Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Eva Moskowitz: Mayor And Chancellor Not Willing To Learn From Success Academies

Buried near the end of the Times story on the Eva/de Blasio charter fight is this:

The mayor’s office noted that while it canceled plans for three Success charter schools last week, it allowed five more to open as planned. It said that it withdrew space from the three not out of animus toward Ms. Moskowitz, but because those schools would have placed elementary school students with high school students or cut programs for students with disabilities.

Ms. Moskowitz saw another motive at play: “I think the problem is that we now have a mayor and a chancellor who don’t seem to want to learn from what we can do,” she said.

Chancellor Farina had a response to that:

Critics note that her schools tend to serve fewer special education students and nonnative English speakers than surrounding neighborhood schools. Chancellor Fariña said on Tuesday that while some charter schools “do great work” in helping children with special needs, or those with limited English proficiency, Ms. Moskowitz “makes it clear these are kids she cannot help, necessarily, because she doesn’t have the resources for them.”

Eva won the propaganda war over de Blasio yesterday - in fact, she's been winning it since the DOE first announced three of her charter co-locations were being retracted for next year.

If there is any positive in all of this, it should be this - with all the attention Eva Moskowitz has garnered for her schools and students these past few days, it's time for critics to forcefully show how Moskowitz works very hard to exclude children she thinks will hurt her test score averages or cause problems in her schools.

There's much we can learn from Eva on that score, that's for sure.

2 comments:

  1. As long as Moskowitz is allowed to act with impunity - shutting down her schools and forcing students, parents and staff to demonstrate far from home - she'll continue to be given public school facilities.

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    1. How can she be stopped? Given the money and influence behind her, at any rate? Barring a scandal, it's hard to see her losing her influence and money people, and the pols all fall all over themselves for her (except for BdB and Silver.) The press too...

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