I Enrolled in the Success Academy Ed Institute
On June 19, 2017, education historian Diane Ravitch posted that New York’s Success Academies (SA) now has an “education institute” available to the public.
So, I signed up– which I was surprised to be allowed to do since I am a traditional public school teacher and decided supporter of traditional public schools.
I also signed up for the new-content alerts.
My initial intention in accessing the SA institute link was to examine the fees associated with SA’s institute. Yet there are no fees.
There are, however, the terms and conditions to which I had to agree. These include not “publishing the content in any media,” which could make it difficult to utilize the curriculum offerings (a principal point of the institute, or so it seems).
I agreed to not copy and post content (including videos) from the site. I do plan to comment on the content, a practice that might also get me canned if my commentary is perceived as “damaging to the website.”
I will try to play nice because I would like to see where this SA institute is headed. So far, it includes a K-4 literacy curriculum as well as school design articles and videos for elementary and middle schools, with the promise of school design info for high school set to arrive in December 2017.
I did watch a few of the literacy videos. In each one that I saw, all students sat obediently with their hands clasped as they tracked the teacher the entire time with their eyes. When given a partner discussion task, the students all began precisely when told and appeared to all be on task during the expected time.
In the videos I viewed, student behavior was perfect.
I question exactly how emotionally healthy such an atmosphere is for children and whether such training exploits a child’s desire to please adults. Frankly, I find the student behavior homogeneity in the SA instructional videos unsettling.
The atmosphere is too controlled… which begs a question:
If SA is using its institute as a means of publicizing its success and sharing tips with others on how to be as successful, what evidence is there that the SA model can work I Enrolled in the Success Academy Ed Institute | deutsch29:
