wall Street Journal immediately published an editorial blasting Mayor Eric Adams (whose campaign was bankrolled by charter billionaires) and who put charter advocates on the city’s school board. The decision was made by Chancellor David Banks and never reached the pro-charter city board.

For Eva Moskowitz of Success Academy, this was a surprising rejection. She is accustomed to cowing politicians (she has her own PAC) and getting her way.

Charter fans and the pro-charter media blame “the unions,” their usual enemy, but this isn’t correct. Parents and educators in these communities contacted their legislators and won their support. And the legislators and local officials killed the deal.

Congressman Jamaal Bowman stepped up to oppose the co-location in a school that he knew. He wrote a thread on Twitter (@JamaalBowmanNY) that began:

The @NYCSchools proposal to open and co-locate a new @SuccessCharters school in Building X113 is absolutely outrageous. The Panel for Education Policy has to vote against this plan, and I urge my colleagues and neighbors to get loud in opposition. Here’s why: 🧵

As a former educator & principal of a middle school in the same district as X113, I’ve seen up close how the educators there have done a tremendous job serving their students & families. Our community is incredibly grateful for the love they pour into their work every day.

I’ve also seen how charter schools can harm students, educators, and traditional public schools in our communities. We can’t let that happen at X113.

Big charter networks have a history of draining students & funds from traditional public schools, and violating the rights of their students. Last year, Success Academy had to pay out $2.4 million in a federal court settlement for pushing out students with disabilities.

The plan will decrease available space for the existing schools at Building X113 – both district-run public schools – and prevent them from lowering class sizes adequately. Class size matters. We’ve got to demand schools get the resources & physical space to meet student needs.

As many charter school expansions do, this destructive plan will also disproportionately harm students with disabilities. The plan does not include sufficient analysis of what intervention rooms are necessary to provide students with IEPs with the services they need.

Another surprise: the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post got the story right. The story recognized that the pressure to block the co-locations came not from the union but from parents. The Post has been a vocal supporter of charters, and Murdoch himself has contributed to them.

Elected officials helped kill a plan to open three new charter schools in existing public schools or other city-owned buildings — after hearing fierce opposition from local parents.

Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson — who last week spoke at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new DREAM Charter High School in Mott Haven — suggested Tuesday that her hand was forced against the planned Success Academy in Williamsbridge.

“Parents of School District 11 spoke to us loud & clear. The deep rooted history of disinvestment at the Richard R. Green Campus must be recognized. So much progress has been made,” she tweeted.

A City Hall insider also cited “a lot of pushback” from community members opposed to the new charter schools.

“They vote and they hold folks accountable,” the source said.

Schools Chancellor David Banks’ unexpected withdrawal of the proposal came even though Mayor Eric Adams packed the board in charge of the decision with pro-charter allies.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Courage, Cuomo, Andrew, Education Industry, Failure, Harlem Success Academy, New York City, Privatization, Resistance

Gary Rubinstein: Success Academy Attrition Is Even Worse Than Previously Reported

By dianeravitch
December 22, 2022 //
14

Gary Rubinstein is a mathematics teacher but also a close observer of boasting about miracle schools. He watches the charter sector closely and has exposed many hoaxes. He was first to report that Tennessee’s highly praised Achievement School District never achieved any of its goals. Here, he reviews the attrition rate at Success Academy, which has attained high test scores by curating its students. Success Academy has received national acclaim for its “miraculous” scores. Rubenstein explains what is behind the curtain.

Rubenstein writes:

Success Academy is the largest charter network in New York City. With 40 schools and 20,000 students, Success Academy is known for its high 3-8 standardized test scores and their rigid rules. Success Academy also celebrates the annual 100% college acceptance rate among its graduates.

