Eva Moskowitz’s urgent lessons
Eva Moskowitz is on a nice little roll. On Friday, a state appeals court handed her network of Success Academy charter schools a victory — and $720,000 — in ruling that New York City overstepped its authority trying to impose its pre-K contract on the network.
On Monday, she was in Washington to accept the Broad Prize, which goes each year to a charter school operator who demonstrates “outstanding academic outcomes among low-income students and students of color.” Success, with 41 schools educating 14,000 mostly low-income New York City children, was nominated for the same award last year.
The validation from her charter school peers is fortuitous timing for Moskowitz and Success Academy, which Wednesday unveils its “Ed Institute,” an online collection of free curriculum, tools and training resources that are “the foundation of Success Academy’s school design.”
Attention must be paid. Moskowitz, who operates the largest charter school network in the city and the most controversial by far, remains a deeply polarizing figure in education. But as the Broad honor suggests, whether enthusiastically or begrudgingly, one has to respect what she has brought to the families she serves.
Success Academy students continue doing to state tests what Aaron Judge does to baseballs at Yankee Stadium, hitting them high, far and with authority. The poorest-performing Success Academy school pushed 90% of students to at or above grade level on last year’s state math tests.
The network’s English Language Arts (ELA) results are not at first glance as spectacular — the lowest-scoring Success campus had 75% of its students at or above grade level last year in reading — but given the complex nature of language proficiency, which is profoundly impacted by factors outside a school’s control, it is arguably an even greater accomplishment to get low-income kids to levels unmatched even by most affluent suburban schools.
Success has a model, and so far at least, it has replicated it without a single obvious outlier. No other charter network of a similar size anywhere in the country can make the same claim.
Success boosters and critics will fight until the end of time over exactly why it gets the results it does, but for all the controversy, far too little attention has been paid to a more fundamental question: What exactly Success Academy students do all day?
The centerpiece of Success Academy’s online offering is its K-4 ELA curriculum. There’s guidance for teachers on how to structure lessons in guided reading, “shared text” and reading aloud to children, along with lists of recommended books.
Even a casual glance shows the depth and content-richness of what Success Academy kids learn and read. For years, New York City’s “balanced literacy” pedagogy encouraged teachers to base literacy lessons on reading and writing that reflected the lives of students. Success Academy’s version of balanced literacy mostly directs students’ attention not in the mirror, but out the window.
School leaders looking for lessons in Success Academy’s offering will want to attend not just to the literacy curriculum, but the online “school blueprints.”
Here, some elements of the Moskowitz Way will travel more easily than others. Any school can — and probably should — put all nonacademic functions on the plate of an “ops” (operations) team, freeing teachers and school leaders to focus exclusively on student outcomes.
On the other hand, the Success playbook places prodigious demands on parents to be deeply engaged in their children’s education. Too many schools undoubtedly view parents as barriers to progress, or as ciphers, not partners. As a school of choice, Success is simply in a better position to demand and receive a high level of parental involvement.
Success has often been criticized for being secretive and less than eager to share the secrets of its success. It’s a bit of a bum rap. I’ve personally attended multiday professional development sessions given free of charge by Success and attended by educators from all over the country.
Success classrooms are similarly open and accessible to visitors. Teachers and students rarely even look up when strangers enter their classrooms. It’s a constant occurrence.
The promise of charter schools is not merely that they drive school choice, spur competition or serve as an alternative to “failing” traditional public schools. In their original conception, they were supposed to use their operational freedom to serve as “laboratories of innovation” for American education at large. When our highest-achieving charter school network offers to let all comers look behind the curtain, we would be wise to sneak a peek.