Robert Pondiscio is a senior fellow at the Thomas B. Fordham
Institute, a thinky tank steeped in conservative ed reform and staunch
advocates of school choice, so one might expect that his book about Success
Academy, the famous/infamous charter chain in New York City would be something
of a puff piece, one more example of founder Eva Moskowitz’s broad and endless
PR campaign. Indeed, the title
How The Other Half Learns, seems like a bad sign-- Success Academy is not and does not represent half of anything, and to present it that way might suggest that Pondiscio is setting out a case for SA as an elite solution to education's problems.
It’s not that simple (which could be a subtitle for the
book). Pondiscio brings a unique skill set to this work; he was a journalist
for his first career and, in a real rarity for Reformsters, he taught in an actual
classroom (five years in the South Bronx, not far from where the school that is
the subject of this book now stands). Pondiscio enters this project as a fan of choice, and he leaves the same way, but along the way he gives a
fairly unflinching look at his year inside the Success chain. Much of the book is commendably objective and reportorial, to the point that it can serve, as
Pondiscio suggests, as a kind of Rorschach Test. If you are a supporter of
charters and SA, you will find much here to confirm your beliefs; if you are an
opponent, you will find many of your critiques confirmed as well. In fact, there isn't a bad thing you've heard about Success Academy that is not here in this book. If I had to
pick a bottom line for the book, it would be this:
Success Academy schools are both better and worse than you
think. Here are some things I learned from this book.
Success Academy Does, In Fact, Cream
But not the way they’re usually accused of. As Pondiscio
details in considerable detail throughout the book, the charter chain doesn’t
cream students, but families. From a demanding application process, through
repeated meetings that lay out the demands of the charter, even through
measuring sessions for school uniforms, through pre-school orientation
meetings, Success filters out the parents who are unable or unwilling to meet
their requirements. A kindergarten child whose family missed a pre-year
orientation session without calling the school to explain their absence arrives
on the first official day of school only to be turned away; because of the
family’s absence, his seat has been given to a student on the wait list.
Success Academy demands a high degree of involvement from
its parents, and only those that are willing to meet and keep meeting that
demand make the cut. A not-inconsiderable number of families who make the cut
will, after a tough introductory meeting, vote with their feet to attend
elsewhere. In the end, Success Academy is populated with students whose
families are willing to toe the school line, which helps with what may be the
secret of their success.
Success Academy Thrives On A Monoculture
The outcome of that selection process is to find families
that are a “culture match” for the school. Likewise, as Pondiscio puts it, “at
Success Academy, adults speak with one voice.” The message, from top to bottom,
is consistent. Curriculum, pedagogy, discipline, behavioral norms—it all is (or
is meant to be) the same from classroom to classroom and building to building.
That monoculture’s reach extends to the home, where
homework, reading, and other expectations are expected—demanded—by the school.
Pondiscio depicts several school-on-parent interactions that will make public
school teachers cringe. Not many parents would tolerate that kind of demanding
tone, the kind of “tough love” that permeates the school. There is a central
irony here—once these parents exercise the right to choose that Reformsters
value so much, these parents will never have any real choice about their
children’s education ever again. From sock color to paperwork, they will do as
they're told until their child leaves Success Academy.
Parts Of That Culture Are Not Bad
One aspect that every school in the US could borrow? The
Business Operations Manager with a full staff that monitors and maintains every
physical aspect of the school. It’s an impressive thing, though it also speaks
to one of SA’s secret weapons—a whole lot of money. Still, every teacher who
has waited weeks for someone from maintenance to answer their pleas to fix a
thermostat or replace a light bulb will gaze in envious marvel at this feature.
Like many SA critics, I have been inclined to see the
charter as a sort of grey Soviet Bloc factory, and the charters are, in
Pondiscio’s words, “unabashedly behaviorist.” But coming through clearly in
this book is the teachers’ love and concern for their students. And that helps
feed into the culture’s demand that all these students will succeed (as SA
defines success). In the hands of other teachers and staff, that demand to
perform could be oppressive and even crushing. But the tempering love and
support of the classroom teachers makes more explicit what is implicit in the
demand “You will do this,” which is “Because you can do this.” We can, should,
and will talk about whether or not the “this” is well-chosen or not, but if you
believe an important, transformative element of education is having a teacher
who believes in you and believes that you have what it takes, then Success
Academy seems to have that.
However…
The system puts an enormous value on compliance. Compliance
by students, parents, teachers, administrators—communication is constant and
much of it is about compliance, about making sure that everyone is in the same
paragraph on the same page. Despite Moskowitz’s denial, Pondiscio rightly
identifies SA as very much in the No Excuses camp, and that extends from
everything to being on time to sitting to reading logs.
That comes with a huge amount of micro-management,
particularly, it seems, of teachers who are seen as not quite on the right
page. The staff churn is tremendous, moving both within and out of the chain,
and the teachers are all young; someone who has a mere six years in the
classroom counts as the building veteran. Pondiscio notes that the youth and
inexperience doesn’t seem to get in the way of the school, but that’s because
they are all fully set into compliance with the SA model, which, while it
doesn’t go as far as actual scripting, expects all teachers at one level to be
covering the same material in the same way on the same day at the same time.
It’s another central irony of Success Academy. Eva Moskowitz
has made a career out of refusing to comply with school district leaders, civic
leaders, or state leaders. But she would not tolerate that level of
non-compliance from teachers or students in her charter school.
But is it a bad thing to have everyone on the same page, if
it’s the right page?
