The growing storm around Success Academy
On Friday morning, the NY Times ran a story and posted the video above, a minute and 16 seconds of a teacher berating a first grade child at a Success charter school, ripping up her math work, and sending her to sit on the “calm down” chair. This video has gone viral in the last few days, with an apparently greater impact than all the news articles, complaints, and lawsuits filed against Success charters in the past few years.
There have been so many documented instances of students unfairly treated and pushed out of Success charter schools that it is difficult to know where to start. One of the first parents to tell her story of how her special needs son was pushed out of Kindergarten within a few weeks of the beginning of the school year was Karen Sprowal, to Michael Winerip of the NY Times in July 2011 – nearly five years ago. We followed up with Karen’s own account on our blog here.
Over the years, Juan Gonzalez of the Daily News has repeatedly chronicled the many documented instances of young children repeatedly suspended and ejected from Success Charters. For the first time, the NY Times started critically covering the school last spring, describing their high-pressured test prep tactics and severe disciplinary practices for the purpose of achieving high scores on the state exams.
This fall, PBS ran a segment about the suspensions of young children at the Success Academy Charter Schools. You can see the segment here. Fatima Geidi spoke about the way the school had repeatedly suspended her first grade son for minor infractions, and refused to provide him with the special education services he was entitled to. While the reporter, John Merrow, attested to the fact that many other parents and teachers confirmed these system-wide practices, they told him they were afraid to appear on camera.
Shortly after this PBS program ran, the NY Times published an October 29 article on a “Got to Go list,” composed by the principal at the Fort Greene Success charter school targeting certain students, and explaining how he had determined their parents had to be persuaded to take them out of the school.
After that, a petition to the US Department of Education was posted online by Alliance for Quality Education and Color of Change, asking for a NYC Public School Parents: The growing storm around Success Academy:
