Archives for category: Harlem Success Academy
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John Merrow: “I Was Just Following Orders”

By dianeravitch
March 15, 2019 //
50

 

John Merrow asks, who makes the rules? Who decides? He describes the many elementary classrooms he has visited over the course of his four decade career. Usually there is a posted set of rules for behavior. Not at all complicated. Some classrooms, however, have rules that the children devise, which end up looking very similar to the rules posted in other classrooms. It seems everyone wants an atmosphere of respect and good behavior in which to learn and play.

But then, he says, there are the “no excuses” charter schools, which have long lists of offenses that can bring suspension, even expulsion. He uses Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy as a leading example of a punitive environment where children learn to follow orders without question.

The flip side, the draconian opposite that gives children no say in the process, can be found in charter schools that subscribe to the ‘no excuses’ approach.  The poster child is Eva Moskowitz and her Success Academies, a chain of charter schools in New York City.  A few years ago on my blog I published Success Academies’ draconian list of offenses that can lead to suspension, about 65 of them in all.   Here are three that can get a child as young as five a suspension that can last as long as five days: “Slouching/failing to be in ‘Ready to Succeed’ position” more than once,  “Getting out of one’s seat without permission at any point during the school day,” and “Making noise in the hallways, in the auditorium, or any general building space without permission.”   Her code includes a catch-all, vague offense that all of us are guilty of at times, “Being off-task.”   You can find the entire list here.

(Side note: the federal penitentiary that I taught in had fewer rules.)

Does being able to help decide, when you are young, the rules that govern you determine what sort of person you become?  Schools are famously undemocratic, so could a little bit of democracy make a difference?  Too many schools, school districts, and states treat children as objects–usually scores on some state test–and children absorb that lesson.

Fast forward to adulthood: Why do many adults just fall in line and do pretty much what they are told to do? I am convinced that undemocratic schools–that quench curiosity and punish skepticism–are partially responsible for the mess we are in, with millions of American adults accepting without skepticism or questioning the lies and distortions of Donald Trump, Fox News, Alex Jones, Briebart, and some wild-eyed lefties as well.

The question, I suppose, is whether a democratic society wants “discipline” or “self-discipline.”

Go to The Merrow Report to find this article. I could not create a link for some reason.

Categories Discipline, Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy

New York State: Success Academy Charters and NYC Department of Ed. Violate Civil Rights of Kids with Disabilities

By dianeravitch
March 2, 2019 //
10

An investigation by the New York State Education Department faulted Success Academy Charter Chain and the New York City Department of Education for violating the civil rights of students with disabilities. 

Success Academy charter schools and the New York City education department have violated the civil rights of students with special needs, an investigation by state officials found.

The charter network failed to provide required services to students, changed the special education placement of children without giving parents the opportunity for input, and refused to follow orders issued at special education administrative hearings, according to the state.

Investigators also fault the city education department for failing to provide parents with legally required notices regarding changes to their child’s Special Education Program, or IEP, and for not ensuring that the charter network complied with hearing orders.

Both the city and Success Academy will be required to implement a list of reforms that will be monitored by the state, according to a decision reached earlier this month by New York’s Office of Special Education.

Success Academy spokeswoman Ann Powell pushed back against the report, saying the network doesn’t agree with all the conclusions and has been in “active discussions” with state leaders about their concerns. Powell attributed most of the findings to a need for better documentation, “not about any failure in providing services to children.”

The state investigation was prompted by a complaint filed in November by the advocacy group Advocates for Children and a private law firm.

“This decision makes clear that students do not give up their civil rights when they enter a charter school, and parents do not give up their voice in their children’s education,” Kim Sweet, executive director of Advocates for Children, said in an emailed statement.

The findings heap fresh scrutiny on the city’s largest charter network, which has previously been accused of denying services to students with disabilities — and on the city education department, which came under fire this week for shortcomings in how children with special needs are supported.

At the four schools covered in the investigation, the state’s Office of Special Education found that Success Academy did not provide required special education classes, small group instruction, or testing accommodations. The network also failed to follow the proper procedure for changing the services provided to children with disabilities by not holding required meetings with families, among other issues, and did not follow “pendency orders,” which require schools to maintain accommodations in cases where parents have appealed changes to their children’s education plans.

Categories Civil Rights, Harlem Success Academy, New York City, Special Education

New York City: Advocates for Children Lodges Complaint Against Success Academy for Treatment of Students with Disabilities

By dianeravitch
December 3, 2018 //
17

Success Academy is under fire again for its treatment of students with disabilities. Of course, Success Academy denies the charges.

This is what Chalkbeat reports:

Success Academy officials violated civil rights laws when changing students’ special education services according to a complaint filed Thursday, resulting in some students suddenly changing classrooms and losing months of required instruction.

