One of the faces of the charter school movement is the "spokesperson in demonizing public schools"

madfloridian

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Sat Jun-26-10 11:58 PM
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One of the faces of the charter school movement is the "spokesperson in demonizing public schools"

She has high access as well. She is close to the NYC school chancellor, Joel Klein.

Lombard for News
Success Charter Network founder Eva Moskowitz and NYC Chancellor Joel Klein sharing a laugh during an event.

Here are some interesting paragraphs from a New York Magazine profile of Moskowitz.

At the crux of this sea change stands Moskowitz. At 47, she is feared, revered, and reviled in like proportions. As the face of the social-Darwinist wing of the local charter movement, she�s been cast as the grim reaper of moribund neighborhood schools, a witting tool of privatizing billionaires, and a Machiavellian schemer with her sights set on the mayoralty. �She�s the spokesperson in demonizing the public schools,� says Noah Gotbaum, president of District 3�s Community Education Council. �Eva�s philosophy is that you�ve got to burn the village to save it.�

The Patron Saint (and Scourge) of Lost Schools

Here is more from the article:

Bold, indeed. Most charter operators, observes Sy Fliegel, president of the Center for Educational Innovation, �ask for space very quietly and hope they can get it. Eva asks for schools.� Co-location, as she once put it, is a �Middle East war.� As her beachheads roll out and roll up, one grade per year, her need for real estate sparks resistance. Police were called last summer when she brought movers to take another floor at P.S. 123, piling the zoned school�s belongings in the gym after it neglected to vacate on time. Stringer flayed her �thug tactics�; Moskowitz dismissed him as a �UFT hack.�

These tactics which are pitting parent against parent, teacher against teacher, and charter leaders against the people already in the school....are approved by Arne Duncan.

There is a method to these expropriations, as documented by 125 e-mail exchanges with Klein that were recently unearthed by the Daily News. In July 2007, a year before opening Academies 2 through 4, Moskowitz identified five zoned schools that had declining enrollments �and suck academically.� In October 2008, she informed Klein that she was �most interested in� P.S. 194 and P.S. 241 in Harlem. Two months after that, the DoE moved to shutter those two schools and pass their buildings in toto�a first�to Success Charter Network. But there was a problem: Success could not accept all the children to be displaced. For one thing, the network has no self-contained classrooms for the profoundly disabled; for another, it takes in no new students after the second grade. At an incendiary public hearing at P.S. 194, zoned- and charter-school parents roared each other down, neighbor against neighbor. In a colonial metaphor that made Moskowitz shake her head, one resident compared her to Tarzan�s Jane��back again, swinging through Harlem not with vines, but with charter schools.� When Klein stayed the closings in the face of a UFT lawsuit, he also advised the zoned schools� parents to �seriously consider� moving their children to Harlem Success.

Klein seems to forget that he is chancellor of the public school system.

It does not sound like the schools have much stability, and that's a shame.

Moskowitz has already burned through three principals at Harlem Success Academy 1, taking the reins each time as the school�s de facto leader. The latest was Jacqueline Getz, a highly regarded veteran from P.S. 87 on the Upper West Side, who took the job last summer and resigned within weeks. (While Getz declined to comment, she told a confidante that there were �things going on that she could not in good conscience let happen.�) Her presumptive successor is Jacqueline Albers, a 26-year-old alumna of Teach for America. Critics point out that Albers fits the profile for much of Moskowitz�s top leadership circle: young white women with thin r�sum�s. �The people they have making decisions are inexperienced and undereducated,� a former network staff member says.

One principal, Paul Fucaloro, has some ideas that simply would not fly in a traditional school setting.

"We have a gap to close," says Paul Fucaloro, director of instruction. "I want the kids on edge, constantly." (Photo: Yolo Monakhov for New York Magazine)

I am not much for that philosophy of keeping the students "always on edge." It raises tension levels in young children, and I am not sure it accomplishes all that much.

At Harlem Success, disability is a dirty word. �I�m not a big believer in special ed,� Fucaloro says. For many children who arrive with individualized education programs, or IEPs, he goes on, the real issues are �maturity and undoing what the parents allow the kids to do in the house�usually mama�and I reverse that right away.� When remediation falls short, according to sources in and around the network, families are counseled out. �Eva told us that the school is not a social-service agency,� says the Harlem Success teacher. �That was an actual quote.�

A principal who doesn't believe in special education?

While Moskowitz may be pushier about getting her way than other charter school owners, her vision is just about the same as most. It is the future of our schools.

They surely do have a distinct advantage in one way. They have ways of getting unproductive kids out of their schools, note the words above:

When remediation falls short, according to sources in and around the network, families are counseled out.

From the blog Care2.com, there are concerns about the lotteries and the success of the kids chosen.

Survival of the Fittest?

So what happens to the lucky students who get chosen from the lottery? Once you are in, that does not mean your spot is secure. A study of the KIPP Charter School chain shows "selective attrition" in which academic strugglers and disruptive students leave the schools in greater numbers than other students.

..."According to an article in NY Magazine, when students are deemed "a bad fit," the administration of Harlem Success creates a nightmare for their families -- repeatedly suspending children and making constant phone calls until parents take their children elsewhere. At one Harlem Success school alone, a teacher said at least six lower-grade children who were eligible for IEPs were withdrawn this school year.

Charter School Lotteries Leave Many Kids Behind

It is hard to believe that our Democratic party is setting up this much conflict for teachers and public school students and parents.

The Democratic leaders who met with Diane Ravitch at the WH recently told her they did not approve of some of the education policies...but that they could not stop them.

Q) Have you met with any Obama administration officials? Members of Congress? What do you say? What did they say?

A) I was recently invited to meet with high-level administration officials in the White House. I told them my concerns. I told them what I have heard from teachers and parents. They told me I was misinformed. I think they should listen more to the grassroots, not just to the think tanks and the media. Over the past few weeks, I have met with many Democratic members of Congress. I have met some really impressive members who understand how destructive the current "reform" movement is. Many agree with me that the emphasis on evaluating teachers will simply produce more teaching to the test, more narrowing the curriculum, more gaming the system. They have heard from their constituents, and they don�t like what is going on.

But frankly, these same Congressmen and women tell me that they are probably helpless to stop the President�s agenda. The Democratic leadership will give the President and Secretary Duncan what they want, and they will have the support of Republicans. That leaves the Democrats in a quandary. They were not happy to see Secretary Duncan campaigning for his approach with Newt Gingrich. Maybe it will turn out to be a winning strategy for Secretary Duncan. He may get what he wants. It just won�t be good for American education or our kids.

It does not seem to matter that they are harming teachers, putting them in a bad spot, and hurting education. They will give the president his victory anyway.