The Problems
First, that assumes that any one page can be the right page
for everyone. That point may not matter here, since Moskowitz has filled
schools based on selecting those who are on that same page.
But another notable feature of SA is how externally things
are managed. Students depend on external verification that they have spoken
correctly, walked correctly, set correctly. Part of the goal is empower them,
and yet at the end of the day, what they’ve learned is that the power they have
is to comply with a power greater than their own. This may be why Moskowitz’s
first attempt as a high school, as chronicled by Pondiscio, was a failure. It was supposed to mirror a high-toned prep school, and she hired the people to do it, but they found the students weren't ready for it. Well, of course not-- they've enjoyed virtually no independence or self-direction in their academic career and depend on external control and validation at every turn. Also, children are much easier to push into compliance than teens.
There are also plenty of indications that SA is not on the
right page. Pondiscio lays out how the SA approach to reading flies in the face
of much of what we know about reading instruction. SA is also deeply attached
to lexiles and leveling and uses those shaky materials in ways that even their
creators wouldn’t approve of.
And then there’s the test. The great holy Big Standardized
Test. Moskowitz takes the students to Radio City for a giant pep rally, and
test prep dominates the school for a massive amount of time. Pondiscio gives
ample space to the work of testing expert Daniel Koretz (author of
The
Testing Charade) in explaining the many faults, failings, and ill
effects of high stakes testing. But in the end he waves it off with a “We could
argue about this all day.” We could—but
given
the work of Koretz and Jay Greene, to name a couple, it would be a hard
debate for test apologists to win. Test scores are Moskowitz’s big win, the
achievement hook on which much of the charter’s press hangs (though, as
Pondiscio notes, only recently have SA students started to score at all well on
the city’s competitive high school exams). Are high test scores opening doors
for SA alumni?
But perhaps the most surprising thing for me when reading
was the degree to which Success Academy seems lost. This may well be my own
Rorschach Test speaking, but in their extreme devotion to every single detail,
the entire organization reminded me of a beginning teacher who isn’t sure what
matters and what doesn’t, so she just lays on everything extra hard, or an English teacher who isn’t sure how to assess an essay, so scores heavily on the
size of the margin and the placement of the heading. Each time I was reading
about one of the caring, invested teachers, I wondered how they might flourish
in a school that didn’t require them to spend their days enforcing compliance
by narrating student sitting positions.
As recounted in many profiles, the school seems to exist as
an extension of Eva Moskowitz’s will. She rejects the notion of outside
consultants, yet rarely have I read her citing any educational research or
expert writings to support her notions of how school should work. At one point,
she harkens back to the 1940s and how much more smoothly schools worked then,
not noting that those schools only served a portion of the population. But for
me she and her schools jumped off the page as uninformed amateurs exerting
enormous control with enormous certainty that they haven’t earned. And despite all of this, they are absolutely certain of their correctness. "We do it this way because we know it works,' is the message, both internally and externally, but it's an empty assertion (unless you think the purpose of school is to get scores on the state's Big Standardized Test). But that certainty--that unearned confidence is part of the sales pitch. Pondiscio notes that part of charter appeal seems to be safety, and this seems like an extension of that. What could be more safe than a school that confidently, convincingly argues that there is One Right Way to educate children and they adhere to that way, top to bottom?
The charter chain is neither scalable nor sustainable
because it exists as her personal vision. It has nothing to teach other
charters or the public school system. Get donors to give you lots of money?
Teach only the students that will comply with your vision? Public schools
already know those nuggets—but that’s not the mission for public education. SA
parents echo the thoughts of many charter parents—the school is appealing
because it is less chaotic and rarely disrupted, compared to the public
schools. It’s a safe space; that’s the other part of its secret to success.
The Big Questions
Is that reason enough for it to exist, and what about the
students causing disruption? Pondiscio, in one of his best lines, identifies an
issue at the heart of the public vs. charter school debates: “A significant
tension between public schools and charter schools is the question of who bears
the cost and responsibility for the hardest-to-teach students.”
Who indeed? Pondiscio tracks down a student who disappeared
during the year, and hears from the parents of a non-compliant child who was
systematically pushed out, and he must reluctantly admit that the story tracks
with many other stories like it, told by parents who found the school would use
all manner of tools to convince them to get their child out of there. It’s not
a good look for the charter.
But for all its faults, Pondiscio suggests, if Success
Academy is providing what some parents want and those parents are happy,
shouldn’t that be reason enough. Is it any worse than rich parents who buy a
home in a nice neighborhood or send Junior off to Fancypants Prep School? I’d
argue that it depends in part on the cost. The book ends with an analogy about
a lifeboat, suggesting that charters are a way off a sinking ship. But if we’re
building the lifeboats out of pieces of the sinking ship, leaving those behind
in even greater peril—well, that’s difficult moral calculus. And if the
lifeboats really aren’t any more seaworthy than the big ship, have we really
saved anyone, or just kept them comfy a little bit longer? And why aren't we trying to do something about the ship instead of building these life boats? And what sort of equity is involved if the lifeboat seats are reserved for only the right sort, the properly compliant sort, of people? As Pondiscio says
several times in the book, it’s difficult and complicated.
There's a lot more to this book, but this is already a long post.
Read the book. Seriously. It probably won’t change your mind; I still would be leery of sending a child to Success Academy, and under no circumstances
would I recommend them as an employer for a young teacher (and they appear uninterested in any other kind). But I understand what’s going on there a
bit more clearly, and that’s not a bad accomplishment for a book.