The complaint, filed with the state’s education department, alleges a pattern of school officials unilaterally changing special education placements without holding meetings with parents, moving students to lower grade levels, and even ignoring hearing officers’ rulings. In some cases, students were removed from classrooms that integrate special and general education students and sent to classrooms that only serve students with disabilities.

Filed by the advocacy group Advocates for Children and a private law firm, the complaint says that Success Academy officials often force parents to fight the charter network in federal court to maintain the services that are listed on a student’s individual learning plan, also known as an IEP.

“Students with disabilities do not give up their civil rights when they enter a charter school,” Kim Sweet, executive director of Advocates for Children, wrote in a statement.

The city’s education department, also named in the complaint, is responsible for making sure students in charter schools receive the services laid out on their learning plans, and setting up meetings with parents to discuss any changes. But, according to the complaint, the education department “has no system to ensure that these schools comply” with those rules.

With 17,000 students, Success Academy is New York City’s largest charter operator and has previously been accused of denying services to students with disabilities, and even pushing them out of their schools. In 2015, at least one school was found to have a “got to go” list of students that school leaders wanted to see leave. More recently, the network filed a lawsuit claiming the opposite is true: Success officials said they often fight for services for students with disabilities, only for the requests to be denied or delayed by the city.

This is Leonie Haimson’s report on the same charges. You will want to open her comment to see the picture of Eva Moskowitz and her family making fun of their critics, holding a banner that says “Success Academy Threatened to Call 911 on 1st Graders”

Categories Harlem Success Academy, New York City, Special Education

Gary Rubinstein Writes a Letter to the Mega-Donors Who Support Success Academy: “You’ve Been Scammed!”

By dianeravitch
September 18, 2018 //
42

Gary Rubinstein notes that Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter chain has been a “success” in attracting huge donations from hedge fund managers. Gary was a charter member of Teach for America and a part of the Reform world. But he got woke in 2010 at the TFA 20th anniversary celebration. He just can’t stand lies and boasting; honesty is in his DNA.

In this post, he warns that the big donors are being scammed. They believe what the PR department of Success Academy tells them. It has an obvious interest in putting out information that portrays the chain as a miracle, a miracle that can be easily copied by others. But as he shows, no one has been able to reproduce Success Academy’s test scores, and attention should be paid to how those test scores are generated.

Rubinstein has made a reputation as a miracle-buster. In this post, he does it again.

Dear Seven Digit Success Academy Donor,

Obviously if you have seven (or eight!) figures to donate to Success Academy, you are a person who does not easily fall for scams. But this time, I’m afraid you did.

There are really only two possibilities: Either Success Academy is the greatest miracle in the history of education — or the greatest Hoax…

If Success Academy is hiding some secret methods that could be scaled around the country so that other schools could achieve results even in the same ballpark, these methods would be worth billions of dollars to Eva Moskowitz. If she is for real, she has found the equivalent of Ponce De Leon’s famed fountain of youth…

I assume you were inspired by the mind-blowing statistics from Success Academy’s PR department. I assume you were impressed by the way that their 3rd grade through 8th grade test scores would make them the top district in New York State. You assume that their methods can be replicated, but no other charter school in the state has done so…

Success Academy is built on a foundation of lies and it is only a matter of time before it comes crumbling down.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Discipline, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy, Privatization, Standardized Testing

Leading Democratic Congressman Honored by National Alliance for Public Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
September 17, 2018 //
14

Hakeem Jeffries from Brooklyn is one of the leaders of the Democratic Party in Congress. He is considering a bid to be chair of the Democratic Caucus.

On September 13, he was honored by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools and received its first “African American Charter School Leadership Award.” The event is referred to in the official invitation as #BringTheFunk. The award noted that he is a “faithful supporter” of New York City’s Success Academy charter chain, a favorite of the hedge fund industry, which may well be the best funded charter chain in the nation, known for its strict discipline, its high test scores, and its high attrition rates.

The event was sponsored by the rightwing, anti-union Walton Family Foundation, Campbell Brown’s “The 74,” and Education Reform Now. Campbell Brown is a close friend of Betsy DeVos; Education Reform Now is affiliated with Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), the hedge funders’ organization. Education Reform Now and DFER exist to promote charter schools.

Like so many privately managed charter schools, the new award is segregated, for blacks only.

To understand why Congress is paying $440 million a year for new charter schools, even when there is no need for funding for new charter schools, even though they are amply funded by philanthropists and billionaires, even though they draw funding away from public schools, even though the federal General Accountability Office found that they are rife with waste, fraud, and abuse, even though charter school scandals are increasingly common, even though the NAACP called for a national moratorium on new charter schools, start here.

