An unusual public fight between a New York charter school network and PBS
A rather unusual public fight has erupted over a PBS NewsHour piece by longtime correspondent John Merrow about the Success Academy Charter School network in New York City, which was founded in 2006 by former City Council member Eva Moskowitz with the financial backing of Wall Street financiers. Success demanded a correction to material it said was wrong, PBS issued a clarification, but Moskowitz isn’t satisfied.
In the PBS NewsHour video, Merrow reports about student suspensions in the 34-school Success network. Success is structured in the “no excuses” model of schooling, which essentially means that teachers are responsible for student achievement and that there are no excuses — not hunger or sickness or violent home lives — for students not doing well. Critics have long charged that Success counsels out students who may drag down their school’s standardized test scores or present difficult disciplinary problems, which Moskowitz has repeatedly denied.
A recent post by Leo Casey, executive director of the nonprofit, Washington, D.C.-based Shanker Institute, charged that Success suspends students at about seven times the rate of New York City public schools, and that the network has misrepresented its suspension rates to the U.S. Department of Education. The charter network said it had no response to that post.
But it did respond — publicly and strongly — to the Merrow piece, which featured the Success Academy Prospect Heights in Brooklyn. Merrow noted that the school’s code of conduct runs six pages, labeling as infractions everything from “bullying and gambling to littering and failing to be in a ready-for-success position.” Getting out of a seat without permission or calling out an answer are infractions as well — and these can lead to suspension. Moskowitz is shown telling Merrow: “If you get it right in the early years, you actually have to suspend far less when the kids are older, because they understand what is expected ofAn unusual public fight between a New York charter school network and PBS - The Washington Post:
