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John Thompson: How Robert Pondiscio’s Book About the Success Academy Charter Chain Reflects Our Edu-Political Culture

By dianeravitch
January 25, 2020 //
14

John Thompson used to be a friend of Robert Pondiscio, who is now a vice-president at the rightwing Thomas B. Fordham Institute. A decade ago, Robert was a good friend of mine; he was one of the early readers of Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. At the time (2010), Robert and I agreed on the importance of public schools and the irrelevance of charters. I recall the publication party at the home of then-NYC Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, where I told Robert how much I appreciated his help and his ideas, which were consonant with mine. I saw him as a professional ally. But since then, Robert has changed his views (as I changed mine in 2008-2010). I never criticize anyone for changing their views, even when I disagree with them.

John Thompson often posts here about what is happening in Oklahoma, where he was a teacher for many years. He also has useful insights on national topics, and I welcome his contributions to our discussion about providing “better education for all,” not just for the strivers or the gifted. The discussion below bears on an extended exchange that I had recently with a Wall Street guy, who has given six-figure donations to Success Academy. He insists that Eva Moskowitz has “cracked the code” and knows how to educate all children, if only the powers-that-be would copy her model. He insists that “every child” would have high scores if they all attended Success Academy charters. Pondiscio helpfully debunks that idea, although nothing I was able to say could change the belief of this donor. John makes the point below that many educators were offended by the claim that Success Academy was for all children; Robert explains that the chain cherry-picks the parents, not the students. I doubt many people would object to Eva or her chain if they openly admitted what Robert demonstrates in his book. Eva’s charters are not for all kids.

John Thompson writes:

This isn’t a review of Robert Pondiscio’s How the Other Half Learns but a review of our edu-political culture using the book review process to understand why we still have to fight education “Disruptors.” A decade ago, Robert and I were long-distance friends, continually sharing thoughts on how we should resist corporate reformers like Michelle Rhee and test-driven accountability, while improving schools like Robert’s in the South Bronx and my mid-high, which was the lowest performing secondary school in Oklahoma.

Now I’m trying to make sense of the aftershocks from the reformers’ previous political victories and the education debacles they prompted.

Being a former elementary teacher, Robert focused much more on reading instruction and curriculum. We agreed on the need to bring history, science, arts, and music back into the classroom, while opposing high stakes testing. Robert was more confrontational. He characterized Rhee’s value-added teacher evaluation system, IMPACT, as “pure lunacy,” and coined the phrase, “Erase To The Top.”

http://www.livingindialogue.com/5801-2/
http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2011/03/30/the-best-posts-articles-about-erase-to-the-top/

Even after we grew apart, Robert wrote, “It’s long past time to acknowledge that reading tests—especially tests with stakes for individual teachers attached to them—do more harm than good.” Moreover, he said, “if your goal is to boost test scores now, you’re incentivizing bad teaching by encouraging a vacuous skills-and-strategies approach to reading, conspiring against patient investment in knowledge and vocabulary, and sacrificing vast amounts of class time for test prep.”

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-bank/2015/10/26/obamas-school-testing-talk-is-meaningless
https://www.the74million.org/article/pondiscio-its-time-to-end-the-testing-culture-in-americas-schools-and-start-playing-the-long-game-to-produce-better-life-outcomes-for-at-risk-kids/

Conversely, I took an embarrassingly long time before realizing that the Billionaires Boys Club wasn’t going to listen to classroom teachers.

I’ve been intrigued by Pondiscio’s recent writings, especially his critiques of the reforms that failed in the ways that we and so many others predicted. “Ed reform circa 2010 was riding a cresting wave, but in retrospect it was the high-water mark,” Pondiscio explained. And, ten years later, most of the reform victory has been “reversed or is in retreat. Big reform is dead.”

Pondiscio’s own review of his book foreshadowed ambivalence, at least in terms of what it would take to improve the highest challenge schools, “Regardless of where you stand on charter schools, choice, ed reform or education at large, you’re going to be disappointed: My book does not support your preferred views or narrative.” He concluded:

We have become overdependent on pleasing or expedient narratives that we know aren’t quite right, and we have become tribal in our devotions to them. It’s going to be painful and unpleasant, but it’s time to let them go.