Categories Charter Schools, Democrats, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy, New York City, Privatization, Race

Arthur Goldstein on Eva’s Nepotism and Low Wages

By dianeravitch
August 28, 2018 //
43

Arthur Goldstein, veteran teacher, writes here about the special privileges available to Eva.

Not only did she hire her son to teach AP economics while he is still in college, but last year he taught middle-school math.

Just goes to show: Wealth has its privileges. Or, to paraphrase the great Mel Brooks, “It’s good to be the Queen.”

Eva Moskowitz has made a career of telling the world how UFT teachers suck. We devote our lives to helping the city’s children and that’s an unpardonable crime. Only she has the secret sauce that leads to an amazing 20% of her students graduating over at the Moskowitz Academy. You might say, but Eva, we graduate that many on a very bad year. That doesn’t matter because there are no excuses over in Moskowitz World. I mean no excuses for us.

And we know that she’s right. Otherwise, why would hedge funders be taking suitcases of cash and buying off easy targets like Andrew Cuomo? Why would the last Democratic president have hired Arne Duncan to push charter schools and whatever programs flowed from the ample posterior of Bill Gates? Why would we all be bribed to Race to the Top and be judged via junk science? They must be right because they have all that money. Who cares if research fails to support their ideas, or if the American Statistical Association rates them as nonsense?

Now some people might say that the incredible churn of charter teachers is an issue. How can you have institutional memory when year after year you lose most of your people? How do kids feel coming year after year and seeing the teachers they may well love gone and never coming back? Is that how you do role modeling? None of that is important. Otherwise why would all those people with all that money keep supporting Eva?

Furthermore, Moskowitz Academies have high standards. No excuses. If you screw up, be prepared to suffer. Eva Moskowitz doesn’t pay herself almost a million dollars a year to put up with your nonsense. They hire only the best teachers charter pay and working conditions can provide. The fact that they can’t hold on to the overwhelming majority of them is only a testament to the selfishness of teachers. They aren’t focused on the test scores because they want to have lives. Some of them want to get married and even have children.

But in Moskowitz World, there are no excuses. Make the kids pass the tests. No excuses and no time for that nonsense. Except for Eva, of course, who is in fact married with children. I wasn’t actually aware she had children until I read Chalkbeat, the publication that covers All Things Moskowitz All the Time. It turns out that Eva has hired her 19-year-old son to teach economics.

A lot of people shook their heads in wonder when Eva and her BFFs wanted charters to certify their own teachers. I mean, shouldn’t teachers graduate from college? In Moskowitz World, that seems not to be a prerequisite. This is particularly true if you happen to be Son of Moskowitz. Here’s yet another innovation from Moskowitz World:

Michaud says Culver Moskowitz makes minimum wage, as he did last year as an intern at Success Academy Harlem East, a middle school. Santiago, Venner, and a former student said he taught eighth-grade math classes there last year.

Wow. Teachers making minimum wage. Betsy DeVos is probably rolling over in her coffin this morning wondering why she didn’t think of that. And then there’s that other tidbit–while reformy Chalkbeat is all over Moskowitz Junior teaching economics, this isn’t the first time they’ve set him up as a teacher. Maybe they think teaching math while being totally unqualified doesn’t merit mention, but teaching economics is beyond the pale.

Categories Accountability, Harlem Success Academy, Privatization

NYC: Success Academy Hires Eva’s Son to Teach AP Economics Even Though He Hasn’t Finished College

By dianeravitch
August 28, 2018 //
44

How creative. How innovative.

Eva Moskowitz’s son is teaching AP Economics at her high school because the teacher hired to teach the class quit before school started. Her son Culver Grannis Moskowitz does not have a college degree. (Grannis is Eva Moskowitz’s husband’s name).

Some of the students think it is odd to have a teacher only a year or two older than themselves. Others like it.

Maybe he is just filling in until she can find a real teacher.

He is uncertified, of course. Was this the reason Eva wanted the power to certify her own teachers?

Culver may be a fine young man but he is not certified to tesch in New York State.

The moral of the story is that when you are CEO, you can do whatever you want.

Or, when your school is not a public school, you don’t have to hire certified teachers. You can even hire your son.

Categories Accountability, Harlem Success Academy, Teachers and Teaching

Leonie Haimson: Eva Moskowitz School Pushes Out Special Ed Class

By dianeravitch
August 22, 2018 //
23

Leonie Haimson reports that Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy Charter School chain eliminated a classfor students with disabilities.

https://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2018/08/success-academy-eliminating-one-fourth.html?m=1

“In June, I was contacted by two parents whose fifth-grade special needs children were in a self-contained 12-1-1 class at Success Academy Bed Stuy middle school. They told me how the principal, Rishabh Agarwal, had brought them individually into his office and told them that the school was getting rid of their 12-1-1 self-contained program, because the school didn’t know how to educate kids with special needs and it was too difficult to find a certified special education teacher.

