Archives for category: Harlem Success Academy
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Andrew Cuomo: Why He Loves Charters and Despises Public Schools

By dianeravitch
March 14, 2014 //
55

You can’t say this often enough.

Money matters in politics.

Forget principle. Think money.

Andrew Cuomo wants to be re-elected Governor of New York with a large majority.

He has raised $33 million.

One of his biggest sources of money is Wall Street.

Wall Street loves charter schools.

Wall Street doesn’t love public schools.

The fact that only 3% of students in New York State attend charter schools doesn’t matter to Andrew Cuomo.

Cuomo now wants to take charge of dispensing millions in public funds to charter schools for construction, and he wants to assure them that they can have public space without paying rent. He wants the power to give free space to charters, no matter what Mayor Bill de Blasio says.

The fact that high-flying charters like Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy not only excludes children with special needs but literally pushes them out of their schools does not matter to Andrew Cuomo. Success Academy is for winners, not losers. Children with disabilities don’t belong in Success Academy’s charters.

I have been trying to remember something that his father Mario Cuomo said. I can’t find it. I have googled, and I can’t find it. Mario Cuomo, known for his eloquence, once explained that a parent gives more love and affection to the weakest child, not the strongest one. I remember it well, even though I can’t find the source. It was very moving, spoken by a decent and kind human being, a loving father.

Did he teach this lesson to Andrew? I think not. Andrew is ready to toss the neediest children overboard. They don’t have high test scores. They don’t count. They drag down scores. They don’t matter to Andrew Cuomo. In his eyes, they are dispensable. They are invisible. And the hedge fund managers, so necessary for his re-election, don’t like losers. They like high scores. They like winners.

And that is why Andrew Cuomo has become the lobbyist for the hedge-fund supported charter sector. After all, they did give him $800,000 for his re-election campaign.

Categories Charter Schools, Cuomo, Andrew, Harlem Success Academy, Special Education

NYC Protest Today at Noon Against “Protect Eva Act” and Gubernatorial Control

By dianeravitch
March 14, 2014 //
5

Parents and other supporters of public schools will rally today against Governor Cuomo’s attempt to wrest control of the New York City public schools for the benefit of his campaign contributors.

Dan Morris. 917.952.8920.

Julian Vinocur. 212.328.9268.

Media Advisory for Fri. March 14, Noon, Cuomo’s Midtown Office

Rally Against Quid Pro Cuomo State Budget Deal and Gubernatorial Control of NYC Schools

*Parents condemn Cuomo’s pay-to-play budget deal with charter school lobbyists who are bankrolling his re-election campaign and want to undermine New York City’s power over its schools.*

WHAT: Public school parents, community leaders, and elected officials will rally against the budget deal Cuomo clearly orchestrated with the Senate Majority to advance the extremist, anti-de Blasio agenda of charter school lobbyists who are heavily funding the Governor’s re-election campaign. This disturbing Quid pro Cuomo opens the door to gubernatorial control of New York City schools.

WHO: Outraged public school parents, community leaders, and elected officials who won’t stand for Cuomo and the Senate Majority cutting a pay-to-play budget deal with charter school lobbyists.

WHERE: Governor Cuomo’s Midtown office: 633 Third Avenue, between E40th and E41st Streets.

WHEN: Friday, March 14, Noon.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy, New York City, Parents, Privatization, Students, Supporting public schools

Will Sheldon Silver Stop the “Protect Eva” Act?

By dianeravitch
March 14, 2014 //
11

In New York state, the Assembly is led by Sheldon Silver, Speaker of the Assembly. In this interview, he expressed opposition to the State Senate’s bill to protect Eva Moskowitz and to assure that all of New York City’s nearly 200 charters get rent-free space in public school buildings. Eva has a chain of 22 charters. Mayor de Blasio just agreed to give her five more, but turned down three proposed charters for her chain. Two of those schools do not exist and have no pupils. The third will have to relocate 194 students.

