Perdido 03

Perdido 03

Thursday, October 29, 2015

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.

7 comments:

  1. http://nypost.com/2015/10/28/desk-dumping-principal-gives-herself-the-heave-ho/

    This is the story of the crazy principal who just quit. If you remember she was the one that made all teachers throw out their chairs and desks because she did not want anyone sitting down......Another luny boon principal in the news in NYC...only in NYC do we have these wacky principals ------she quit!!!! The story states this was the 3rd school she was at after being removed from the previous two. Yet, the DOE was still keeping her as the principal....the only reason she is no longer around is because she quit and not that the DOE removed her...

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  2. Yes yes yes how sweet it is as Jackie Gleason use to say. This eva moskowtich is really a pain in the ass isn't she?? OMG this woman is hated by a lot of people including the teachers there at success schools. You see, once these teachers get over the fact of just getting a pay check, because kids out of college are hard up to get a pay check - once they get over the excitement of actually making some money, they then get bored and start to see right through the corrupt bull shit that exists in these charter schools. Moskowitch has blown a fuse by losing her hubby mr bloomberg who had the hots for her so he gave her his loin to say the least. Now, moskowitch is showing her true colors - red - and like trump says she has red coming from all over the place.....sorry eva and oh by the way did she really have aspirations to become mayor of NYC??? Really?? Everyone seems to hate her and her know it all give me all attitude which fades really fast here in NYC.

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  3. Actually, the NY media love the attitude if the person spouting it is rich (or, backed by rich people). One of those rich people must have given the OK to throw her under the bus. I can see no other reason for the change in coverage. . . Maybe the have agreed she will be the sacrificial lamb to appease an angered public that isn't being assuaged by puff pieces anymore. Fire some of the icons, but, keep the privatization policies, and claim that it was just a few bad actors.

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  4. The real issue is that she cannot be removed. Charters act independently and are accountable to no one. So, despite cultivating a rather abusive school culture, she will remain in charge. That is not true of other public institutions.

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  5. My 'Got-T-Go' list:

    1) Eva Moskowitz
    2) MaryEllen Ellia
    3) Meryl Tisch
    4) Andrew Cuomo
    5) Arne Duncan
    6) John King
    7) David Coleman

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    1. The name of the guy at the top is missing from the list. The hollow suit up there driving education policy, and the other decimate the middle class initiatives since change we can believe in came down the pike.

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  6. Public school teachers welcome students from September until June. They provide support to children living in chaotic circumstances. They do not require them to come from model families. They build paths of communication with children exhibiting the most challenging sets of behaviors. They allow them to go to the bathroom. These acts of loving kindness are not rated on rubrics and do not appear as Common Core directives. Standardized testing does not measure a good heart.

    Abigail Shure

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