From an Anonymous comment regarding Harlem Success schools:
I don't see how this "authoritarian" (which is a bit of an exaggeration) approach is any different than most private schools. A lot of (rich, lily white) parents do choose this environment.
Au contraire, Anonymous, there are big differences between Harlem Success and private school. Here's 3 to start:
1.) Class size.
Eva Moskowitz brags in "The Lottery" that her class sizes are even larger than those in zoned public schools, and quotes a kindergarten class size of 27 kids. I've never heard of a private school with such a large kindergarten class. (For comparison, my younger daughter's first grade class at a private school has 11 kids, one full-time teacher, and an assistant.)
Once you've got 27 kindergarten kids in a class, you're pretty much stuck with an authoritarian (euphemism: "structured") environment. There's a real limit to how child-centered and progressive you can be with that many very young kids in a room. There's also a limit to how much attention any one child can receive.
2.) Instructional time.
Private schools generally have less instructional time than public schools. Many parents say, "the more money you pay, the less time the kid spends at school", and in my experience, that's true. I actually see this as an advantage to private school. I want my kids to have time for friends, family and leisure; I don't want school to eat their young lives.
By contrast, Eva Moskowitz seems to expect her "scholars" to be workaholics just like her. The difference is that she's middle-aged and has chosen to devote her life to work; the kids are, well, kids, and they don't get to choose. At Harlem Success, there is apparently no limit to the number of hours kids can be forced to spend at school. According to an article in New York Magazine, Harlem Success kids only got two days off over the winter break, Christmas and New Year's. In addition, the lowest-scoring third-graders were kept doing test prep until 6:00 p.m. four days a week, for six weeks before the standardized test.
3.) Treatment of parents.
As I've noted before, one of the biggest differences between private and public school is that the public schools treat parents with utter contempt, while the private schools treat parents as the customer. Harlem Success stands firmly in the public school tradition with regard to parents. From the same article I quoted before:
Parents must sign the network’s “contract,” a promise to get children to class on time and in blue-and-orange uniform, guarantee homework, and attend all family events. “When parents aren’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing,” Fucaloro says, “we get on their behinds. Eva and Paul Fucaloro are their worst nightmares.” Infractions can range to the trivial: slacks that look worn at a child’s knees, long johns edging beyond collars. Recidivists are hauled into “Saturday Academy,” detention family style, where parents are monitored while doing “busy work” with their child, the ex-staffer says. Those who skip get a bristling form letter: “You simply stood up your child’s teacher and many others who came in on a Saturday, after a long, hard week.”
I don't know a lot of parents who would be willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars a year to be treated this way.
P.S. It occurs to me that there's a correlation between class size and instructional time. The larger the class size, the less the teacher is able to tailor instruction to each kid in the class. As a result, instructional time is less focused and efficient, and you wind up having to increase the time spent to cover the material.
ReplyDeletePrivate schools have smaller classes, so they're able to work more efficiently and use less time.
Appreciate the response.
ReplyDeleteI don't think Eva regards large class sizes as a positive. She's just proud they accomplish what they do, given the space constraints. And part of the reason the students get tested regularly is to check their progress - there is one-on-one and small group tutoring at her schools. I haven't spent time in any of her classrooms, but I think a fair reading from afar is that many students do get the attention they need.
If you don't want your children to spend that much time at school, I respect that. But it seems reasonable that some kids (and drained parents) need and/or seek it. Especially if they are behind after time at lackluster public schools.
The idea that Eva treats parents with "utter contempt" seems silly to me. The teachers have cell phones and must respond to parents' inquiries within 24 hours. There are also family events like math and literacy nights. To me, that sounds responsive.
I also find it hard to believe that adults who are treated with disdain or neglect would rate the schools so highly. Certainly much more highly than the vast majority of public schools, per the DOE's spreadsheet of survey results.
Anonymous says:
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The idea that Eva treats parents with "utter contempt" seems silly to me.
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You don't hear the contempt in the paragraph I quoted from the article? How about the scene in "The Lottery" where Moskowitz is threatening to issue "wake-up calls" to mothers whose kids are late to school? I hear a lot of contempt there.
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If you don't want your children to spend that much time at school, I respect that. But it seems reasonable that some kids (and drained parents) need and/or seek it.
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The problem with piling hours of school work on young children is that you swiftly reach a point of diminishing returns. Kids become exhausted, burnt out, and turned off to school and learning.
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I also find it hard to believe that adults who are treated with disdain or neglect would rate the schools so highly.
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Public school parents are used to being treated badly. This is only more true if they're poor. And I can see they would rate the school highly because they're relieved to have a better option than the zoned school. The problem is that "better than the zoned school" is a very low bar.
Maybe you think Eva's methods are over the top. Maybe they are. But that doesn't mean she hates parents. It just doesn't. She's trying to educate their kids better. Her nagging is what it is -- insistence on complying with the rules.
ReplyDeleteYour answer to why parents give glowing reviews is: "Public school parents are used to being treated badly. This is only more true if they're poor."
So, poor parents are not perceptive enough to understand what a good school is or isn't? They don't understand the difference between a great education and a mediocre one?
"The problem is that 'better than the zoned school' is a very low bar."
By what metric are Eva's schools only a little better than the zoned schools?
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Maybe you think Eva's methods are over the top. Maybe they are. But that doesn't mean she hates parents.
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I don't think Moskowitz hates the parents. I think she looks down on them, which is not exactly the same thing.
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So, poor parents are not perceptive enough to understand what a good school is or isn't? They don't understand the difference between a great education and a mediocre one?
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I never said anything remotely like that. My comment about parents getting used to bad treatment was in response to your asking why parents would give high ratings to a school that treated them with disdain.
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By what metric are Eva's schools only a little better than the zoned schools?
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Here's the metric. The public schools may be dropout factories, but Harlem Success is a burnout factory.
Teachers get burned out, so Moskowitz is constantly hiring new, young, inexperienced teachers. When the economy improves (knock wood), those jobs will become increasingly hard to fill.
The stress Moskowitz inflicts will burn out the kids and parents too. Pretty soon we'll start hearing about high rates of attrition, a la KIPP.
Anonymous -- I'm in favor of a greater role for parents and for parental choice in our educational system, which, on the whole, I think can only improve things. But I don't think that's inconsistent with arguing that some parental choices are not good choices, and are not in the best interests of their kids. That's not an effort to say that they shouldn't get to choose; it's an effort to persuade them to choose differently. To say otherwise would preclude any kind of debate about educational practices.
ReplyDeleteSome parents still beat their kids as a form of discipline. I wouldn't hesitate to express my opinion that those parents don't know what's best for their kids, at least on that particular issue. Would you disagree?
That said, I think FedUpMom's point is that the array of choices really sucks, so you can't blame the parents who choose Harlem Success over their other options, and I agree with that.
ReplyDeleteChris, thanks for that. Yes, parents who choose Harlem Success over their zoned public school may be making the best choice of what's available to them. But that doesn't mean that Harlem Success is the best choice in any world, or that it's somehow beyond criticism.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's just not true that Harlem Success is comparable to expensive private schools. The private schools my kids attend are substantially different from Harlem Success. I wouldn't send them there otherwise.
I agree about private schools. From what I've seen, one of the great advantages of some private schools is that they give the kids far more autonomy than public schools do -- and autonomy certainly does not sound like a feature of Harlem Success. I'm afraid it's still true that you often get what you pay for.
ReplyDeleteWell, I feel I have to pipe up here in defense of public schools, at least the ones where I live. I've been touring private schools recently, looking at options for my daughters for next year, because the local middle school is very large, and the girls seem to be dead set against going there. (Of course, they'll probably end up there anyway :).) What I've seen at the private schools has not been encouraging. The ones we've toured appear to be as regimented and rule-bound as our (nominally) progressive public schools—if not more so. What the administrators at the private schools seem most proud of is the technology they have introduced in their schools: WI-FI throughout, laptops for each child (payed for by the parents), Smart-boards in every classroom. On the occasions when we've been able to enter classrooms or peek into them, we've invariably seen a bunch of kids hunched over their laptops, which to me is the perfect image of the new improved factory-model of schooling (Micro-serfs?).
ReplyDeleteOf course, these are traditional private schools, with no pretensions to being alternative. (I imagine that Quaker or Waldorf schools would be quite different.) They claim to offer small classes, lots of technology and many extra-curriculars. One offers the IB program. In terms of extracurricular activities, in our city, many of the private schools are outdone by public schools. For example, our local middle and high schools both have indoor pools, whereas the two private schools we visited do not. The public school sports teams are also considered better than their private counterparts because they draw from such a large talent pool. As for the IB, it is offered in select public schools (to which any kid can apply), from the early years program, through to the high school diploma program. Class size is the one area where most private schools have an advantage, though in Ontario public schools, there is a cap on class sizes—set at 20 kids—from Grades JK-3.
Anyway, I didn't mean to hijack the discussion here, which I realize is about a specific school and its regressive policies, and about the limited choices parents have in certain poverty-stricken areas. But...I guess I wish people wouldn't give up entirely on the public system. I firmly believe that if we in North America were taxed more realistically, say at the European rate, we could fund a great public school system similar to (for example) Finland's.
(By the way, there are bad public schools where I live too. But so far no one has suggested Charters as a solution. We do have a slew of parented-initiated, publicly-funded alternative schools. The problem is that there are not enough spaces in these schools for all who want to attend them. Which is one of the reasons we're looking into private schools.)
northTOmom, these are hugely complicated issues that we all navigate as best we can.