So that’s my new book [wrote Pondiscio]. I hope you hate it

Fortunately, Gary Rubinstein has already written a definitive review of How the Other Half Learns. His title, “How the Other 1/300 Learn” spoofs the claim, which once was presented with a straight face, that Eva Moskowitz and company show what could have been accomplished had teachers and unions embraced “No Excuses!,” accountability, and competition.

Rubinstein focuses on the narratives that “will be devastating to the reputation of Success Academy,” concluding “if it is true that reformers do really like this book and are not just pretending to then Pondiscio has really accomplished quite a feat.”

Rubinstein stresses Pondiscio’s statements, such as the following, which implicitly explain why Success Academy isn’t scalable. Pondiscio wrote:

“•       The common criticism leveled at Moskowitz and her schools is that they cherry pick students, … This misses the mark entirely. Success Academy is cherry-picking parents.”
“•       Is Success Academy a proof point that the reform playbook works and that professionally run schools with high standards and even higher expectations can set any child on a path out of poverty?  Or does the rarity of Moskowitz’s accomplishment suggest that however nobly intended it might have been, the reform impulse was doomed from the start?
“•       It would be dishonest to pretend that Success Academy is not a self-selection engine that allows engaged families who happen to be poor or of modest means to get the best available education for their children.”

And that third paragraph brings me back to my review of the process of reviewing How the Other Half Learns. The second half of Pondiscio’s paragraph illustrates the two most salient features of his narrative.

Pondiscio then writes:

“It is equally dishonest and close to cruel to deny such families the ability to self-select in the name of “equity.” Indeed, it is nearly perverse to deny low-income families of color — and only those families — the ability to choose schools that allow their children to thrive, advance, and enjoy the full measure of their abilities.”

First, Pondiscio repeatedly pretends that the issue is how to educate the relatively small number of students who have benefited from Moskowitz et al’s charters. This would be valid if her enemies were elite schools that don’t properly serve poor children. But if that was her obsession, as opposed to a scorched earth crusade against traditional public schools, would educators and patrons have felt the need to resist her agenda?

Second, and most importantly for his book, it created another opportunity for Pondiscio to attack the integrity of his opponents as “dishonest and close to cruel,” and “nearly perverse.”

The following are illustrations of the pattern which reoccurs when Pondiscio is citing journalists’ criticisms of Success Academies:

•       Page 259 is a part of perhaps the best reporting in How the Other Half Learns where Pondiscio digs deeper into the exclusionary nature of Success Academy’s admissions lottery. As Rubinstein explains, the truth is even more upsetting than the story Pondiscio recounts. His narrative, however, creates the opportunity for attacking the New York Times’ Kate Taylor for her “armor-piercing articles” that “have frightened prospective parents away.”   

•       On page 53, Pondiscio characterized “no-excuses” as “an optimistic belief that the root cause of educational failure and black-white achievement gaps was adult failures – not poverty …” Two pages later, rather than acknowledge he had just made the argument against the scalability of the reformers’ solutions,  Pondiscio shifts gears and blames educators for “no excuses” going from a “rallying cry to a curse,” after a “sustained attack from political progressives, teachers’ unions, and anti-reform activists,” led by Diane Ravitch, their “Joan of Arc figure.”

•       On page 88, closing the chapter on the hugely important New York Times report on a first grade teacher ripping up a student’s work and “exiling her from the classroom rug,” Pondiscio cites the problem caused by teacher turnover. But, he then explains,  but doesn’t analyze, how Moskowitz suddenly realizes that the problem isn’t overworked and overstressed, inexperienced teachers, but “leadership via BFF.” The problem is that young teacher leaders want to be liked, so they aren’t tough enough!

•       On page 152, Moskowitz acknowledges to charter management organization leaders that she has no idea how to turn around high schools. This previews Success’ failure to run a high school, as well as the admission that “no-excuses” schools haven’t shown much of an ability to produce longterm, life-changing gains. This was an opportunity for Pondiscio to ask for evidence that their behaviorist methods are sustainable, as well as scalable. Instead, he quotes Moskowitz’ description of Success Academy as a “Catholic school on the outside, Bank Street [progressive school] on the inside.” That opens another door to Pondiscio’s attacks on opponents who have “promiscuously used, impressionistically defined” and “fetishized” progressivism.

