Leo Casey: Tracking Attrition Patterns at Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy Charters
When the New York Times revealed the existence of a “Got to Go” list of students, Moskowitz replied that this was an “anomaly.”
When the New York Times published a video of a teacher chastising and humbling a first-grader for not answering a question correctly, Moskowitz said this was an “anomaly.”
Critics have often said that Moskowitz gets good test results by pushing out students who might pull down scores and by not replacing them with new students (“backfilling”). Casey reviews the data. Tables are in the link.
Casey writes:
The general pattern is unmistakable. In the early grades, student enrollment in Success Academy Charter Schools increases: Whatever losses the schools may suffer through student attrition are more than compensated for by the enrollment of new students. After Grade 2, however, the enrollment numbers begin to decline and do so continuously through the later grades. There are only small variations in this essential pattern among the different Success Academy Charter Schools.
In New York State, high stakes standardized exams begin at the end of Grade 3.
Success Academy Charter Schools has made a conscious decision to not fill seats opened up by student attrition in the upper grades of its schools. And this is a deliberate, network-wide practice, as evidenced by Success Academy’s own website. When one compares the grades in each Success Academy Charter School, as listed on its website, with the grades in each school, as listed on the website of the New York City Charter School Center, one finds that the Charter School Center lists all the grades currently being provided under the school’s charter, while Leo Casey: Tracking Attrition Patterns at Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy Charters | Diane Ravitch's blog: