Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy High School Faculty: 70% Gone in a Single Year
New York charter-school serrated force, Eva Moskowitz, knows how to drive a faculty out of her Success Academy (SA) high school, as the July 24, 2018, Wall Street Journal reports:
Success Academy’s first high school has seen a wave of teachers leave in recent months, with some describing a punitive culture overly focused on testing and rigid discipline.
Of the 67 teachers and administrators at the Manhattan high school last fall, 20 will be back when classes start in August, its officials said. They said 25 quit, nine were dismissed and 13 took jobs elsewhere in the network.
Faculty said that the rate of departures is high even in an organization known for turnover. Six teachers who left Success Academy High School of the Liberal Arts-Manhattan had a range of complaints, such as harsh policies that require students to repeat a grade and a lack of respect among network chiefs for staff viewpoints.
“What really makes me sad is the number of first-year teachers who quit and decided never to teach again,” said Natasha Venner, an experienced history teacher who left for a district school. …
Several teachers said they were upset that some bright, capable students were sent to a prior grade midyear….
One teacher who left, Lynn Strong, is an adjunct assistant professor of writing at Columbia University. … She said the juniors’ new classroom “became my worst fears of a test-prep factory”….
In June 2018, Moskowitz’s high school graduated 16 students, or 22% of the original 73 first graders from 2007.
Maybe some of the remaining 2007 first graders were moved back a grade midyear (can you imagine??), so maybe, like some of those exiting SA high school teachers, they are technically still tethered to Eva’s World.
Bright spot, though: At least the percentage of returning SA high school teachers is higher than the percentage of students who made it all the way through from first grade to high school graduation in 2018.
Bright spot… like the unforgiving, invasive bulb hanging from the celing of an interrogation cell.
Eva Moskowitz
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Want to read about the history of charter schools and vouchers?
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Schneider is a southern Louisiana native, career teacher, trained researcher, and author of two other books: A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who In the Implosion of American Public Education and Common Core Dilemma: Who Owns Our Schools?. You should buy these books. They’re great. No, really.
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Damn you’re good!! Ouch! The look on Eva M’s face at the end….LOLOL. I may have missed your return email to me…though I saw something in my phone, but then now I can’t find it…I forwarded you some email responses I received from Tim Morris of NOLA.com…..
Hi, David. I read the emails you sent. I saw no need to respond to Tim Morris.
And this in a high school for the Liberal Arts? Thank you for shedding more lights the weird definition of Success in this franchise.
Excellent work, Mercedes.
In NYC, nobody tells Moskowitz what to do, and she “earns” a salary of nearly half a million dollars a year, and burns through her teachers like the wildfires in Greece, and only graduates 22% of her starting class — with no backfill. Such success!
Thanks, Guy. Greenberg and Petry have a nonprofit created it seems to supplement Eva’s salary: https://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2018/04/27/hedge-fund-backers-pay-success-academy-ceo-eva-moskowitz-via-a-special-nonprofit/
“Serrated force”
Hmmm, trying to figure out what you mean by that. Cutting? Hacking? Chopping?
Yes.