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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

NYC: Parents and Activists Win Battle to Keep PS 25 Open: A Victory for Resistance!

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2019 //
5

 

The NYC Department of Education wanted to close PS 25 in Brooklyn to make room for a Success Academy charter middle school, but parents and activists fought them in court. Yesterday the Resistance won.

PS 25 will stay open!

PS 25 is a high-poverty, high-performing school.

It has small classes, and Leonie Haimson says it demonstrates the importance of class size. 

Leonie and her small-but-mighty organization Class Size Matters was in the thick of the fight, supporting the. parents of PS 25 against the Powers of the city, the DOE, and Eva.

Leonie writes here on the NYC Parents blog:

Today we won our fight to keep PS 25 open!  DOE had tried to close the school last year, despite the fact that it is an excellent zoned neighborhood school in Bed Stuy that gets stellar results despite a highly disadvantaged student body: 27% kids with special needs, 18 % English language learners, 92% Black and Hispanic, and a 96% economic need index- which combines measures of poverty, public assistance and homelessness. And yet the school performs as well as the citywide average in ELA (46% proficient vs. 46% citywide) and far above the city average in math (71% proficient compared to 47% citywide), according to the DOE’s performance dashboard.

Last year, as I pointed out in my open letter to Chancellor Carranza, published in the Washington Post, the school had the fourth highest rating of any elementary school in the city according to it’s “impact score”, which measures achievement and attendance compared to schools with students of a similar demographic background.  And yet under Carmen Farina, the DOE tried to close the school anyway because of its low enrollment.

At the same time, it was as a result of its low enrollment that PS 25 students had the benefit of very small classes, ranging from 10 to 18 per class – which was one of the main reasons for its success, along with excellent, experienced teachers and a collaborative principal. This year, class sizes at PS 25 are even smaller: 8 to 16 students per class. In essence, the school has served as a natural experiment in class size, showing the heights at which disadvantaged students can achieve if given the right conditions and a real opportunity to learn.

Yet despite the great track record of the school, in February 2018, at the recommendation of then-Chancellor Farina, the Panel for Educational Policy voted 8-5 to close it, with the eight mayoral appointees all rubber-stamping the proposal.  The following month, I helped PS 25 parents file a lawsuit to prevent its closing, with the assistance of Laura Barbieri, our pro bono attorney from Advocates for Justice.

Our primary legal hook was that the Community Education Council in District 16 had never voted to approve closing the school,  which would be required according to NY Ed Law section 2590-E and Chancellor’s regulations A-185, since PS 25 is a zoned school and the district CEC has to pre-approve any changes in zoning.  On May 24, Judge Katherine Levine of the Kings County Supreme Court granted the parents a temporary restraining order, and said the school should stay open for at least year, while she examined the legal issues more closely.

The Judge scheduled another court hearing today, May 16 at 11 AM, nearly a year later.  Right before hand, yesterday afternoon, the city’s attorney called our attorney Laura Barbieri.  She asked Laura to agree to a postponement of the hearing.

Then unexpectedly, the city backed down and agreed to keep the school open for at least another year.

The charter vultures will have to settle somewhere else.

Categories Closing schools, Harlem Success Academy, New York City

Did Success Academy Violate This Child’s Rights?

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2019 //
13

Chalkbeat reports that a parent has filed a federal complaint against Success Academy for releasing her daughter’s records to the media.

A former Success Academy parent filed a federal privacy complaint Thursday claiming the charter network violated her daughter’s rights by releasing her education records to a reporter, including notes from psychologists and her special education learning plan.

The complaint — which is unlikely to result in consequences for Success — comes in response to a Chalkbeat story published Saturday about Jazmiah Vasquez, a seven-year-old student with autism who has not been in school for a year and a half.

Lisa Vasquez, the student’s mother, claimed that Success Academy Prospect Heights, the last school Jazmiah attended, effectively pushed her out by repeatedly calling home about behavioral issues, threatening to call child services, and sending her back to kindergarten after she started first grade.

In response to questions from Chalkbeat about those allegations, Success officials provided detailed records of Jazmiah’s time at the city’s largest charter network, including contemporaneous notes from multiple educators and psychologists, progress reports, and a copy of Jazmiah’s individualized education program, a document that lays out students’ special education needs and services….

Success officials defended their disclosure of student records on the grounds that parents implicitly waive their rights if they go public with their complaints about a school.

An expert quoted in the article disagreed that the parent had waived her rights by filing a complaint and going public. 

