Classified School Employees of the Year Announced - Year 2019 (CA Dept of Education)

Classified School Employees of the Year Announced - Year 2019 (CA Dept of Education)

State Superintendent Tony Thurmond Announces 2019 Classified School Employees of the Year

SACRAMENTO—State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond today honored six outstanding classified school employees for their dedication to California’s public school students.

“Meeting students’ basic needs, as well as their social and emotional needs, is essential to ensuring that every student can learn,” said Thurmond. “These dedicated employees make sure that kids have healthy meals, safe transportation on school buses, and have someone to talk to during difficult times in their lives—allowing California’s students to reach their greatest potential.”

The annual program honors six outstanding classified school employees from the following categories: Child Nutrition; Maintenance, Operations, and Facilities; Office and Technical Support; Para-Educator and Instructional Assistance; Support Services and Security; and Transportation. This year’s recipients were chosen from more than 100 nominations statewide.

The 2019 Classified School Employees of the Year, who will be honored by Thurmond at a luncheon in Sacramento on Thursday, May 23, are (information contained in the following biographical sketches was excerpted from their nomination forms):

Child Nutrition: Debora Watkins, Food Service Cook, Westminster School District, Orange County. 24 years in current position.Debbie has an incredible work ethic and goes above and beyond to ensure the cleanliness standards in the kitchen are impeccable and that all rules and regulations are followed. Debbie is responsible for planning, cooking, and distributing 7,500 meals to Westminster Elementary school sites each day. In the 24 years she has worked for the district, there has not been a single day that students have not received a meal. Debbie is one of the most reliable, hard-working individuals at the district.

Maintenance and Operations: Kim Bramsen, Director of Maintenance and Operations, Ballard Elementary School, Ballard School District, Santa Barbara County. 21 years in current position.
Beyond taking great care of the school, Kim is an integral part of the community at Ballard School. An elementary school with around 120 students, Kim gets to know each child by name and establishes relationships with them. He is always a willing participant in the hijinks of the kindergarten classroom, whether it involves leprechauns and their mischief or regaling the children with historical tales of the school house.

Office and Technical: Michelle Brobak, School Secretary, Del Rey Elementary, Orinda Union School District, Contra Costa County. Seven years in current position.Michelle runs the Del Rey front office with heart. Students trust her and feel safe. She is calm and reassuring, particularly when dealing with injured students and their concerned parents. On many occasions, teachers and staff report escorting a crying child to the office during yard supervision and witnessing Michelle quickly assessing the situation, providing necessary first aid, and ensuring the student feels safe and as comfortable as possible.

Para-Educator and Instructional Assistance: Maria Arroyo, Behavior Specialist, Daly Academy, Chula Vista Elementary School District, San Diego County. 12 years in current position.There is not a single “hat” that Maria doesn’t wear at Daly Academy. The work that Maria does on any single day is nearly unmatched—it takes a special type of person to do it all with a smile and a desire to do it well so that students have an amazing day. Maria understands trauma-informed care and never takes things personally. The children immediately know they will be loved, cared for, and educated. This allows for an environment of grace which helps our children thrive.

Support Services and Security: Benito Torres, Police Officer, Stockton Public Safety Academy, Stockton Unified School District, San Joaquin County. 19 years in current position.
During his 19 years of service with the Stockton Unified School District Police Department, Officer Torres has worked in many capacities. He exudes the definition of role model and mentor for the students. He is passionate about so many things, especially making a difference in the lives of others. That includes taking a call on his personal cell phone at 1 a.m. from a scared cadet whose house was just shot at; helping a family who can’t afford medication for their child; and simple everyday actions that make everyone he encounters feel safe, heard, and important.

Transportation: Ramon Moreno, Bus Driver, Greenfield Union School District, Monterey County. 12 years in current position, 20 years with the district.Ramon is a bus driver for special education students who get services in other school districts in Monterey County. He is always conscientious about students’ feelings and well-being. There are times where his routes result in very long journeys due to traffic or delays. During these times, Ramon engages with students when they become irritable or sad. He is in constant communication with parents during these delays. He personally communicates and informs parents of transportation time changes in his route. These are tasks that he does not have to perform but is willing to do to ensure students are comfortable and parents have peace of mind.

Please visit the California Department of Education’s Classified School Employee of the Year web page for more information. The program is co-sponsored by the Classified School Employees Association and our Presenting Sponsor, San Mateo-based California Casualty. California’s Classified School Employee Week, established as an official week of statewide recognition in 1986 through Senate Bill 1552, will be celebrated from May 19 to May 25, 2019.

# # # #

Tony Thurmond — State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Communications Division, Room 5602, 916-319-0818, Fax 916-319-0100

Classified School Employees of the Year Announced - Year 2019 (CA Dept of Education)

Education Reform: Warnings Confirmed, But Lessons Learned? | radical eyes for equity

Education Reform: Warnings Confirmed, But Lessons Learned? | radical eyes for equity

Education Reform: Warnings Confirmed, But Lessons Learned?

Soon after I began my career as an educator in 1984, I became a serious cyclist. An unexpected hobby sprang from that newfound activity—being my own bicycle mechanic. In fact, over the past three-plus decades, I have built up dozens of road bicycles from the parts for myself and my friends.

In the last 1990s, I bought my first titanium road frameset made by Litespeed. Not long after I began riding it, I noticed an irritating creaking sound and soon learned that the different metals involved in the various parts often created such problems, notably mating aluminum bottom bracket cups with the threaded titanium bottom bracket.

Several times, I rebuilt that bottom bracket fitting, cleaning, changing greases, and even using thread tape. I worked on the bicycle while mounted on my indoor trainer, and each time, when I tested the bicycle there, the noise was gone.

However, once on the open road, the same creaking returned.

Frustrated, I resigned myself to taking the bicycle to a shop mechanic. Like I did, he rebuilt the bottom bracket, multiple time, but each time he went out to test the bicycle, the creaking noise persisted.

After spending an inordinate amount of time fruitlessly working on the bottom bracket, the mechanic called me to report that he eventually discovered the noise was coming from the quick releases on the wheels. In fact, he also shared in exasperation that the mating of aluminum quick releases to titanium dropouts was a common noise problem.

The moral of this story? The mechanic and I were so focusing on a solution that we failed to properly evaluate the problem in the beginning. For the professional mechanic, this was particularly disturbing because he CONTINUE READING: Education Reform: Warnings Confirmed, But Lessons Learned? | radical eyes for equity

JEFF BRYANT: Progressives take a bold stance at an epicenter of the charter school movement for public education | Salon.com

Progressives take a bold stance at an epicenter of the charter school movement for public education | Salon.com

Progressives take a bold stance at an epicenter of the charter school movement for public education
Unifying this diverse coalition was an uncompromising political argument about what makes public schools public

To learn more about school privatization, check out Who Controls Our Schools? The Privatization of American Public Education, a free ebook published by the Independent Media Institute. Click here to read a selection of Who Controls Our Schools? published on AlterNet, or here to access the complete text. This article was produced by Our Schools, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

When President Trump appointed Betsy DeVos to be U.S. Secretary of Education and made charter schools, vouchers, and other forms of “school choice” practically the sole emphasis for his K-12 education policy—other than slashing funding and programs for public schools—he brought national attention to a decades-long battle over privatizing public education that was already raging in communities across the nation.

The community that’s been on the frontline of the fight for the longest has been Milwaukee, where the city’s public schools have been undermined by a nearly 30-year-old voucher program—the nation’s oldest—and an invasion of charter schools going back to 1993, when the state passed its first charter school law just a year after the very first charter school law in the nation passed in Minnesota.

Despite the decades-long effort to privatize Milwaukee’s local school, recent events in that community have revealed how public school advocates can successfully fight back against the forces of privatization.

In Milwaukee’s recent school board election, a slate of five candidates swept into office under a banner of turning back years of efforts to privatize the district’s schools. The win for public schools was noteworthy not only because it took place in a long-standing bastion of school choice, but also because the winning candidates were backed by an emerging coalition that adopted a bold, new politics that demands candidates take up a full-throated opposition to school privatization rather than cater to the middle.

Unsurprisingly, the coalition includes the local teachers’ union, who’ve long been skeptical of charters, vouchers, and other privatization ideas, but joining the teachers in their win are progressive activists, CONTINUE READING: Progressives take a bold stance at an epicenter of the charter school movement for public education | Salon.com

Jersey City school board sues state to restore “horrific” cuts in state aid |

Jersey City school board sues state to restore “horrific” cuts in state aid |

Jersey City school board sues state to restore “horrific” cuts in state aid

The Jersey City school board has sued the state, demanding the Legislature restore at least $27 million funds cut from New Jersey’s second largest school district.

Sudhan Thomas, the board’s president, said state aid cuts–$27 million this year alone–represented a “complete abandonment” of the state’s constitutional responsibility to the children in Jersey City.

“We will not allow 30,000 children of Jersey City to be denied the education they have a constitutionally guaranteed right to. This is the civil rights battle of our generation and this lawsuit is filed to protect the fundamental rights of every student in Jersey City and to ensure that they have a real shot at the American Dream.”

The statement released by Thomas and other Jersey City school officials follows. Analysis will be added later.

   

Sudhan Thomas, JC school board president, vows to fight state’s “abandonment” of children in New Jersey’s second largest district

Jersey City Board of Education Files Lawsuit Challenging Devastating State Education Aid Cuts District Faces $27 Million Reduction, 400+ Teacher Layoffs This Year Unless Unconstitutional Aid Cuts are Reversed

JERSEY CITY, N.J. — The Jersey City Board of Education has filed a lawsuit in Hudson County Superior Court seeking to overturn dramatic cuts in state education aid that would lead to permanent, irreparable harm for thousands of local students if allowed to continue. The loss of aid, which amounts to $27 million in this school year, could lead to as many as 410 layoffs of teachers and instructional support staff in 2019-20. The projected cuts of $180 million over the next five years would lead to massive layoffs in addition to the elimination of extra-curricular activities including sports and athletic programs, after-school CONTINUE READING: Jersey City school board sues state to restore “horrific” cuts in state aid |

CURMUDGUCATION: OH: The Ongoing Fight To End School Takeovers

CURMUDGUCATION: OH: The Ongoing Fight To End School Takeovers

OH: The Ongoing Fight To End School Takeovers

I have been watching events unfold in Lorain, Ohio, site of both my first job and an absolute clusterfrick of epic proportions It's time for an update.

You can find the complete story so far starting here, but the short form is that Ohio has a bone stupid law known as HB 70, passed using underhanded legislative shenanigans in order to get it run through quickly and without public discussion. The law takes over school districts that score low on state evaluations too many years and installs a mostly-state-appointed board which in turn hires a school tsar. HB 70 strips the powers from both the elected school board and the district superintendent and hands them to the tsar. So far, Lorain, East Cleveland, and Youngstown have been put under the HB thumb. Knowing how the Big Standardized Test effects class and economics, you will be unsurprised that these are three of the poorest districts in the state.

State superintendent DeMaria: Everything's great, right?

In Lorain, it has not gone well. The tsar, David Hardy Jr, is a TFA product with little actual experience, who has brought in other TFAers, also with little real experience, to help run things. Hardy writes pretty speeches about collaboration and relationships, but he doesn't live in Lorain, won't meet with local elected officials, and has adopted a management style that improbably combines Chainsaw Al and the Three Stooges.

There have been lessons to learn from Hardy's reign. For instance, Lorain appears to answer the question "What would happen if you tried out some charter school management techniques not on newby teachers who didn't know any better, but on seasoned veterans who can tell that it's a bunch of baloney?" (Answer: morale plummets and CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: OH: The Ongoing Fight To End School Takeovers

California School Boards Association on Needed Reforms of Charter Law | Diane Ravitch's blog

California School Boards Association on Needed Reforms of Charter Law | Diane Ravitch's blog

California School Boards Association on Needed Reforms of Charter Law

Almost everyone in California seems to acknowledge that the state charter law is broken and needs reform. Governor Gavin Newsom created a Task Force, under the leadership of Tony Thurmond, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, charged with coming up with ways to fix the law. Since the majority of the Governor’s Task Force has ties to the charter industry (including two members of the state’s charter lobbying organization), it bears watching to see whether the proposals are effective or cosmetic.

Now the California School Boards Association has released its recommendations. Its report mentions in passing that only one of every three charter schools outperforms the public schools in the district where it is located.

“After more than 25 years of continued charter school growth, California now finds itself far removed from the original mission and vision of the Act, which was, in part, meant to improve student learning with an emphasis on CONTINUE READING: California School Boards Association on Needed Reforms of Charter Law | Diane Ravitch's blog

Teacher Appreciation Week is coming, and this educator is starting to cringe: ‘I’ll trade appreciation for respect any day’ - The Washington Post

Teacher Appreciation Week is coming, and this educator is starting to cringe: ‘I’ll trade appreciation for respect any day’ - The Washington Post

Teacher Appreciation Week is coming, and this educator is starting to cringe: ‘I’ll trade appreciation for respect any day’

Teacher Appreciation Week is fast approaching — the first full week in May — but New York City educator Emily James is already starting to cringe.

Every year, the week is sponsored by the National Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) in an effort, the group’s website says, “to show our thanks and gratitude” to “stellar educators.” How? Here are headlines on some Internet stories about how to mark the week:

• “All the Perks and Freebies You Can Get for Teacher Appreciation Week”
• “7 Meaningful Ways to Celebrate Teacher Appreciation Week,” with the first suggestion being “gifts” and the sixth being “classroom supplies” (because, unfortunately, too many classrooms aren’t properly equipped).
• “Teachers Can Get Free Flights to the Caribbean in Honor of Teacher Appreciation Week”

To James, this week represents nothing more than lip service to teachers and is “a Band-Aid for a much larger problem, which is a systemic lack of respect for our educators.” In the post below, she notes that there are no appreciation weeks for doctors and other professionals.

To James, teachers need more than an annual appreciation week, which she finds cringeworthy. James, a writer as well as an educator, created a petition on change.org demanding paid parental leave for city public school teachers last year. It garnered 85,000 signatures, leading to negotiations that ended with city public school teachers getting paid parental leave starting last June.

Her work has been published in the New York Daily News, HuffPost and various literary magazines. She was the recipient of the 2019 Bechtel Prize from Teachers and Writers Magazine. You can follow her on Twitter @missg3rd.

By Emily James

As Teacher Appreciation Week comes near, I feel my annual cringe coming on. While the occasional “THANK YOU” pencil is nice (and I do love a buy-one-get-one-free Chipotle burrito), this week often feels like a faulty Band-Aid for a serious issue that educators in our country face day in and day out.

As a society, we don’t flaunt lawyer appreciation weeks, doctor appreciation weeks, engineer appreciation weeks. Why? Because the image and perceptions of these careers hold a certain respect from our communities, along with a certain respect within the field.

As educators, it often feels like no matter how many years we prove ourselves as competent, to make the CONTINUE READING: Teacher Appreciation Week is coming, and this educator is starting to cringe: ‘I’ll trade appreciation for respect any day’ - The Washington Post

Betsy DeVos has become a punchline -- here's why Trump still keeps her around

Betsy DeVos has become a punchline -- here's why Trump still keeps her around

Betsy DeVos has become a punchline — here’s why Trump still keeps her around

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has become a punchline for late-night television hosts and “Saturday Night Live,” but she’s managed to stay alive in President Donald Trump’s political game of “Survivor.”

A recent Washington Post report took a deep dive into the benefits of the Trump cabinet official that revealed why the fraught appointment manages to hold, despite so much controversy.

DeVos is, at her core, an advocate of privatized and religious education that conservatives champion to help build a Christian army. She has fought tirelessly to undermine public schools by taking much-needed funds and passing them to costly private institutions.

“There’s an audience I play to, and it’s just an audience of one,” she said to the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities. “That’s a true north star.”

Trump’s lackluster “Christianity” has caused public flubs that makes his support from the evangelical community look like partisan hypocrisy. DeVos lends credibility to Trump’s faith claims. According to The Post, DeVos’s “deeply religious” beliefs help carry Trump among his base. Those voters continue to support him to the tune of 67 percent, according to the recent Washington Post/ABC News poll.

“He has staffed his administration and surrounded himself with people who have deep roots and street cred in the faith community. Betsy would be at or near the top of that list,” said Faith and Freedom Coalition founder Ralph Reed.

DeVos’s other benefit is about cold-hard-cash. The spouse of a billionaire has a long history of philanthropy and connections to old-money and deep-pockets among the elite Trump has few relationships with.

She’s managed to succeed where other right-wing education policy-makers have failed, in large part because Trump has no idea about public education and little interest in CONTINUE READING: Betsy DeVos has become a punchline -- here's why Trump still keeps her around

Charter schools nearly destroyed McDonogh 35. Now it will become one

Charter schools nearly destroyed McDonogh 35. Now it will become one

Charter schools nearly destroyed this New Orleans school. Now it will become one.
The first black high school in New Orleans, McDonogh 35, was a source of pride, until the chartering of the city’s schools after Hurricane Katrina contributed to its academic collapse. Now, the school board hopes turning it over to a charter organization can save it

NEW ORLEANS — The McDonogh 35 “Roneagles” were killing their opponents on the softball field. Junior Tye Mansion had just stolen a base, and her teammates in the dugout were going wild, chanting and taunting the other team. Tye’s mom Tyra Mansion was cheering her on behind home plate.

“That’s my superstar. That’s Hollywood,” she said.

Off the field, life was less glamorous for Tye this spring. She had taken and retaken the ACT, trying to get a score high enough to get into college, with a scholarship. Her mom said Tye’s school, McDonogh 35 Senior High School, wasn’t giving her the academic support she needed to improve her score, so Mansion had to go elsewhere for help — taking Tye to programs at the local university, and paying for private tutoring.

This story also appeared in WWNO

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“We may have to go five different places to get it, but we get it,” Mansion said.

McDonogh 35’s average ACT score was a 16.1 last year. That’s well below the national average, of 20.8 and not nearly high enough to get into most colleges. It’s a stark contrast to when, 15 years ago, McDonogh 35 students posted some of the highest test scores in the district. The century-old high school — the city’s first public school for black students — boasted alumni who went on to become mayors and judges.

Then Hurricane Katrina hit. McDonogh 35 was one of the few schools that weathered the storm mostly intact. It was the onslaught of charter schools that followed that contributed to the school’s near collapse in academics.

As school after school became chartered in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, McDonogh 35 High School remained under district control. Money and attention turned to the new, privately run schools. Teachers, resources and programs for McDonogh 35 disappeared. The school, once a selective magnet, became a last-resort school for some of the city’s most vulnerable students. Alumni of the historic black high school accused the school district of CONTINUE READING: Charter schools nearly destroyed McDonogh 35. Now it will become one

“Progressive” 2020 Democratic Presidential Hopefuls Who Support Charter Schools | Dissident Voice

“Progressive” 2020 Democratic Presidential Hopefuls Who Support Charter Schools | Dissident Voice

“Progressive” 2020 Democratic Presidential Hopefuls Who Support Charter Schools

More writers, commentators, and researchers are increasingly reminding the public that a large number of democrats at all levels of government have long supported and promoted privately-operated charter schools that annually siphon billions of public dollars from thousands of over-tested and vilified public schools.

The oft-repeated myth that the privatization and destruction of public education has always largely been “a Republican thing” or “a right-wing thing” is slowly dissolving. It was always a fairytale. Just like the widely-rejected No Child Left Behind Act, and its much-worse successor, the Every Student Succeeds Act, nonprofit and for-profit charter schools continue to have bipartisan support: both parties of the rich support these “free market” schools plagued by corruption, discriminatory enrollment practices, low transparency, high teacher turnover rates, intense controversy, and a high rate of failure and closure.

Some Democrats here and there have broken ranks and come out opposing, or at least criticizing, charter schools, but mostly to save face or to self-servingly incubate a specialized voting bloc for themselves in a discredited political system. The next few months will be revealing in terms of which democrats at different levels of government will represent the public will and have the courage to vocally oppose charter schools and unequivocally defend public schools instead.

Many are not holding their breath.

Pete Buttigieg is the Mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and one of almost two dozen 2020 Democratic presidential candidates. Much of the mainstream media is touting him as a great progressive guy, a breath of fresh air, someone we might be able to get behind. But Buttigieg has unabashedly made it clear that he is not opposed to charter schools, repeating worn-out disinformation like charter schools are laboratories of innovation others can learn from.

Beto O’Rourke, another young Democratic presidential candidate (from Texas) who is also receiving many glowing reviews from the mainstream CONTINUE READING: “Progressive” 2020 Democratic Presidential Hopefuls Who Support Charter Schools | Dissident Voice

Betsy DeVos Gave This Charter Chain $225 Million. It Doesn’t Pass the Smell Test | Diane Ravitch's blog

Betsy DeVos Gave This Charter Chain $225 Million. It Doesn’t Pass the Smell Test | Diane Ravitch's blog

Betsy DeVos Gave This Charter Chain $225 Million. It Doesn’t Pass the Smell Test

Betsy DeVos recently gave $116 million to the IDEA charter chain, mostly to expand in Texas. Previously, she had already given millions to IDEA, altogether this lucky business has received $225 million in federal funds.

In El Paso alone, IDEA will open 20 new charters. That’s bad news for the El Paso public schools, because IDEA is known for pushing out the kids it doesn’t want and sending them back to the public schools, which will have to slash their budgets to adjust to lost enrollment.

Veteran Texas educator Tim Holt says that this IDEA invasion doesn’t pass the smell test. Parents and taxpayers are being fooled. He wrote this before DeVos gave IDEA its latest plum, $116 million.

“In the next few years, IDEA plans to increase from one school today in El Paso to over 20, making them larger than either the Anthony, Canutillo, San Eli, Fabens, or Clint ISD’s in terms of number of campuses. (“IDEA’s big goal is to serve 100,000 students by 2022” in Tejas according to the IDEA website.

“That would make them larger than Ft. Worth or Austin ISDs, which each have about 88,000 students each.) Of course, local districts are concerned because they get CONTINUE READING: Betsy DeVos Gave This Charter Chain $225 Million. It Doesn’t Pass the Smell Test | Diane Ravitch's blog

National Average Teacher Salary Down 4.5% - NEA Today

National Average Teacher Salary Down 4.5% - NEA Today

National Average Teacher Salary Down 4.5%

Amber McCoy, a fourth grade teacher at Kellogg Elementary in Huntington, West Virginia, has 16 years’ experience under her belt, but still makes just $44,000 a year. She also has about $40,000 left in student loans to pay off. McCoy has worked as a tutor, pet sitter, and Amazon customer service rep to make ends meet.

In February 2018, she decided enough was enough and joined thousands of her fed-up colleagues across the state in launching a successful nine-day work stoppage.

“[It] was our last resort, but it raised public awareness about persistent low pay,” McCoy says.

The average salary in West Virginia is $45,642, one of the lowest in the nation. The national average teacher salary, adjusted for inflation, has decreased 4.5 percent over the past decade, according to NEA Ranking of the States 2018 and Estimates of School Statistics 2019, released this week.

“Across the nation educator pay continues to erode, expanding the large pay gap between what teachers earn and what similarly educated and experienced professionals in other fields earn,” says NEA President Lily Eskelsen García.

“Educators don’t do this work to get rich, they do this work because they believe in students. But their pay is not commensurate with the dedication and expertise they CONTINUE READING: National Average Teacher Salary Down 4.5% - NEA Today

Frank Biden, His For-Profit Charter Chain, Mavericks in Education, and More | deutsch29

Frank Biden, His For-Profit Charter Chain, Mavericks in Education, and More | deutsch29

Frank Biden, His For-Profit Charter Chain, Mavericks in Education, and More

NOTE: This post is not an indictment of Joe Biden. it is an investigation into the charter school association of his brother, Frank Biden. I have seen info on social media regarding Frank Biden’s for-profit charter school involvement, but the info is old. So, I investigated.

Joe Biden is not involved, but his brother has time and again capitalized on the “my brother Joe” name-dropping, including in his charter school ventures.

As for Joe Biden: Like all presidential hopefuls, he needs to offer the public a clear statement regarding his position on K12 public education, including clarity about his thoughts on school choice.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Frank Biden is the brother of former US vice president and 2020 presidential hopeful, Joe Biden.

In 2008, Frank Biden was passionate about charter schools, enough so to become involved with the Florida for-profit charter school chain, Mavericks in Education.

In the 2012 youtube video interview below sponsored by Florida-based, school choice promoter, Tripp Scott law firm, Biden refers to a chance meeting with someone associated with charter schools in Florida. That someone was Mark CONTINUE READING: Frank Biden, His For-Profit Charter Chain, Mavericks in Education, and More | deutsch29

Revealing Podcast About Success Academy — Part V | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

Revealing Podcast About Success Academy — Part V | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

Revealing Podcast About Success Academy — Part V

Star Wars fans know that Episode 5 — The Empire Strikes Back, was the best of the Star Wars saga.  And of Beethoven’s nine symphonies, the most famous is surely his fifth.  Likewise, of the seven episodes of Startup’s podcast about Success Academy, the fifth (found here) is the most powerful and the most important.

To say that this episode has the ‘smoking gun’ would be an understatement.  This episode has not just the smoking gun, but a video of the culprit firing that gun.  I’m not sure why this episode hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves.  Maybe because it is so many hours into the podcast and most people don’t listen to all the parts.  Or maybe there are so many Success Academy excuses and talking points weaved into all the other episodes that this episode just seems like a small blemish on a generally favorable portrait of the controversial charter network.  Whatever the reason, I’m hoping that people will take the time to listen to the whole podcast and to share it, along with my summary, widely.

This episode is entitled ‘Expectations’ and it explores whether or not the expectations Success Academy has for it’s students and for the parents of those students are something that the students and parents rise to meet or if they scare away potential families and families who struggle to keep up with those expectations.

They play a tape of Eva Moskowitz speaking to families who have been CONTINUE READING: Revealing Podcast About Success Academy — Part V | Gary Rubinstein's Blog