Revealing Podcast About Success Academy — Part IV
Part four of Startup’s seven part podcast about Success Academy (found here) is centered on the ‘Got To Go’ incident where a principal was found to have created a list of students he wanted to oust from his school. This episode explores whether or not the ‘Got To Go’ list was an isolated infraction by a rogue principal or if it is something that is part of the culture of the school.
Episode 1 was about the state of public schools in NYC that would make it ripe for a network like Success Academy to emerge. Episode 2 was the story of Eva Moskowitz and how she rose to power. Episode 3 was about the emphasis the network puts on standardized tests and questions whether the high test scores come at some greater cost.
Episode 4 — Growth — is the most critical so far. The ‘Go To Go’ list was a major story in the New York Times and it corroborated what many families said about Success Academy, that they push out students which, as a side benefit for them, raises the test scores of the school.
The narrator, Lisa Chow, though, got some talking points from Success Academy about how to spin this story.
Candido Brown was a new principal, put in charge of a Success Academy elementary school in Fort Greene, a neighborhood in Brooklyn. The school had already gone through two other principals in a year. The place did not represent the Success ideal of quiet classrooms and well behaved kids. It CONTINUE READING: Revealing Podcast About Success Academy — Part IV | Gary Rubinstein's Blog