Apparently FERPA is toothless since no school has ever been sanctioned by loss of federal funds for violating the privacy rights of students. 

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy, Privacy and Privacy Rights

Gary Rubinstein: Episode 7, High School Graduation

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2019 //
14

 

This is the last of the podcasts that Gary Rubinstein reviews. There’s dissent in the high school. The students rebel against the discipline. Most teachers bail out.

But graduation comes at last. Of the 73 students who started, 16 graduates made it. It annoys Gary that the interviewer tiptoes around the issue of attrition. Senior year started with 17 students. One mysteriously disappeared. 16 survived the Success Academy boot camp.

The 2019 graduating class consists of 26 students. The president of Harvard University will deliver the commencement address to this tiny cohort, a sign of Eva’s power, money, and connections.

These 26 students are the survivors of a class that originally included 83 students. Eighty percent of the graduates are females.

But there is progress: the first graduating class was 16 of 73. The second was 26 of 83.

No one seems to wonder what happened to those that didn’t make it to graduation.

Has Eva created a template for American public education?

To see all of Gary’s posts on this topic, here they are.

Categories Harlem Success Academy, High School Graduation, Privatization

Gary Rubinstein: Episode 6 on Success Academy, Its Political Campaign to Get Free Space, and Its Teaching Strategy of “Rip and Redo”

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2019 //
14

Gary Rubinstein deals in this segment with two controversial sagas in the brief and tumultuous life of Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy Charter Chain. 

The first came about because Mayor DeBlasio declared that he would rein in Eva Moskowitz when he was elected (under Bloomberg and Klein, she got whatever she wanted). Eva’s billionaire friends promptly put up a kitty of millions to run emotional television ads claiming that her students were about to be tossed out into the street, when the reality was that she was trying to claim extra space and push out children with serious handicaps. Her campaign was skillfully managed, and she ended up with legislation guaranteeing that the city would give her the space she wanted or pay her rent. Governor Cuomo embraced the charter cause,and the mayor suffered a defeat.

Then there was the infamous video, leaked to the New York Times, showing a teacher ripping up the paper of a first grader and sending her as punishment to a corner to calm down (although the teacher seemed to be more agitated than the child). Most people thought the teacher humiliated the child, but the practice seems to be commonplace at SA.

The next segment is the last.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Discipline, Harlem Success Academy, New York City

Gary Rubinstein: Episode 5 Spills the Beans about the “Success” of Success Academy

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2019 //
17

identifies episode 5 as the crucial reveal about Success Academy,

Gary Rubenstein identifies episode 5 as the crucial reveal about Success Academy, where even a supportive reporter notes the behaviors that shows the central message of Success Academy: Control.

Star Wars fans know that Episode 5 — The Empire Strikes Back, was the best of the Star Wars saga.  And of Beethoven’s nine symphonies, the most famous is surely his fifth.  Likewise, of the seven episodes of Startup’s podcast about Success Academy, the fifth (found here) is the most powerful and the most important.

To say that this episode has the ‘smoking gun’ would be an understatement.  This episode has not just the smoking gun, but a video of the culprit firing that gun.  I’m not sure why this episode hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves.  Maybe because it is so many hours into the podcast and most people don’t listen to all the parts.  Or maybe there are so many Success Academy excuses and talking points weaved into all the other episodes that this episode just seems like a small blemish on a generally favorable portrait of the controversial charter network.  Whatever the reason, I’m hoping that people will take the time to listen to the whole podcast and to share it, along with my summary, widely.

This episode is entitled ‘Expectations’ and it explores whether or not the expectations Success Academy has for it’s students and for the parents of those students are something that the students and parents rise to meet or if they scare away potential families and families who struggle to keep up with those expectations.

They play a tape of Eva Moskowitz speaking to families who have been accepted into Success Academy:

EVA: Hi everyone, I’m Eva Moskowitz the founder and CEO of Success Academies. It’s very nice to meet you in this large auditorium.

LISA: Eva paces across the stage in stilettos, a fitted blue dress and leather bomber jacket, her standard attire. She’s speaking to a couple hundred parents, near Success Academy Union Square. That’s one of 30 Success elementary schools offering spots to new students.

EVA: First of all, congratulations for those of you who have won the lottery.

LISA: This year Success Academy had a little over 3000 spots for about 17000 applicants. That means through a random lottery, only about one out of every six kids got a spot.

Eva tells the audience that she designed Success Academy with the hope that kids would fall in love with school. They have science labs in kindergarten, kids learning chess early on. She touts the school’s high academic standards. But she is also clear about some of the things that parents might not like.

