The amazing, ‘eye-popping’ success of Success Academy Charter Schools

From Mark Perry.

"If you haven’t yet heard about the Success Academy Charter Schools in New York City, here’s some background:

Founded in 2006, Success Academy Charter Schools is the largest and highest-performing free, public charter school network in New York City. Admission is open to all New York State children, including those with special needs and English language learners. Students are admitted by a random lottery held each April. Success Academy operates 46 schools serving 15,500 students in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. Across the network, 76% of students are from low-income households; 8.5% are current and former English Language Learners, and 15% are current and former special needs students. About 93% of students are children of color.

In the state of New York, there are 2,377 elementary schools and the table above shows the top 30 highest performing elementary schools in the state based on New York Elementary School Rankings just released for the 2016-2017 school year and compiled by School Digger. The rankings are based on the Average Standard Score (2017) for each elementary school, and that score is explained here.

What is truly amazing is that of the 30 elementary schools in the entire state of New York (roughly the top 1% of schools) with the highest Average Standard Score for the 2016-2017 school year, almost half (14) are Success Academy Charter Schools. And when you compare the demographics of the Success Academy Charters Schools above to the other 16 schools in the table, you’ll see that the students attending Success charters: a) are three times as likely to qualify for free or discounted lunch, b) 12 times as likely to be black and c) twice as likely to be Hispanic.

Questions: With those kinds of impressive, eye-popping academic results for some of the city’s most at-risk student populations in Harlem, Queens and the Bronx, shouldn’t that proven record of academic success be replicated in all NYC and New York state public schools? Wouldn’t you think that these Success Academy charter schools would be recognized as academic models for the rest of the city and the state? After all, the students at Success Academy charter schools are performing at the same or higher level as students in the tony and upscale Scarsdale school district, where 90% of the students are white or Asian, less than 1% are black, 0% of the students qualify for free/reduced lunch, and the median household income is $221,531.

A: Yes, except for a few major obstacles. The Success Academy charter schools are run by Eva Moskowitz, and her network of charter schools hire only non-union teachers, who are paid well but can be fired for non-performance. So the New York City teacher unions hate Eva Moskowitz despite her eye-popping “off-the-charts success” at educating black and Hispanic kids in some of the poorest neighborhoods in the city (see table above). Likewise, instead of being thrilled that so many of the city’s low-income, minority students are being educated so successfully, the new New York mayor Bill de Blasio hates charter schools just as much as the entrenched teacher unions (who are a main part of his political base of support) and he has been in a ferocious battle to stop Eva Moskowitz and the spread of charter schools.

Bottom Line: In a saner and more sensible world where students and learning are really the No. 1 priority, the educational establishment (including members of the teacher unions and the NYC mayor) would be “falling all over themselves” to copy the proven educational success of charter schools like the ones in Harlem profiled above. But in the insane world of New York City where unionized teachers have a stranglehold on public schools, the liberal mayor, and liberal teacher unions are waging a war on the city’s successful charter schools like the ones operated by Success Academy Charter Schools. Preservation of the status quo and a continuation of the current failed public school model, and preserving its power, are the primary concerns of the teachers unions and their administrative enablers, which now includes the new New York mayor.

Related: Here’s what the wise Thomas Sowell had to say last August about the Success Academy charters in one of his columns (and featured on CD here):

We keep hearing that “black lives matter,” but they seem to matter only when that helps politicians to get votes, or when that slogan helps demagogues demonize the police. The other 99% of black lives destroyed by people who are not police do not seem to attract nearly as much attention in the media.

What about black success? Does that matter? Apparently not so much.
We have heard a lot about black students failing to meet academic standards. So you might think that it would be front-page news when some whole ghetto schools not only meet, but exceed, the academic standards of schools in more upscale communities. There are in fact whole chains of charter schools where black and Hispanic youngsters score well above the national average on tests. There are the KIPP (Knowledge IS Power Program) schools and the Success Academy schools, for example.

What makes this all the more amazing is that these charter schools are typically located in the same ghettos or barrios where other blacks or Hispanics are failing miserably on the same tests. More than that, successful charter schools are often physically housed in the very same buildings as the unsuccessful public schools. In other words, minority kids from the same neighborhood, going to school in classes across the hall from each other, or on different floors, are scoring far above average and far below average on the same tests.
If black success was considered half as newsworthy as black failures, such facts would be headline news — and people who have the real interests of black and other minority students at heart would be asking, “Wow! How can we get more kids into these charter schools?” But the teachers’ unions are opposed to charter schools — and they give big bucks to politicians, who in turn put obstacles and restrictions on the expansion of charter schools. These include politicians like New York’s “progressive” mayor Bill de Blasio, who poses as a friend of blacks by denigrating the police, standing alongside Al Sharpton."