ReplyDeleteIn our district, the publics often have better resources than the privates. And there are certain private schools here that strike me as not much better than the public schools, because they're so close in philosophy. If you're a hard-working, conventional, smart-enough kid, you might even be better off in our public schools.
But if you're even slightly unusual -- if you're a dreamy, sensitive kid like my older daughter, or an energetic, rammy kid like my younger daughter, the public schools can be a real disaster.
Agreed. Actually, Harlem Success sounds a lot like the Blue Ribbon elementary school in our affluent suburb. One of the mothers complained to the Principal that her son was being bullied and the Principal screamed at the mom that she wat talking to her as an equal when in reality she (the Principal) was up here (and used a hand gesture to show her at the top of the hierachy) and she (the mom) was down here (and used a hand gesture to show her at the bottom of the hierachy). Believe it or not, many of the Stepford Moms defended the Principal's words.
ReplyDeleteWow. That's a great example of how parents get treated at public schools.
ReplyDeletePrivate schools are not perfect, but a private school that treated parents as serfs would go out of business pretty fast.
Sorry I've missed some of this discussion.
ReplyDelete"I never said anything remotely like that. My comment about parents getting used to bad treatment was in response to your asking why parents would give high ratings to a school that treated them with disdain."
Let me restate, then. Your rhetoric is comic exaggeration. You are exercising painstaking selectivity when you quote from the press, often citing the very same articles that include parents who seem to genuinely enjoy what they're getting, not simply tolerate it.
If your hypothesis were true, we would hear many more lukewarm reviews. We would see demand for Harlem Success schools level off. We would see much, much more anger - even (and maybe especially) from people who felt "trapped" at these charters. And we would not see the interest that has been observed from UWS parents.
If nothing else, there would be a shift in the balance of applications toward other charters, which there hasn't been.
Chris: "Some parents still beat their kids as a form of discipline. I wouldn't hesitate to express my opinion that those parents don't know what's best for their kids, at least on that particular issue. Would you disagree?"
The above "particular issue" is not remotely relevant to the "particular issue" we are discussing. The only point you are making is that parents are humanly capable of bad decisions. I'm well aware, thanks.
"Here's the metric. The public schools may be dropout factories, but Harlem Success is a burnout factory... Pretty soon we'll start hearing about high rates of attrition, a la KIPP."
Look, if you one day are proven right, then fine. But the notion that we'll "pretty soon" starting hearing the evidence is weak. Couldn't I just counter argue that "pretty soon" we'll hear about higher HS graduation rates, because the parents seem on board and the test scores show unprecedented proficiency?
Anonymous says --
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If your hypothesis were true, we would hear many more lukewarm reviews. We would see demand for Harlem Success schools level off. We would see much, much more anger
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Anonymous, what we see is either what Eva Moskowitz wants us to see, or what the press gets around to telling us. So far, the press has mostly been a lapdog to the charter school movement, as "The Lottery", "Waiting for Superman", and writers like Jay Mathews attest.
One of the functions of my blog is to provide a voice in opposition to the prevailing press line on charter schools.
So, I've presented three areas that I see as problematic in Harlem Success -- big class sizes that necessitate an authoritarian environment, apparently unlimited demands on the children's time and energy, and the patronizing, contemptuous treatment of parents.
In my opinion, burnout (of teachers, kids and parents) will prove to be a very serious problem. Time will tell.
Of course, you're welcome to disagree. I like to have debate on my blog. There's little enough true debate in the public sphere.
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Couldn't I just counter argue that "pretty soon" we'll hear about higher HS graduation rates, because the parents seem on board and the test scores show unprecedented proficiency?
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Remarks like this are why I titled my blog "Kid-Friendly Schools." Parents on board and good test scores are not enough. Schools should benefit kids.
I had to pull my daughter out of a school with tremendous parent buy-in and fabulous test scores, because it was wrecking her mental health.
When I look at HS, I want to know what the experience is like for the kids.
Are the kids enjoying their childhood, or are they stressed out? Do they have time for family, friends, and non-school areas of life? Are they interested in learning, or are they being turned off? Are they becoming independent, self-directed thinkers, or are they mostly being trained in compliance?
From PsychMom:
ReplyDeleteI don't come to this site to find unbiased, clinical essays on educational topics. I tend to be the kind of person who is like the kid in the crowd in the story about the Emperor and his missing clothes. I come to this site because I just don't believe everything I hear and see in schools and in education and I'm wondering if anyone else sees (or doesn't see) what I see.
I'm not always correct or accurate. In fact, most of the time, I'm trying to get people in education to show me the data, to prove to me what they're doing and saying is effective and that I'm wrong in my stance about homework and the misguided demands placed on families and children. Most of the time I'm frustrated, because so much of what is done, is done because "that's the way we do it." To boot, I'm left with the impression that it was insulting of me to even ask for the proof.
Sitting comfortably in the middle, on fair and balanced ground would be fine, if our childrens' health and wellbeing weren't at stake.
Anonymous: I think you are treating the question as purely empirical when it is, for many of us, largely a question about values. I wouldn't care if a school like Harlem Success raised my kids' standardized test scores; I still wouldn't want to send my kids there because I don't think their approach is a humane way to treat the kids, and because I'd be afraid that the school was teaching authoritarian values. (Again, granting that it may be the least bad option in some places.)
ReplyDeleteJust like -- watch out, *analogy* coming up! -- I wouldn't care if using corporal punishment somehow resulted in higher test scores and college acceptance rates. I'd be against it anyway.
"In my opinion, burnout (of teachers, kids and parents) will prove to be a very serious problem. Time will tell."
ReplyDeleteFair enough. Maybe it will be a problem. Certainly the demands are steep. I just don't see this as big, evil and menacing, like it seems this audience does. As potential problems go, it's fixable fairly easily -- at least, compared to cleaning up a fundamentally awful education. Which is what many zoned schools in Harlem have offered for decades.
"Parents on board and good test scores are not enough. Schools should benefit kids."
I am guessing that you believe much less in standardized tests than I do. So I won't hijack this conversation. But clearly it's possible that rising test scores COULD indicate benefit to kids. And in this case, I think they do.
"I had to pull my daughter out of a school with tremendous parent buy-in and fabulous test scores, because it was wrecking her mental health."
Look, with all sincerity, I respect that. You made the best decision for your daughter. But why is it so hard to accept that the best decision for some other people's daughters (and sons) is to get some intensity?
What bothers me is that you (et al) keep universalizing. I'm comfortable with doing that in very extreme cases. But we're not talking about child abuse or something outrageous. We're talking about a longer school day, Saturday school, and chippy notes to parents. Not war crimes, just things you personally find distasteful. Which I have no problem with -- I just wish you would do it in a more even-handed and realistic way.
"I wouldn't care if a school like Harlem Success raised my kids' standardized test scores; I still wouldn't want to send my kids there because I don't think their approach is a humane way to treat the kids..."
See, this is fair and reasonable. Even well thought out. But as a former HS debate teacher, I still find your analogies quite cringe-worthy.
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ReplyDeleteI am guessing that you believe much less in standardized tests than I do.
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That's a good guess!
Anonymous says:
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But as a former HS debate teacher, I still find your analogies quite cringe-worthy.
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Does "HS" there stand for "High School" or "Harlem Success"?
As PsychMom said earlier, we're not here to have some dry, ivory-tower type discussion. Most of us are parents who have seen what's happening to our kids and their friends. We're passionate about the problems we see in schools today. If that means we go over the top from time to time, that's OK.
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But why is it so hard to accept that the best decision for some other people's daughters (and sons) is to get some intensity?
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Because when I read reports of kids vomiting on testing day, I think it's too much stress for them too.
Let me dig up the reference ...
Ah yes, here it is, from that same NY mag article. It's the only remotely balanced piece of reporting I've managed to find on HSA.
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During the TerraNova, a mini-SAT bubble test over four consecutive mornings, three students threw up.
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HS = high school. Definitely an important clarification.
ReplyDelete"As PsychMom said earlier, we're not here to have some dry, ivory-tower type discussion.... If that means we go over the top from time to time, that's OK."
Well, ok, sure. It's your blog. Talk how you want. But I think there is a clear difference between "passionate" and "hysterical," and I think crossing that line leads to negative outcomes. (Like the extreme wing of opposition to charters that's not grounded in reality.)
Also, I resent the implication that I'm somehow not passionate about kids because I use less hyperbole.
"Because when I read reports of kids vomiting on testing day, I think it's too much stress for them too."
Yeah, I can see that. That is distressing. But (from same piece):
Some might deem this excessive, but Ashley’s grandmother, Yvette Rolack, was delighted with the extra attention—and with Ashley’s pair of 3’s.
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ReplyDeleteAlso, I resent the implication that I'm somehow not passionate about kids because I use less hyperbole.
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I didn't mean to imply that. You can be passionate without hyperbole if that's your style. We're cool with that.
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Some might deem this excessive, but Ashley’s grandmother, Yvette Rolack, was delighted with the extra attention—and with Ashley’s pair of 3’s.
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Right, so the question for Harlem Success is, can you find a way for Ashley to continue to get her high scores, without the stress that causes her classmates to throw up?
Just bookmarking a couple of sites in opposition to HSA:
ReplyDeleteEva Moskowitz is Not Running a Lean Organization
Eva Moskowitz|Gotham Schools