Success Academy is a K-12 program and, until recently, the only time that you could enter the school was either in kindergarten, 1st, 2nd, or 3rd grade. The size of the first graduating cohort in 2018 was 16 students. The answer to the natural question of how many students started that cohort originally was 73 which meant that approximately 25% of the students who started with Success Academy eventually graduated from there. I say ‘approximately’ because it isn’t fully accurate to just divide 16/73=22% and conclude that 78% of the cohort left the school for one reason or another. Not counted in the 16 is the students who were still in the school but had been left back one or more years. It seems that about 6 more of the students from that cohort graduated a year later so maybe the true number is 22/73=30% is more accurate. But there’s another factor that, until now, has been impossible to factor in. Some of those 22 students are students who transferred into the school after the first year so you would have to subtract those students from the 22 to get the actual attrition rate. The only way to get that kind of data is to do a FOIL request which is exactly what I did.

Success Academy had 315 Kindergarteners in 2008. The graduating class of 2021 had 110 students. Without this new data, it would seem that their persistence rate is about 35%. But this new data I received shows that only 69 of the graduating class had started with the school as kindergarteners. So a more accurate estimate is 69/315=22% which is a little lower than the 25% I had originally estimated.

It is also interesting that 41/110=37% of the graduating class were from the backfills even though the backfills were from a pool of about 100 students. So about 41% of the backfills graduated vs 22% of the original cohort. A reason for this discrepancy could be explained by the way that Success Academy manipulates their backfill students to guarantee that the backfilled students are ‘better’ than the students they replaced. As I reported previously, lower performing students applying to be backfill students are often told that they have to repeat the grade they just graduated from which surely discourages some of them from accepting their backfill offer while higher performing students are not required to repeat the grade.

Please open the link and read the post.

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

Gary Rubinstein: Cruel and Unusual Punishment of a Student at Success Academy

By dianeravitch
November 14, 2022 //
16

Gary Rubinstein is a high school math teacher and blogger. He has been following Success Academy charter chain, which has been nationally acclaimed for its high test scores. In his latest post, Rubinstein examines the case of a student who thrived at Success Academy until the pandemic, but struggled when the school switched to remote learning. Read the story and answer the question, was she treated fairly by her school?

He begins:

A few months ago I published the first part of this series where parents of current or former Success Academy students can share their stories. As I hoped would happen, another frustrated parent found that post and contacted me with his own disturbing story to tell.

Success Academy is known for its high 3-8 standardized test scores and its extreme rigidity. In a way, the rigidity is part of what causes them to have such high test scores. They demand compliance from their students and from the families of those students. When a student or the family of a student is not conforming to the expectations of the school, that student or family are going to be harassed, humiliated, and punished until they either fall into line or ‘voluntarily’ transfer to another school.

The heartbreaking saga of a girl I will call ‘Carla’ began pleasantly enough eight years ago when she was accepted into Success Academy Springfield Gardens as a kindergartener. From kindergarten through fourth grade, she thrived at the school. Her fourth grade report card grades were mostly the highest or second highest category, except for writing where she was struggling….

In fifth grade, she started having problems academically, though not catastrophically, and then as we all know, the pandemic hit and schools in New York went remote for the next year and a half. For the end part of fifth grade and all of sixth grade, Carla struggled to learn remotely. She had various connection issues and would wait in zoom waiting rooms endlessly. She was really traumatized by the pandemic year and was eager to return to in person classes for her seventh grade year.

But she was still suffering the effects of the 18 months of remote learning. She was having mental health issues and was seeing a therapist about them. At school she was failing several classes. Carla is a very hard working student and someone who really tries her best and her parents work very hard to support her needs and to keep on top of what assignments Carla was missing. Everyone knows that Success Academy has one trick in their playbook which is to make students repeat grades for failing courses. So Carla managed to improve most of her grades but she still failed two subjects, writing and science and was told that she would have to pass those two courses in summer school or she would have to repeat the entire seventh grade.