•       On page 159, just after reporting on the beginning of the high school, Pondiscio seems to inexplicably change the subject to the unsupported claim that “students faced an intense scrutiny from critics.” This weird assertion made sense only after he identified the supposed lead critic – Diane Ravitch, “the longtime ed reform critic and fierce Moskowitz critic.”

•       On 179, Pondiscio addresses the New York Times description of “students in the third grade and above wetting themselves during practice tests.” Pondiscio’s reply is that it is “inaccurate” to blame “’drop everything and test-prep’” because there is “an overtone of test prep” throughout the year!?!?

•       He then changes the subject to the “opt out” movement which is “particularly strident.” And on page 180 Pondiscio seems to defend Success Academy’s test-prep as a part of a new normal which isn’t going away, “”No person in the room … likely ever spent a day in school, as an administrator, a teacher, or even a student, that was not dominated by the imperatives of standardized testing.”

And that, of course, is the real reason why educators across the nation fought back against Moskowitz. As another review of the Other Half by reform-sympathizer Natalie Wexler says, the book’s title is misleading because, “we’re not talking about the other ‘half,’ we’re talking about the other 1%—or less.” Teachers wouldn’t have had to counter-attack if the issue was merely “How the Other One Percent Learns – to Take Tests.”

As Pondiscio used to know, the problem wasn’t just tests; it was the high stakes they were tied to. The problem we fought wasn’t just tests; it’s the teach-to-the-test culture that reform imposed on everyone, whether they chose it or not.  We didn’t resist charters just because we opposed competition; it was the resulting toxic culture of competition. The damage was then multiplied as test scores became the ammunition for this battle for the survival of public schools. The biggest problem wasn’t just the false statements claiming that “no-excuses” charters served the same poor students who attended the highest-poverty schools. It was the well-funded and vicious propaganda campaign using such falsehoods to demonize teachers.

After a decade of failure, corporate reformers have backed off from the “bad teacher” meme. But Pondiscio now exemplifies the quieter ways their anger is revealed. Yes, reformers, we have a problem, he says. Then Pondiscio repeatedly spins and blames the problem on those of us who resisted their failed agenda. His theme is, yes, Success Academy failed its student, Adama. But you defenders of the status quo failed my student, Tiffany, and she might have benefited by being in the 1 percent.

I’m afraid this pattern in his (and his colleagues’) writing shows that Pondiscio is just one of many defeated Disruptors who admit that something went wrong but who habitually change the subject by responding to evidence-based criticism with the children’s defensive meme, “I know you are, but what am I?”

Finally, here’s why I approach Pondiscio’s book as an opportunity for contemplation, not just an education case study. I admit to mistakes rooted in my congenital optimism. I’d thought, however, I’d learned my lesson when realizing why corporate reformers were not about to listen to people who saw the world differently. I belatedly acknowledged that the movement was about more than accountability-driven, competition-driven policy; it was a part of a larger privatization movement. I’m finally understanding how corporate reformers, who couldn’t face facts, became Disruptors.

In contrast to Pondiscio, who also sought more pragmatism among traditional school system leaders, as well as a serious effort to build safe and orderly school cultures, I continued to work within the system. Today, after defeating so many of the worst data-driven experiments, its frustrating when traditional public schools remain terrified that a new Goliath will emerge, again attacking the professional autonomy of educators.

The Disruptors’ politics of destruction may have been beaten back. But Pondiscio illustrates the politics of resentment which remains threatening. How the Other Half Learns provides more evidence how and why their experiment failed. It also personifies their anger, and how they still blame teachers (and Diane Ravitch) for their theories’ defeat.         

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Discipline, Education Industry, Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy, Privatization, Testing

Mike Bloomberg Announces Centerpiece of His Education Agenda: Charter Schools Galore!

By dianeravitch
January 7, 2020 //
25

It was a curious fact that when billionaire Michael Bloomberg was mayor of New York City for 12 years, he had complete control of the public schools yet did not have any fresh ideas about how to improve them.

This should not be surprising, because he was never an educator. He hired another non-educator–Joel Klein–to be his chancellor. The two of them relied heavily on McKinsey and other consultants to guide them. They hired lots of MBAs to staff top  positions. They hoped to adopt a corporate style of organization, which made sense because they had low regard for actual educators.

