NY Times Exposes The "Got To Go" List At Success Academies

It's interesting to see how the press coverage of Eva Moskowitz and Success Academies has changed in the past couple of years.

For a long time, the press dutifully covered whatever Eva wanted covered and mostly treated her and her schools with kid gloves.

But not anymore.

Kate Taylor of the NY Times had the "Kids are too scared to go to the bathroom during test prep so they soil themselves instead" story about Success Academies in the NY Times and she follows that up with an expose on the Success Academy "Got To Go" list:

Success Academy, the high-performing charter school network in New York City, has long been dogged by accusations that its remarkable accomplishments are due, in part, to a practice of weeding out weak or difficult students. The network has always denied it. But documents obtained by The New York Times and interviews with 10 current and former Success employees at five schools suggest that some administrators in the network have singled out children they would like to see leave.

Taylor goes on to report that 16 students were on the "Got To Go" list at SA Fort Greene and staff worked to get the parents of these students to pull them out of school - an endeavor that worked with over half:

Nine of the students on the list later withdrew from the school. Some of their parents said in interviews that while their children attended Success, their lives were upended by repeated suspensions and frequent demands that they pick up their children early or meet with school or network staff members. Four of the parents said that school or network employees told them explicitly that the school, whose oldest students are now in the third grade, was not right for their children and that they should go elsewhere.

The "Got To Go" practice is rife throughout the Success network:

The current and former employees said they had observed similar practices at other Success schools. According to those employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their jobs or their relationships with people still at the network, school leaders and network staff members explicitly talked about suspending students or calling parents into frequent meetings as ways to force parents to fall in line or prompt them to withdraw their children.

Success Academies claims the "Got To Go" list was a "mistake," that the principal that created it was "reprimanded."

Eva Moskowitz demanded an apology from PBS over a report by John Merrow on the Newshour about SA and their suspension rate.

In an interview Merrow asked Eva directly if she juiced her test stats through suspensions and push-outs.

Moskowitz turned red and sputtered a response, then quickly wrote an attack letter to PBS demanding the apology.

But now, just a few days later, we get a Times story that confirms what Merrow was getting at in his report for the Newshour - Success Academy indeed does seek to make life hell for students who they want out in order to get them to leave on their own.

Will Eva demand an apology from the Times too?

Moskowitz was going on the attack today against Bill de Blasio over pre-K funding, claiming the city was wrongly keeping money from charters to hold pre-K.

But instead of being on the attack all day, Moskowitz is instead going to be on the defensive, responding to another damaging report about Success Academies and their suspension/attrition rates.

How the media coverage has turned for Eva and Success these days.