Silver said about the State Senate’s proposal:

“This whole right of having a building around you — yet there’s thousands of children sitting in trailers in city public schools. Does anybody speak for their right?” Silver asked reporters during a rare visit to the Capitol’s press room. “They don’t have Wall Street billionaires who can put ads on, or contribute to campaigns, and therefore, nobody represents them and they’re doomed to sitting in trailers for the rest of their school career? That’s unfortunate. Some of that money, maybe, from all the advertising, would do well to build some buildings for a lot of students if they actually support them.”

If Silver acts on his views, the legislation won’t pass.

194 children were displaced from one of Eva Moskowitz’s 22 charters. Her chain, which spends millions on marketing, public relations, and advertising can easily afford to rent space for a school for them. The legislation proposed by the State Senate would guarantee
Eva the right to expand in a public school without regard to the children they displace and to stay there rent-free.

On the other side are 1.1 million children in the public schools, who have no billionaires to fight for them. They now depend on Speaker Silver to defend them from those who would bully their way into their schools, take away their art room, their dance room, their resource room for special education kids, their computer room, and any other space they choose.

Categories Bill de Blasio, Charter Schools, Harlem Success Academy, New York City

Charters Rule: New York State Senate Proposes to Protect Charters But Not Public Schools

By dianeravitch
March 14, 2014 //
3

The New York State Senate has drafted a budget proposal to make sure that Eva Moskowitz gets the eight charters she wants, not just the five that Mayor Bill de Blasio approved. This is how big money talks. Under the proposal, Eva can kick the special education kids out of their school to make way for her new middle school, which has no high-needs special education students. Furthermore, the proposal would protect all rent-free co-locations, allowing handsomely funded charters whose boards include billionaires to take public space at no cost to them. Even more astonishing, charters that are co-located inside public school buildings are given the power to veto any effort to move them; in other words, the charters are given greater “rights” than the public schools that they invade.

Amazing that the Republican-dominated State Senate would write legislation that guts mayoral control to benefit one charter entrepreneur, while simultaneously undercutting the education and rights of the 94% of kids in New York City who do not go to charters.

I am no fan of mayoral control, but I am also no fan of special-interest legislation written for the protection of privately managed charters.

If ever there was a demonstration of the toxic and divisive role of charters in politics, this is it. This bill to protect the billionaires’ plaything is not about improving education for all. It is about me-first and he devil take the other 94%.

Here is a response from the Alliance for Quality Education:

For Immediate Release
For Info:
Billy Easton 518-461-9171

Alliance for Quality Education Reacts to Senate Majority Budget Resolution

The Senate Majority budget proposal adds only $217 million in new school aid—only 56% of what the Assembly added. The Senate Majority actually offers more state funding to private schools than it does to public schools by authorizing a tax credit for private schools that is estimated to cost the state at least $250 million in the first year.

“It is unconscionable that the State Senate Majority is proposing to do more for private and charter schools than for our public schools,” said Billy Easton, Executive Director, Alliance for Quality Education. “The Senate adds $250 million in state funding for private schools, but only adds $217 million for public schools. The $250 million the Senate is giving in state financed tax credits to fund private schools should instead be invested in restoring arts, music, and high quality curriculum in our public schools. They said their priority was to cut the Gap Elimination Adjustment, but when it came time to give out the money, private schools won out.”

On privately-run charter schools the Senate Majority would make a number of changes to favor charter schools in New York City at the expense of public school students. These include:

· Increasing the amount of money that public schools are required to pay to charter schools;

· Requiring free rent for private charter schools in public school buildings;

· Overriding the decisions of Mayor de Blasio to reverse the co-location of three of Eva Moskowitz’s charter schools;

· Giving charter schools power to veto any changes in co-location arrangements, even though public schools are denied the same rights under the mayoral control legislation that the Senate Majority championed.

“The Senate Majority, Governor Cuomo and the wealthy campaign donors providing the political muscle to the charter school movement are all in synch when it comes to special treatment for charter schools,” Easton said. “While our public schools are hemorrhaging programs, the Senate Majority and the Governor have clearly signaled that privately run charter schools that serve only 3% of students top the list of priorities.”

About AQE

The Alliance for Quality Education is a coalition mobilizing communities across the state to keep New York true to its promise of ensuring a high quality public education to all students regardless of zip code, income or race. Combining its legislative and policy expertise with grassroots organizing, AQE advances proven-to-work strategies that lead to student success and echo a powerful public demand for a high quality education.

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Categories Charter Schools, Harlem Success Academy, New York

Fact-Checking Eva’s Claims on National Television

By dianeravitch
March 12, 2014 //
41

This article, which I co-wrote with Avi Blaustein, an independent education researcher, was cross-posted on Huffington Post.

It explains that Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charters do not serve the most disadvantaged students in New York City; that her school in Harlem (Success Academy 4) that will not expand is NOT the highest scoring school in the state; and that her schools have few, if any, of the highest-need special education students and a high attrition rate.

By Diane Ravitch and Avi Blaustein

The battle between NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio and Eva Moskowitz, CEO of the Success Academy charter chain, has blown up into a national controversy, covered on national television, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.

Mayor de Blasio had the nerve to award the Moskowitz chain only five of the eight charters that it wanted, and Moskowitz has been on the warpath to get all eight, even if it means pushing kids with disabilities out of their public school classrooms.

What is missing from the controversy so far is any interest on the part of the journalists in basic facts. Instead, what is happening is a public relations battle. Moskowitz has attacked Mayor de Blasio in multiple media appearances, and no one in the media has bothered to check any of her claims.

Let’s fill that gap.

On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Ms. Moskowitz claimed that Success Academy 4 in Harlem is the “highest performing school in New York State in math in in fifth grade.” This is obviously an odd metric to use in judging a school. Picking out one subject in a single grade should raise suspicion among the media, but it hasn’t.

It is also not true. On the fifth grade state math test, the students at Success Academy 4 are, in fact, #8 in New York City (tied with another school) and presumably even lower when compared to schools across the state. The fourth grade math test scoresare #54 in New York City (tied with six other schools). The third grade math scores rank #63 in New York City (tied with 6 other schools). The school’s rankings are even worse in English. The fifth grade English test scores rank #59 in New York City (tied with seven other schools), the fourth grade English test scores rank #81 in New York City (tied with five other schools), and the third grade English test scores rank #65 in New York City (tied with eight other schools).

The school is not the “highest performing school in the state” in any grade.

Moskowitz’s interviewers have said that the students at Success Academy 4 are the “most disadvantaged kids in New York City,” to which she assented. She has said “it’s a random lottery school. We don’t know who they are.”

We do, in fact, know who the students at Success Academy are. They are not the most disadvantaged kids in New York City. Harlem Success Academy schools have half the number of English Language Learners as the neighboring public schools in Harlem. The students in Success Academy 4 include 15 percent fewer free lunch students and an economic need index (a measure of students in temporary housing and/or who receive public assistance) that is 35 percent lower than nearby public schools.

Moskowitz’s Success Academy 4 has almost none of the highest special needs students as compared to nearby Harlem public schools. In a school with nearly 500 students, Success Academy 4 has zero, or one, such students, while the average Harlem public school includes 14.1 percent such students. With little sense of irony or embarrassment, Moskowitz has attacked Bill de Blasio for preventing the school’s expansion inside PS 149. Her school’s expansion would have come at the cost of space for students with disabilities. The school has already lost “a fully equipped music room … A state-mandated SAVE room … A computer lab… Individual rooms for occupational and physical therapy … and the English Language Learners (ELL) classroom,” due to earlier Success Academy expansions in the same building.