He adopted every aspect of No Child Left Behind: high-stakes testing, closing schools, firing teachers and principals. He loved opening small schools, and when they failed, he reopened them with a new name so they could start over.

New York City was a faithful replication of NCLB, with punishments and rewards leading the way.

His main idea was to hand schools over to private charter operators, assuming that they would have better ideas about how to run schools than he did.

Some of the charter operators made a point of excluding low-performing students, which artificially boosted their test scores.

Some closed their enrollments in the fourth grade, so they would not have to take in new students after that point.

Some kicked out kids who were in need of special services.

Bloomberg’s favorite charter chain was Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy, which used all of these tricks to get astonishingly high test scores.

Bloomberg was obsessed with data and test scores. He even adopted Jeb Bush’s policy of letter grades for schools (which his successor Bill DeBlasio abolished).

The New York City charter industry practiced all the tricks of raising test scores by manipulating the student population.

In addition, the charter sector mastered the ability to organize mass rallies, flooding legislative halls with students and parents, pleading for more funding for new charters (which they could not attend since they were already enrolled in charters).

So pleased was Bloomberg with his charter policy that it is now the centerpiece of his national education agenda.

He doesn’t care about the nearly 90% of kids who are enrolled in public schools.

He believes in privatization.

If elected, he could retain Betsy DeVos as his Secretary of Education and maintain continuity with Trump’s education agenda.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bill de Blasio, Billionaires, Bloomberg, Michael, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), New York City, Privatization, Testing

Gary Rubinstein: Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy Grows But Continues to Have High Attrition Rates

By dianeravitch
November 13, 2019 //
32

Gary Rubinstein read a story in the local Rupert Murdoch newspaper saluting Eva Moskowitz’s charter chain for its high SAT scores, but then noticed how many students were in the senior class. (Billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch is a multimillion-dollar donor to the  Success Academy charter chain.)

What school advertises its SAT scores? Success Academy!

Gary noticed that of the students who started in second grade, nearly 70% did not make it to the senior year.

He writes:

The New York Post recently ran an editorial about the SAT scores of the Success Academy senior class of 2020.  Of all the different numbers they referenced, one that I took note of was 114 — the apparent number of students in the senior class.

The class of 2020 is the third graduating class of Success Academy.  The class of 2018 had 17 seniors out of a cohort of 73 first graders in 2006-2007.  The class of 2019 had 26 seniors out of a cohort of 83 kindergartners in 2006-2007.  Some of the class of 2019 were students who had been held back from the class of 2018 — probably in a comparable number to the number of 2019 students who will graduate this year.  So the 26 out of 83, or 31% persistence rate probably accounts for students who take an extra year to graduate.

For the class of 2020, things get a bit more complicated since in 2008 Success Academy did its first expansion and grew from one school, now called Harlem 1, into four schools now including Harlem 2, Harlem 3, and Harlem 4.  Some of the past records are incomplete for these schools, but when the 2020 cohort was in 2nd grade in 2009-2010, I find that there was a combined 353 students in the cohort.  By 6th grade, they were down to 263 students and by 9th grade it was 191.  In 10th grade they were 161 students and in 11th grade, 146.  And now, according to the New York Post article based on a Success Academy press release, they have 114 seniors.  So only 32% of the students who were there in second grade made it through their program.

Better test scores through attrition, a surefire formula for success!

I have had a long-running exchange with a wealthy pundit who gives six-figure amounts to Success Academy. He says they have found the secret sauce for educating all children in the New York City public schools, and for all schools everywhere. I ask him what should be done about the majority of students they accept who don’t survive. He seems to think they don’t matter. Only the strong survive. Or deserve to survive.

Categories Accountability, Harlem Success Academy, High School Graduation, New York City

Gary Rubinstein: How the Other 1/300th Learn

By dianeravitch
September 23, 2019 //
42

 

Gary Rubenstein enjoyed reading Robert Pondiscio’s book about Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy. He recommends it. What Pondiscio reveals is that SA does not cherrypick students, as critics charge: It cherrypicks parents.