“He said their only two choices were to agree to have their kids held back in a regular 5th grade class or transfer them to a different school outside the Success charter network of 46 schools.

“I contacted two attorneys with experience in special education, who told me that if their IEPs mandated a 12-1-1 class the school could not legally get rid of the program, but neither parent wanted to sue. Neither did they want their children to be held back, since they’d been held back already at least once already by Success and felt that their children’s records did not merit being retained once again. I asked the two parents to email the principal to confirm their story, and to copy Eva Moskowitz.

“A few weeks later, I checked back with the parents, and they told me their emails had not been responded to by anyone at the network. They put me in touch with a third parent who confirmed their story — that the entire class of fifth graders had essentially been driven out of the school, and the parents had received no help from Success in finding a new school.”

Read on.

Categories Accountability, Harlem Success Academy

Eva Moskowitz’ High School is “in Chaos”

By dianeravitch
August 21, 2018 //
30

Eva Moskowitz, the Queen of no-excuses charter schools in New York City, has a problem.

Her high school, according to Chalkbeat, is “in chaos.”

Someone leaked a tape recording of her speech to parents at the elaborate graduation ceremony for 16 students.

The school had a mass exodus of teachers and principals.

Eva’s obsession with rules, discipline, and obedience was upsetting everyone.

On a muggy morning in August, Success Academy CEO Eva Moskowitz stood before a group of parents inside the network’s first high school, trying to regain their trust.

Parents were angry that students were being told they could be held back a grade if they missed four assignments. They were concerned about teachers going too far to enforce the dress code. And they were fearful about an exodus of teachers — as well as an email that said if parents missed a June meeting, Success would “assume your scholar is withdrawing.”

Moskowitz, a fixture in New York City politics who talks about her network of 47 schools with an almost religious fervor, acknowledges that she never planned to run high schools. But Success did open one in 2014 and a second several years later. It hasn’t gone smoothly.

I knew that I was putting it together with bubble gum and Scotch tape,” Moskowitz told the parents, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by Chalkbeat. Of the Success Academy High School of the Liberal Arts in Manhattan, she added, “We’ve been at this for 13 years, and I have never seen a school in our network that has been this disorganized.”

Success Academy, New York City’s largest network of charter schools, graduated its first high school students in June to much fanfare. But behind the scenes, according to nearly two dozen parents, students, and current and former school officials, its first high school spent last year in crisis….

Success Academy is famous for rules.

That was true when the network launched with a kindergarten and first grade in 2006 and remains true now, as Success serves about 17,000 students — mostly students of color.

The schools deploy an at-times controversial “no excuses” approach, with strict discipline and high academic standards. As some other charter schools backed away from out-of-school suspensions in the last few years, Moskowitz has defended them with vigor.

Her schools are also known for their academic rigor, intense test prep, and sky-high state test scores. Their elementary and middle schools regularly blow past city averages on state tests and even beat much wealthier districts like Scarsdale and Chappaqua.

But how should Success’ trademark strictness be adapted for students who are older, more independent, perhaps less inclined to accept big consequences for small infractions? That question has dogged other no-excuses high schools, and Success appears to be struggling to find answers.

For the last three years, the task of figuring that out fell to Andy Malone, a well-liked former Success middle school principal who took over the high school in 2015. (The school’s first principal lasted one year.)

Malone didn’t last either.

Read the rest of the story.

Categories Accountability, Discipline, Harlem Success Academy

Federal Judge Okays Lawsuit Against Success Academy for Discriminating Against Children with Disabilities

By dianeravitch
August 3, 2018 //
34

Leonie Haimson reports here on a federal court decision to allow a lawsuit to proceed against Success Academy.

https://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2018/08/federal-court-rules-lawsuit-vs-success.html

“This week, a federal judge in Brooklyn ruled that a lawsuit vs Success Academy could go forward to trial on behalf of some of the children who were on the “Got to go” list put together by the principal of Success Academy Fort Greene, Candido Brown. These children were subsequently pushed out out of the school.The decision is here.

“While the school claims they simply made “errors in judgement,” the practice of repeatedly suspending kids and calling ACS on their parents if they don’t pick them up promptly in the middle of the school day is a common practice at Success, used to persuade parents to pull their children out of the school. Other methods commonly used by the school include calling the police to take unruly children either to the precinct house or to a hospital emergency room.”

She also notes:

“Meanwhile, NYSED reported today that last year it had overpaid charter schools and underpaid NYC from federal Title II funds. The spreadsheet is here, revealing that Success charter schools were overpaid by $1.5 million; and NYC public schools underpaid by $7.1 million, which will only be repaid slowly over four years.”

Categories Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy, New York City, Special Education
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