Moskowitz said, referring to the students in her schools, “we’ve had these children since kindergarten.” But she forgot to mention all the students who have left the school since kindergarten. Or the fact that Harlem Success Academy 4 suspends students at a rate 300 percent higher than the average in the district. Last year’s seventh grade class at Harlem Success Academy 1 had a 52.1 percent attrition rate since 2006-07. That’s more than half of the kindergarten students gone before they even graduate from middle school. Last year’s sixth grade class had a 45.2 percent attrition rate since 2006-07. That’s almost half of the kindergarten class gone and two more years left in middle school. In just four years Harlem Success Academy 4 has lost over 21 percent of its students. The pattern of students leaving is not random. Students with low test scores, English Language Learners, and special education students are most likely to disappear from the school’s roster. Large numbers of students disappear beginning in 3rd grade, but not in the earlier grades. No natural pattern of student mobility can explain the sudden disappearance of students at the grade when state testing just happens to begin.

Moskowitz made a number of other claims during her Morning Joe appearance. She said “we are self-sustaining on the public dollar alone.” In fact, Success Academyspends $2,072 more per student than schools serving similar populations. This additional funding comes from donations by the very same hedge fund moguls who have donated over $400,000 to Governor Cuomo’s re-election campaign (charter supporters in the financial and real estate sector have contributed some $800,000 to Governor Cuomo’s campaign).

Moskowitz has said “in terms of cracking the code that’s what we’ve set out to do.” But we don’t need charter schools to crack the code if the cryptographic key is to keep out the neediest students and kick out students with low test scores. Public schools could do that too. Then they too would have higher test scores and a high attrition rate. They don’t do it because it would probably be illegal. And besides, it is the wrong thing to do. Public schools are expected to educate everyone, not just those who are likeliest to succeed.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy

Noah Gotbaum: Who Are the Real Victims of Eva Moskowitz’s “Success Academies”?

By dianeravitch
March 12, 2014 //
8

In an article in the New York Daily News, which has been an outspoken champion of charter schools and Eva Moskowitz’s attacks on Mayor Bill de Blasio, Noah Gotbaum explains why Eva’s schools are “successful”: they leave out the neediest students.  Gotbaum is a public school parent and has children with special needs.

Gotbaum writes:

Eva Moskowitz is up in arms. Her schools are being “closed,” she says, and her students left “educationally homeless” by the mayor’s “war” on charters. She’s even called in the civil rights lawyers.

Truth is, it is Moskowitz and her patrons who are waging war — insisting that autistic and severely emotionally disturbed kids be forced out of their own building to make room for her high-performing “scholars.”

Contrary to the cry of the governor and hedge funders, Mayor de Blasio was absolutely right to reverse Success Academy’s co-location agreement and ensure our most vulnerable kids get needed services and a sound education.

Let’s examine the facts.

In the dying weeks of his administration, Mayor Bloomberg rammed through a record 45 new school-sharing arrangements — including 17 new charters. Late last month, de Blasio allowed 36 of these to move forward, including 14 of the 17 new charter co-locations. Moskowitz’s Success Academies network was handed five new sites. Hardly a war or personal vendetta.

Of the three reversed charter co-locations, two were for new Success charter elementary schools, neither of which has yet to accept a single student. This makes Success’ claims of “closed” schools and “evicted” students disingenuous at best.

The final charter rollback was the proposed move of Harlem Success 4’s fifth through seventh grades into the PS 149 building in Harlem, already home to PS/MS 149; the very-high-needs Mickey Mantle school, which is part of special education District 75; and another Success Academy charter.

 

To accommodate Moskowitz, Bloomberg’s DOE planned to move one-third of Mickey Mantle’s autistic and severely emotionally disturbed children out of the building, exiling them to three potential DOE sites long bus rides away from their northern Manhattan communities.

According to the city’s own Educational Impact Statement, the co-location would then have increased occupancy in the building for the remaining Mickey Mantle and PS 149 students to 132% — almost 400 students above the DOE’s already unrealistic “target capacity” of 1,200.
To accommodate the overcrowding, students in the public school would have been required to eat lunch at 10:40 am, but not students in Eva’s charter school.