One premise of the book is that the fundamental secret to Success Academy’s amazing standardized test scores, mentioned throughout the work is the filtering of the right families.  On page 266 he writes “The common criticism leveled at Moskowitz and her schools is that they cherry pick students, attracting bright children and shedding the poorly behaved and hardest to teach  This misses the mark entirely. Success Academy is cherry-picking parents.” Parents must go through a series of tests and hoops to jump through for their children to get into and to stay in a Success Academy school.  First there is, of course, the lottery. But winning the lottery is just the first step. Described in great — and frightening — detail in chapter 20 “The Lottery”, lottery winners have to attend a mandatory informational session where they are told how much work it is to be a parent of a child at the school — how lateness is not tolerated and there is a 7:30 AM start time.  How there is no transportation provided. How every Wednesday is a half day and there is no after school program. How absences require a doctor’s note. Many prospective lottery winners give up after that meeting. Then there are several other steps like extensive paperwork and uniform fittings and a dress rehearsal. Even Pondiscio is shocked to watch how a student who is deep on the waitlist eventually get admitted to the school.  But having families who are this willing and able to comply with the demands made by Success Academy leads, predictably, to high standardized test scores. He doesn’t say this so bluntly, but let’s face it — this is a kind of cheating.

But if you look at the back of the book, you see that it was well reviewed by various reformers including former NYC schools Chancellor Joel Klein.  How can this be? Well even though Pondiscio says the test scores need to be seen in the context of the family selection process, he also argues, several times throughout the book, that it is OK that they do this.  The argument is that wealthy families use their resources to get their child into a school that is a good fit for them so why shouldn’t poor families who have the resource of being highly functional use that to get their child into a school that is a good fit for them too?…

My first response to this would be that only 16 out of the inaugural 73 students even endured to graduate Success Academy.  If a higher percentage were actually served by Success Academy, then this argument of ‘shouldn’t they also get to choose a school that is good for them?’ would be more compelling.  Since for the vast majority, they did not choose a school that was good for them, even after going through all those steps, and they did ultimately choose to leave, so what kind of choice did they really get?  For the small number of families and children that turn out to be a good fit after all, there are at least double that number who regretted that choice and surely feel duped by the false promise that Success Academy actually cares about their children.

Maybe an analogy will make this more clear:  On airplanes, only wealthy people have the choice of flying first class while people who can’t afford that must fly in coach.  So now Success Airlines comes along and they have something they give people the choice of flying in something like first class except the seats are outside the plane on the wings and you have to get to the seats on your own and there’s a 2/3 chance that you’re going to be jettisoned from that seat before the flight is over anyway.  Should we say that having a choice like that is something that poor people deserve to have?

If Pondiscio is making the case here that Success Academy should have the right to exist, I’ve never said that they shouldn’t exist.  But their existence should not be to just benefit the few that are a good fit at the expense of not only the students at the neighboring schools but also the students who left Success Academy before graduating.  To do this, I think that they need more oversight and regulations and transparency about what goes on inside their schools.  And I’m glad that this book does a nice job about showing the sorts of abuse that occur in the school which I’ll get to next.

Categories Accountability, Discipline, Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy, Parents

The Price of Test Scores at Success Academy

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2019 //
31

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Sources:

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

 

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

 

 

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

DeBlasio: A Hypocrite on Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
July 12, 2019 //
56

 

DeBlasio recently boasted at the NEA candidates’ panel about his courageous resistance to the charter industry. It is true that he started his first term in office in 2014 determined to stop the charter zillionaires’ efforts to grab money and the students they wanted from the public schools.

When he did not grant Eva Moskowitz all the new charters she wanted, her backers launched a PR blitz against DeBlasio, spending $6 million on emotional appeals on TV.

Eva bused parents and students to Albany, where Governor Cuomo pledged his loyalty to the charter cause. The legislature passed a bill requiring NYC to let the charters expand at will, to give charters any public space they wanted at no cost, and to pay their rent if they couldn’t find suitable public space.

At that point, DeBlasio stopped fighting the charter industry.

Currently, the New York City Department of Education gives the charter industry its lists of students’ names and addresses for recruitment purposes.

Parents have protested this misuse of their children’s private information. This practice of releasing personally identifiable student information is illegal under state law.

Recently Chancellor Carranza pledged to end the practice. But as Leonie Haimson reported, DeBlasio reversed the decision and promised to reach his own decision. He has not made any decision and the charter industry continues to bombard public school parents with recruitment letters.

So much for those mythical long waiting lists!

