CURMUDGUCATION: Petrilli: Creaming Is a Feature

CURMUDGUCATION: Petrilli: Creaming Is a Feature:

Petrilli: Creaming Is a Feature

You have to give Mike Petrilli, Head Honcho of the Very Reformy Fordham Foundation, credit. He will say what many charter supporters will not.

The standard charter claim is that charters can do what public schools cannot-- take the same kids and get them to score well on standardized tests raise their achievement levels. They have been hemming and hawing all week over the revelation that Eva Moskowitz's Success Academy was caught keeping a "Got To Go" list of students who were to be driven out of their Very Special Test Score Factory. Success Academy has thrown that principal under the bus, and then had him publicly drive the bus over himself, and then underline it with a classic Moskowitz quote:

At Success, we simply don't believe in throwing people on the trash heap for the sake of public relations.

Success Academy simply doesn't just toss human beings aside because those people don't serve Moskowitz's purpose. Of course, that still leaves the mystery of how SA loses half of each cohort on the way to graduation. But all those parents talking about their experience of being pushed out? Liars or deluded or something.

Mike Petrilli calls "bullshit." In fact, he calls bullshit on everybody, including the people who have been howling at the Success Academy revelations, in particular taking a shot at Randi Weingarten of AFT:

What makes this sort of demagoguery more disappointing than usual is the nature of the issue at hand. As Weingarten’s own members know all too well, classroom disruption is a major problem. In CURMUDGUCATION: Petrilli: Creaming Is a Feature:

Eva's Very Bad Month

It has not been a fun couple of weeks for Eva Moskowitz and her Success Academy chain of test score workshops. I just want to collect all there high points in one spot.

First, she found herself the subject of a John Merrow PBS piece on the use of discipline to push students out and raise the collective scores of her schools. It's worth watching the clip to see her performance:

This is what happens when you get too used to only appearing in media settings that you totally control.

But Eva fought back quickly, demanding an apology in a letter that I won't link to because, incredibly, Moskowitz included the easily-identifiable disciplinary record of a then six year old student. Because when your charter business is under attack, you fight back with whatever weapons at your disposal against whoever stands in your way. Talk about putting adult interests ahead of the needs of children.

Does that sound like a violation of the law? The child's mother thinks so, and has filed suit against Moskowitz.

That was two weeks ago. Then this week, Moskowitz found herself facing off against the city. City Controller Scott Stringer put it plainly:

If an organization wants to be paid New York City taxpayer dollars, they need to follow New York Eva's Very Bad Month