Eva has been playing the victim of a vendetta on national television, but the real victims are the children who are pushed aside to make way for her students.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/de-blasio-fake-war-charters-article-1.1718314#ixzz2vkuKLHpk

Categories Charter Schools, Harlem Success Academy, Special Education

Better Living Through Mathematics: How Moskowitz Plays Moneyball with Students

By dianeravitch
March 11, 2014 //
13

This blogger–Better Living Through Mathematics–has a problem with the games played by charters, specifically by Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy.

Not one willing to suspend his disbelief, he wrote that he has a problem with charters in general and was mightily disappointed by Governor Cuomo standing up for the 6% of children in New York City who attend them (and the 3% in New York State):

What’s my problem with charter schools, you ask? I don’t know where to begin, but here it is in a nutshell: chutzpah. You open a school, take all sorts of private money to fund advertising and publicity, exclude students from enrolling through a variety of strategies, and then expel those for whom you cannot or will not provide essential services or are discipline problems, underpay inexperienced teachers and work them to death so there is high turnover, then you instruct your teachers to “teach to the test” AND then have some students who might not measure up stay home on the day of the test, and then give your students copies of the test before they take it, shut up your students in computer labs to be “supervised” by $15 per hour aids, then rake off money for your shareholders and hire all sorts of corrupt ex-government officials to promote your cause, scream when you are asked to pay your share for the space you use to displace kids in public schools, AND then pat yourself on the back when your test scores show up marginally better than the local public school, which doesn’t do ANY of these things….

and you have the chutzpah to say you are “outperforming” public schools?

But what really bothered our mathematically minded friend was a conversation with a friend whose daughter got a great job at Success Academy–straight out of college–as an “educational coordinator” earning $49,000 a year. This is more than a starting teacher makes. Her sole job is to analyze the test scores, determine what teachers must do to get the numbers higher. And she has never taught!

Mr. Better Living Through Mathematics says that this is the educational equivalent of Moneyball:

What we have here is a the “Moneyball” approach to public education: if you need “good numbers” to prove your value, then hire someone whose full-time job is to analyze those numbers and tell teachers exactly what to teach in order to get those numbers to obey.

And what if the student can’t make those numbers? Well, if you were reading the job description closely, you would have seen this duty:

“Coordinate student Individualized Education Program (IEP) creation, and interact with teachers, parents, and special education providers to determine current and future educational services for all students.”

Hmmm, I wonder what those “interactions” with teachers, parents and special education providers about “current and future educational services” would look like? I can imagine it would sound something like this: “I’m sorry, but this does not seem like the right educational placement for your child. I do have a suggestion for an alternative that might be a better fit….”

Categories Charter Schools, Cuomo, Andrew, Harlem Success Academy

NYC: A Rally to Support Students With Disabilities and Mayor de Blasio

By dianeravitch
March 10, 2014 //
31

One of the charter schools turned down by Mayor de Blasio was an effort by Eva Moskowitz to expand her Succes Academy elementary school into a middle school in Harlem. This would have displaced students with disabilities, on the theory that students with high scores should get preference over students with disabilities.

Here is a press release about a rally on Monday at 4 pm.

Which kids are really getting hurt in the charter wars?

Monday March 10, 4PM: Rally at Harlem School for Victims of Moskowitz Attempt to Push Out Special Ed Kids

Rally To Support de Blasio and Public Schools in Harlem Tomorrow

Where: Outside PS/ MS 149
When : 4: 00- 5:00 March 10
41 W. 117th St between Lennox Ave and Fifth
Subway: 2 or 3 to 116th

Even as Mayor Bill de Blasio’s handling of the issue of charter school co-locations has disappointed many, it has signaled the end of the era when the likes of entrepreneur Eva Moskowitz is granted whatever entrepreneur Eva Moskowitz wants, regardless of how many public school children are displaced, short changed and treated as if they are second rate citizens.

Over the past week and more, Moskowitz has received absurdly favorable press in New York City papers, even as she once again removed children from schools during school hours, this time to bus them to Albany as if they were adult lobbyists. After years of incredibly favorable treatment by the Bloomberg administration, de Blasio has had the political courage to stand up to Moskowitz and her billionaire backers.

As a result, Moskowitz and her friends in the media are doing all they can to paint her and Success Academies as victims and create the false appearance of overwhelming public support for Moskowitz and the horrific and destructive policies of Mike Bloomberg.

They have flooded the air-waves with slick, heart-tugging commercials, engaging in a multi-million dollar public relations campaign designed to do nothing less than trick the public into forgetting that de Blasio won by a margin of 75% over Joe Lhota, in large part because of de Blasio’s rejection of Bloomberg’s education policies, of which Moskowitz is such a perfect example.

Today we have an opportunity to once again reaffirm the public will, let Moskowitiz’s billionaires know that they do not own our schools and our city, and let de Blasio know he is not alone.

Please, if you can, come and let your voices be heard loud and clear. Come and remind Moskowitz’s billionaire backers that we live in a democracy. Above all, come and help insure that all of our children are shown the dignity that all children deserve.

Patrick Walsh
Chapter Leader
PS/ MS 149
Harlem

Categories Bill de Blasio, Charter Schools, Harlem Success Academy, New York City, Special Education

Murdoch Salutes Cuomo for Defending the 3% in Charters, Slams de Blasio

By dianeravitch
March 9, 2014 //
27

As reported earlier, Rupert Murdoch is pulling out all the stops to tear down New York City’s new Mayor Bill de Blasio.

De Blasio okayed 36 of the 45 co-locations he inherited from Bloomberg; he approved 14 of the 17 charter proposals. But Murdoch insists de Blasio is closing charters and throwing minority kids out on the street. In fact, Murdoch’s favorite charter operator Eva Moskowitz won five new charters, not the eight she wanted. But you would never know that by reading the editorial rant in the Wall Street Journal. The writer really, really despises de Blasio, even throwing in an irrelevant reference to Zimbabwe’s dictator Robert Mugabe. Which means? I don’t know.

The WSJ can barely contain its admiration for Governor Cuomo, who boldly stood up for the 3% of children in charter schools as he continues to disregard the basic needs of the 97% in the state’s public schools, whose education is crippled by the budget cuts caused by the governor’s 2% tax cap. Even as taxes are capped, the public schools are compelled to spend more money on Common Core and testing, which Cuomo supports. Cuomo never tires of bashing New York state’s public schools. He thinks they cost too much. Someone should tell him that Eva Moskowitz’s charters spend $2,000 per pupil more than neighborhood public schools.

This puffed-up controversy over Eva Moskowitz’s charters demonstrates the inherent divisiveness of charters. They are not public schools. As the charters say in every court proceeding, whether in federal or state courts, they are private corporations with a government contract. As they said to the NLRB, they are not public schools and not subject to NLRB regulations. As the California Charter School Association said in an amicus brief last fall, charter operators should not be convicted for misappropriating $200,000, because charter schools are not public schools and are not subject to the same laws as public schools.

So the billionaires have a chance to smear a popular new mayor, because he gave Eva Moskowitz only five charter schools instead of eight.

Murdoch is outraged that the mayor asked charter operators to pay rent. They can’t cry poverty. Eva Moskowitz is paid nearly half a million each year. She pays the powerful D.C. political lobbying firm Knickerbocker more than $500,000 each year to tend her chain’s image; it must have cost much more this year. In addition, Eva’s Success Academy spends hundreds of thousands each year on marketing to parents, to create demand. In the current battle with the mayor, someone came up with millions of dollars for television and full-page ads. Yet they claim they can’t pay the city for the space they take away from the other 94% of students in New York City. Don’t buy it.

Categories Bill de Blasio, Charter Schools, Cuomo, Andrew, Farina, Carmen, Harlem Success Academy, New York City

David Sirota: How Eva Used Kids As Political Pawns

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2014 //
64

Investigative reporter David Sirota wonders about the legality of Eva Moskowitz closing her charter schools and busing the students to Albany for a political rally. Even stranger is that Governor Cuomo attended and supported her rally.

If her schools were public schools, she would have been fired. At once.

Categories Charter Schools, Harlem Success Academy
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