Speaking of mythical waiting lists, Leonie Haimson also reported on an exciting new development at Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter chain:

More recently, Moskowitz created what is described as a “full service, brand strategy, marketing, and creative division within Success Academy” called the “The Success Academy Creative Agency” according to the LinkedIn profile of its Managing Director, Meredith Levin. 

In an earlier version of her profile, Levin described this internal marketing division of Success as a  “group of over 30 creative directors, designers, copywriters, strategists, e-learning architects & project managers to develop, execute and optimize campaigns to recruit 1,000+ teachers, enroll families, donors, influencers, and cultivate community engagement.

Categories Accountability, Bill de Blasio, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy, Hoax, Oakland, Privatization, Propaganda

Gary Rubinstein: Success Academy’s Curious Test Scores

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2019 //
9

 

Gary Rubinstein tries to decipher the paradoxical test scores At Eva Moskowitz’s controversial Success Academy.

For years, the No-Excuses charter chain has posted sky-high test scores, which skeptical observers attribute to the chain’s practices of exclusion and attrition.

However, Gary has noted this strange contradiction: SA students get high scores on state tests but low scores on high school Regents exams and on the exams for selective high schools in New York City.

Could it be that they do test prep for the 3-8 grade tests but have not cracked the code for the high school tests?

He writes:

Last year I wrote about how the top charter chain in New York City, Success Academy, only managed to have three students get between 52% and 72% of the questions correct on the Algebra II Regents…

Success Academy had 130 9th graders in the 2017-2018 school year.  Presumably most, if not all, would be taking the Geometry Regents, yet according to the records they had zero students even attempting that test.  For Algebra II I wrote about how in 2016-2017 they only had 13 students out of 16 pass and only 3 of them with grades above 72%.  Well, after seeing this recent story about their 8th graders and Algebra I, I looked that their Algebra II scores for last year (this year’s scores are not out yet on the data site).  Despite having 161 10th graders last year, 31 11th graders, and 17 12th graders, Success Academy had only 22 students even take the Algebra II Regents.  And their scores were the same as they were the previous year with 68% of the students getting between 30% and 52% of the possible points and 14% of the students getting between 52% and 72% of the possible points.

The meat of the story is between the ellipses. Read it.

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

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

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2019 //
15

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2019 //
21

 

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

 

Leonie Haimson, advocate for student privacy,  comments:

This press release is also posted here.

 

For immediate release: June 4, 2019

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

 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

Peter Goodman: Charter Lobby Headed for Setback in New York Legislature

By dianeravitch
June 1, 2019 //
3

 

The charter lobby in New York State had a clever strategy: Invest campaign cash in Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo and in the Republican-controlled State Senate. For years, it worked. Cuomo gave the charter industry whatever it wanted. The Republican Senate showered favors on charters, even requiring the City of New York to give them free space in public school buildings, and if they didn’t like the space, to pay their rent in private buildings. NYC is the only city in the nation that is compelled to pay the charters’ rent in private space.

However, the charter industry’s cushy arrangement fell apart last fall when progressive Democratic candidates beat Republican incumbents and took control of the State Senate, thus assuring Democratic control of both houses. The new leader of the Democrats in the Senate, Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins, was insulted in 2017 by the billionaire hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb, who was then chair of the board of Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter chain.

The charter industry wants more charters in New York City, because they have reached the cap. There are still unused charter slots in the state but not in the city. So the lobbyists want either to lift the cap or to let the city have the unused charter slots from the rest of the state.

Peter Goodman, long-time analyst of education politics in New York, predicts that the industry will get neither because the politicians they backed are no longer in office:

Not only will the charter school cap not be lifted it is possible legislation hostile to charter schools may be folded into the “big ugly.”

A few bills dealing with the reauthorization of charter schools and the auditing of charter schools have just been introduced.

Factions will advocate, seek allies, lobby electeds and as the adjournment date, June 19th approaches totally disparate bills will be linked, factions will find “friends,” at least for the moment.

Elections have consequences, charter PAC dollars “elected” Republicans who used their leverage to pass charter friendly legislation; an election cycle later Democrats defeated the charter PAC endorsed candidates, elections have consequences, the leverage switched, and, we can expect that legislation more friendly to teacher unions and public school advocates may become law.

 

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