CURMUDGUCATION: Moskowitz Schadenfreude

CURMUDGUCATION: Moskowitz Schadenfreude:
Moskowitz Schadenfreude

Eva Moskowitz, the super-well-paid queen (almost a cool half million) of Success Academy, finally had more than just a lousy day. She flat out lost one. I know it's not nice, but let's share a little schadenfreude over the defeat of a woman whose defiant hubris has been a bamboo shoot under the fingernails of educators all across Ne York.

The plan has been to expand the SA empire by adding Pre-K. But in an unexpected twist, the city of New York, rather than simply handing Moskowitz a pile of money and saying "Have a nice day," actually insisted that she sign a contract and agree to use the money in particular ways. 


You might think that this does not sound terribly unreasonable, that virtually all vendors who want a chunk of public money have to enter some sort of contract in which they agree to do certain things in certain ways according to certain rules. Even the long-existent military-industrial complex does not work by having contractors say, "We'd like a million dollars to just do some stuff. Heck, plenty of charter advocates propose a system in which charters contract to hit certain marks and have their success or failure measured accordingly. 

But we're talking Eva Moskowitrz here. Moskowitz who successfully told the state of New York that they had no right to audit her. Moskowitz who simply went over the head of the mayor of New York City and had the legislature overrule him so that she could have more schools. 

Not only did Moskowitz want her pile of Pre-K money without conditions, but she offered the argument that it was illegal to require anything contractually of her when the money was handed over. The contract may have been okay for every other provider of Pre-K services in the city, but Moskowitz answers to no one. Check out her op-ed here, where among other things, she says that CURMUDGUCATION: Moskowitz Schadenfreude: