Success Academy Charter Schools, originally Harlem Success Academy, is a charter school operator in New York City. Eva Moskowitz, a former city council member for the Upper East Side, is its founder. Two documentary films, The Lottery and Waiting for "Superman", record the intense desire of parents to enroll their children in Success Academy and charter schools like Success Academy. According the New York Post, Success Academy had 17,000 applicants on a wait list of more than 10,000 families for the 2017-2018 school year. It has 41 schools in the New York area and 14,000 students.
History
Founder and CEO Eva Moskowitz opened the first Success school, the Harlem Success Academy, in 2006. She subsequently opened more schools in Harlem, and then schools in other New York City neighborhoods. As of mid 2015 the network has 9,000 students in schools in every NYC borough except Staten Island.
In February 2014, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio decided to stop the city's former policy of providing free space in public school buildings to charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately run, and to evict those schools, including three Success Academy schools already in those buildings. The decision was reversed in April after New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo stepped into the controversy. The city ended up finding space for three Success Academy schools.
For the 2014â€"15 school year there were over 22,000 applications for 2,688 slots. As of 2015 the schools were not unionized.
In 2015, New York City issued a mandatory contract granting its Department of Education oversight over all pre-kindergarten providers. Success Academy did not sign the contract, citing that the city does not have authority to regulate its charter schools. In June 2016, Success Academy canceled its pre-kindergarten program and filed a suit in the State Supreme Court. The appeals court ruled in favor of Success Academy in June 2017, stating that the city could not regulate a charter school's pre-kindergarten programs, while also awarding $720K in back payments to Success.
Academics
Measured by standardized test scores, the mostly black and Hispanic students at Success Academies outscore contemporaries in both urban public schools and wealthy suburban schools in the New York City area. In New York City, 29% percent of public school students passed state reading tests, and 35% passed math tests. At Success schools, corresponding percentages were 64% and 94%.
Halley Potter, who studies charter schools at the Century Foundation, said that the conclusions that can be made from tests are limited. "Success Academy’s strong test scores tell us that they have a strong model for producing good test scores", she said.
The schools put great effort into teaching and motivating students to take tests, including giving prizes such as remote-controlled cars, and publicly ranking how well each student does on the practice tests. Students have sometimes wet their pants during practice tests; sources differ over whether this is due to students not being allowed to leave for bathroom breaks during practice tests, or students not wanting to leave because it would mean losing time.
No new students above the fourth grade are accepted, because, according to Success Academy, public school students are too far behind to catch up to Success Academy students.
Reception
In 2014, an assistant teacher made a video recording of a colleague publicly scolding a student who failed to answer a question correctly, and tearing up the student's paper. Education experts stated that the teacher's behavior was inappropriate and discouraged learning. A 2015 article in The New York Times reported that discipline, social pressure, positive reinforcement, and suspension are applied to students, as teachers are rewarded for better behavior and performance. Former teachers claimed that they quit because they disagreed with Success' punitive approach to students.
Some parents of special-needs students at Success Academy schools have complained of overly strict disciplinary policies which have resulted in high rates of suspension and attempts to pressure the parents to transfer their special-needs children out of the schools. State records and interviews with two dozen parents indicate that the schools failed at times to adhere to federal and state laws in disciplining special-education students.
Statistics gathered by the New York State Education Department show much higher rates of suspension at most Success Academy schools than at neighborhood public schools. School spokesmen have denied improper treatment of any student, and founder Eva Moskowitz has defended school practices as promoting "order and civility in the classroom".
Awards and recognition
Harlem Success Academy Charter School 3 was awarded a National Blue Ribbon by the U.S. Department of Education in 2015. Success Academy received the Broad Prize for Public Charter Schools and a grant for $250K at the National Charter School Conference in Washington, D.C. in June 2017.
References
External links
- Success Academy Charter Schools website
- New York Daily News op-ed by founder