How Success Academy can make such a threat is incomprehensible to me. For elementary school grades it makes more sense, but in a secondary school setting, why not just retake the courses that you failed? But that wasn’t the threat, it was that she had to pass both courses with a 70 or higher or she would be repeating the entire seventh grade, including all the classes that she had passed.

Please read the rest of the post to learn what happened to Carla? Was it fair? Was it just? What do you think?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Cruelty, Discipline, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy

Gary Rubinstein: Success Academy’s Backhanded Backfill Policy

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2022 //
17

Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy Charter chain has won national plaudits for its extraordinarily high test scores. SA is a fundraising dynamo, attracting the support of leading figures on Wall Street and the financial sector. She and her chain were the subject of a hagiographic film called “The Lottery,” made by Madeline Sackler of the infamous opioid Sackler family,who are big supporters of the charter industry. The implication was that all students were chosen at random and were exactly the same as those in local public schools.

Over the years, critics have noted the high attrition rate of kids who start at SA schools, as well as an extraordinarily high teacher attrition rate.

Gary Rubinstein, high school math teacher and blogger, has followed the progress of SA in many posts on his blog.

In this post, he explores the effects of SA’s “backfill” policy, meaning that the schools seldom accept new students after fourth grade.

Using public data, Rubinstein explores the chain’s admissions and placement policies.

He writes:

I’ve learned through a lot of first hand stories that one of the biggest factors in the ‘success’ of Success Academy is the way they weaponize the school’s ability to force students to repeat grades or to voluntarily leave the school to avoid having to repeat a grade. When they have a student who they think is not fitting into their system enough, even if that student is on grade level and passing the state test, they sometimes arbitrarily tell the family at the end of the school year that if the student returns to Success Academy the next year they will have either repeat the grade they just completed or they can transfer to a different school and then they won’t have to repeat the grade.

So one way that holding a student back can improve the school’s test scores is that the weaker students leave the school ‘voluntarily.’ But maybe the family will decide that they want to keep their child at Success Academy and then the student will be more likely to do well on the state test when they have just repeated the year in that grade. But there is another way that Success Academy wields the power to arbitrarily make a student repeat a grade. Each year there are many students who leave the school for all kinds of reasons. While most schools give students on a waiting list a chance to be ‘backfilled’ and transfer from another school, it is known that Success Academy only allows backfilling in grades 1 through 4. So students from the waiting list are offered a slot at the school, but sometimes Success Academy will tell these families who just got a position off the waitlist that because Success Academy is so rigorous, the student will have to repeat the grade they just completed at their other school. They say this to the families whose children, Success Academy thinks, will struggle at the school. So these families who are told this will either take the deal and have their children repeat the grade or they will choose to go to a different school. Either way, Success Academy improves their test scores this way either by denying the student a chance to go to Success or by having them retake the same grade where they will likely do better on the state test the second time around than they would if they were in their proper grade.

I have heard about families having to grapple with this choice after getting into the school as a ‘backfill’ student, but I had no idea how common of a thing this was. So I did a freedom of information request to the NYC Department Of Education. Much to my surprise, the data was just emailed to me today and what it reveals is shocking, even by Success Academy abuse of families standards.

Read what he learned.

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

Gary Rubinstein: Parents at Success Academy Speak Out: “I Was Not Allowed to Attend My Son’s Graduation”

By dianeravitch
July 20, 2022 //
23

Gary Rubinstein finds that his criticism of Success Academy has caused some parents to reach out to him.

If they attended a public school, they could see the principal, the superintendent, or any number of officials who might be able to intervene.

So Success Academy parents have reached out to Gary to see if he can help them.

But at a charter school, if you have a complaint, they may tell you to choose another school. Leave.

This post is about a mother who was not allowed to attend her school’s graduation. It seems there were a couple of incidents. On one occasion, she failed to buy exactly the right pants for him to wear at school. On another, she went to his classroom without permission.

She had to be punished. She was barred from her son’s graduation.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Cruelty, Discipline, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy, New York City
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