Just How Did They Get To Be So Successful At Success Academy?

Yesterday before the Common Core test scores were released, Gotham Schools offered a handy guide for what to watch for:

Here was the first of those items (emphasis added):

Where are the outliers?
 

All scores are expected to be low, but some will be lower than others. And some will almost certain fall by much less than the average. Identifying those outliers will be a first step in telling the story of schools’ first year under the new standards.

A school whose scores fall by far less than other similar schools might be the site of exceptional, Common Core-aligned teaching — or there might be more nefarious explanations worth looking into.

The Daily News reports the following about the test scores:

Dismal state test scores don’t discriminate between charter schools and traditional public schools.

Charter schools performed better than their district school counterparts on some benchmarks — but not enough to separate themselves from the widespread drop in scores.

Across the city, about 25% of charter school students rated proficient in English, compared with 26% of traditional public school students. In math, 35% of charter school students rated proficient, compared with 30% of traditional public school students.

Traditional public school students slightly outperformed charter school students on the ELA exams, charter school students outperformed traditional public school students by about 4.5% on the math exams.

There are no red flags here - until you dig into the individual charter networks and find this:

There were some charter networks that boasted victory — like the aptly named Success Academy Charter Schools.

At one Bronx school, a whopping 97% of students were proficient in math, and 77% passed English. Overall, the 14-school charter network saw 82% of students meet standards in math and 58% meet standards in English.

“For years, we and other educators have asked for more rigorous tests which would go beyond filling in bubbles,” said Success Academy founder Eva Moskowitz. “Parents finally know if their kids are ready for college.”

Using the handy Gotham Schools "What To Look For In The Scores" guide, we find ourselves an outlier here.

Not only did Success Academy students outperform both traditional public schools students and charter school students, they vastly outperformed them.

 

Overall, Success Academy students outperformed traditional public schools students on math exams by 52% and ELA exams by 32%.  

 

Success Academy students as a whole outperformed charter school students on math exams by 47% and ELA exams by 33%.

 

But one Success Academy School managed to not only vastly outperform all traditional public schools and charter schools, it managed to vastly outperform the rest of the Success Academy network.

 

That would be at the Bronx Success Academy, where students outperformed traditional public school students on the math exams by 67%, charter school students by 62%.

 

On the ELA exams, Bronx Success Academy students outperformed charter school students by 52%, traditional public schools by 51%.

 

Those are impressive statistics!

They are outliers, in fact, something our trusty Gotham Schools "What To Look For In The Scores" guide told us we should take a closer look at, because a school that is an outlier might be "the site of exceptional, Common Core-aligned teaching — or there might be more nefarious explanations worth looking into."

 

Success Academy Charter School proprietor Eva Moskowitz addressed the "miracle" statistics her schools garnered:

For years, we and other educators have asked for more rigorous tests which would go beyond filling in bubbles to measure whether kids are learning at the level they need to succeed in life. These new tests are much closer to the mark. Parents finally know if their kids are ready for college. Our results are a reflection of our commitment to critical thinking, high standards, and lots and lots of hard work by our students, teachers and families.

 

Perhaps Eva Moskowitz is right - perhaps these test scores her schools got do reflect high standards and hard work by both staff and students at the schools.

Moskowitz is known for running test prep factories and being obsessed with test score rates, so it is quite possible the "success" of Success Academy students is due completely to the high standards and hard work, not to mention obsessive test prep, at the schools.

And yet, these stats are truly breath-taking in a year when everybody else's stats fell.

And the scores at that Bronx Academy school - truly, truly awe-inspiring.

 

Think about this - a 97% proficiency rate on the math tests in the very year almost every other school saw scores on the math tests plummet.

That sure is an awfully good proficiency rate - one might say "too good."

In Indiana, at least one politically connected charter school had it's grade changed from a C to an A by the former state superintendent, Tony Bennett.

There is a massive cheating scandal in Beverly Hall's old Atlanta district and there are rumors of a massive cheating scandal and cover-up during Michelle Rhee's Washington D.C. tenure.

This is not to say that anybody at Eva's Success Academies did anything wrong during last April's testing season.

But grades as good as the Success Academy charter organization got - especially one of the Academy school in the Bronx - do bear a little extra scrutiny.

As the folks at Gotham Schools noted in their handy "What To Look For In The Scores" guide, these Success Academy schools might be the sites of "exceptional, Common Core-aligned teaching — or there might be more nefarious explanations worth looking into."

 

And this is especially so at one Bronx Success Academy school with truly miracle statistics.