EVA: We believe in homework. A lot of it. So if you feel really strongly that that is not something you like, you probably shouldn’t come to Success. Cause we’re going to be arguing for 12 years about homework and we’re gonna win.

LISA: Want small class sizes? We don’t have that. And, of course…

EVA: Tests. Anyone against tests? Anyone want to be part of the opt-out movement? Great, thank you for your honesty. Success is not the place for you.

LISA: Success is not the place for you. Parents start hearing that line early on. Eva makes it clear at this meeting that they’ll expect a lot of parents.

EVA: We’re very very strict on kids getting to school on time. School starts August 20th and you must be here the first day of school, no exceptions. We expect at a minimum for you to return our phone calls. I had a parent who was refusing to meet with the principal. God forbid. No no no no no.

About half of the families that get into Success Academy after winning ‘the lottery’ choose to not go there, maybe because of messages like this.

The devastating part in this episode follows a 5th grader at Success Academy named Nia.  Nia had been at Success Academy since kindergarten and had passed both sections of the 3rd and 4th grade state tests.  But she was getting about a 70 average in 5th grade so the school said that she was at risk of repeating 5th grade.  According to the podcast, this is something that is said to hundreds of families each year.

Getting ‘left back’ is a big deal.  It has major consequences that can affect the rest of a student’s life.  From then on, that student will be a year older than her classmates, always having to explain why she is a year older, that she was ‘left back.’  The school said she would have to get her grades up, which she did, to about an 80.  But the school said that it wasn’t enough.  It didn’t matter that she was now comfortably passing.  It also didn’t matter that she had passed the state tests the previous years and that she was likely to pass the state test again this year.  They said that when they took it all into consideration they decided not to promote her.  However, they would promote her if she would transfer out of Success Academy.

The amazing hypocrisy here is that Success Academy is saying that the fact that this girl passed the state tests was not enough.  They are actually admitting that passing the state tests — the thing that the entire reputation of Success Academy is based on — is not an accurate measure of achievement.

The podcast goes on to compare SA to a regular public school. Gary finds the comparison shallow and disappointing.

Categories Cruelty, Discipline, Harlem Success Academy

Gary Rubenstein: Episode 4 and the Infamous “Got to Go” List

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2019 //
11

 

Gary Rubinstein continues with episode 4 of the podcast about Success Academy. This episode attempts to explain away the embarrassing revelation of the “got to go” list, which was reported in the New York Times. You see, getting rid of “bad” children assures the greatest good for the greatest number. Once ejected, where do these children go? The only place that will take them: the public schools that Eva Moskowitz loathes.

Gary writes:

Part four of Startup’s seven part podcast about Success Academy (found here) is centered on the ‘Got To Go’ incident where a principal was found to have created a list of students he wanted to oust from his school.  This episode explores whether or not the ‘Got To Go’ list was an isolated infraction by a rogue principal or if it is something that is part of the culture of the school.

Episode 1 was about the state of public schools in NYC that would make it ripe for a network like Success Academy to emerge.  Episode 2 was the story of Eva Moskowitz and how she rose to power.  Episode 3 was about the emphasis the network puts on standardized tests and questions whether the high test scores come at some greater cost.

Episode 4 — Growth — is the most critical so far.  The ‘Go To Go’ list was a major story in the New York Times and it corroborated what many families said about Success Academy, that they push out students which, as a side benefit for them, raises the test scores of the school.

The narrator, Lisa Chow, though, got some talking points from Success Academy about how to spin this story.

Candido Brown was a new principal, put in charge of a Success Academy elementary school in Fort Greene, a neighborhood in Brooklyn. The school had already gone through two other principals in a year. The place did not represent the Success ideal of quiet classrooms and well behaved kids. It was chaotic, teachers were demoralized, and kids were defiant. Candido had worked at Success for six years but never as a principal before. He was under pressure to turn the school around. But he said drawing up the list was his own idea.

So we are to believe that this was a huge anomaly at Success Academy because that school was in turmoil so he took it on himself to resort to such extreme measures.  But how likely is it that there was actually a Success Academy that was in the chaos that Lisa Chow describes?  Looking at the state data, this school, Success Academy — Fort Greene, had test scores (100% Math, 85% Reading) on par with the other Success Academy schools.  So if they can get such test scores even when the school is in turmoil, perhaps the strict discipline there as described in episode 3 as so critical to their success, is not so important after all.

The next part of the podcast shows the level of control that Success Academy requires at their ideal schools, especially ones that have many inexperienced teachers.

LISA: That silence is the result of Success’ system of behavioral management. For that system to work, teachers need to build strong relationships with their students. Then, on top of that foundation, teachers do three things. Step 1: Set clear expectations… even for the simplest things.

For example, when kids at Success Academy are sitting on the rug, they need to be in what’s called magic five: hands locked, feet crossed, back straight, ears listening and eyes tracking the speaker.

Step 2 is to point out when kids are following those instructions — to narrate good behavior.

TEACHER: Liam is still in magic five. Chastity is silent. Malia’s hand are locked Kalia’s hands are locked, Kalia’s eyes are right on me. Liam is sitting up straight and tall, Sam is sitting up straight and tall. Kalia is tracking Hendrick, Amari is tracking Hendrick

LISA: And, as soon as teachers see a student who’s not following the instructions, they call out the behavior. That’s Step 3: Issue corrections.

TEACHER: Colin is sitting up super tall. Eliany hands in your lap. That’s a correction.

LISA: A correction is basically a warning to the student. The teacher here says it so matter of factly that you barely notice. That’s the point — discipline is woven into the fabric at Success. And if a student gets too many corrections it can land them in trouble — a timeout, a phone call home. For more serious infractions, they’re suspended.

This ‘behavior narration’ is something I had seen on some of the Success Academy training videos (before they took them all down from public site).  It is touted in ‘Teach Like A Champion’ and is also something that Teach For America advises their teachers to do.  Basically, the teacher talks for the almost the entire time the students are working, saying that this student is sitting properly and this other one isn’t.  I find this quite irritating and I would, personally, not be able to concentrate if I was a student and the teacher chattered for the entire time like this.

Open the link and read the rest.

Categories Accountability, Discipline, Harlem Success Academy

Gary Rubinstein: Episode 3 of the Story of Success Academy

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2019 //
15

 

Gary Rubinstein moves on to the third episode in the story of Success Academy.

 

In the first episode of Startup’s seven part podcast about Success academy, they presented the case that most schools in New York City are ‘bad’ and how Success Academy’s unique approach to education levels the playing field.

Episode two, The Founder (can be found here) details Eva Moskowitz’s rise to power.  She started as a very self-assured child who had a bad experience with her music teacher.  Her father wrote the music teacher a note that said “(expletive deleted) you” and this becomes a theme throughout Eva’s career in education, according to the podcast — metaphorically writing ‘F You’ letters to various parties who have crossed her.

Moskowitz was elected to the City Council in 1999 and she visited hundreds of schools and found that some had broken toilets.  She aggressively worked to get them fixed and found that it was frustrating dealing with the large bureaucracy of the New York City school system.

When she went to a school where she felt the lunch room was understaffed, she learned that under the teacher’s union contract, teachers are exempt from certain duties, like doing lunch duty.

The narrator, Lisa Chow, then says matter of factly:  “The teachers’ union contract … a document that protects the interests of teachers in traditional public schools. She asked her staff to get a copy of the teachers contract, expecting something that was maybe 20 pages. But instead, it was 300 pages in length.”

This is common complaint I hear from reformers — that the teacher’s union contract is too long.  Somehow the idea that 300 pages is too long but 20 would be about right is the reformer conventional wisdom.  Well, when I signed up for ZipCar rental cars online, the contract that I skimmed through before hitting ‘accept’ was about 10 pages long, so why shouldn’t a teacher’s union contract be hundreds of pages?  Where is the evidence that there is some kind of inverse relationship between the length of the teacher’s union contract and the quality of the teaching that happens in a school?  I’ve been a teacher in NYC for 17 years and I don’t even know what is in the contract aside from a few lines here and there.  But if something ever comes up where something in there will come in handy for me, I’ll certainly appreciate that the contract is thorough.  Next time Lisa Chow rents an apartment or takes out a bank loan, I’m going to ask her if she would willingly cut the contract that lists her different rights down by 85%?

Lisa Chow continues:  “The contract was packed with rules that seemed to control every minute of the school day. And Eva saw a lot of things she believed were not in the best interest of kids. For example, that rule that kept teachers out of lunchrooms — that was in it. And there were rules that promoted teachers based on seniority, regardless of whether they were actually good instructors.”  So yes, teachers get raises based on years of experience.  Get rid of that one and you are likely not going to attract many people to become teachers where raises from your very low starting pay will be at the whim of a computer judging you ‘effective’ or not based on standardized test scores.

Success Academy is noted not only for high test scores but for high rates of teacher turnover.

Categories Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy, Teachers, Unions
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