During a recent conversation with a sixth grader who attends a Success Academy charter school, she referred to her learning environment as “torturous.” “They don’t let us be kids,” she told me, “and they monitor every breath we take.”
Although praised by many for its test scores, the draconian policies at Success are well documented. Students must walk silently in synchronized lines.
In classrooms, boys and girls must sit with their hands folded and feet firmly on the ground, and must raise their hands in a specific way to request a bathroom break.
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Most disturbingly, during test prep sessions, it has been reported that students have wet their pants because of the high levels of stress, and because, simulating actual test-taking, they’re not permitted to use the restroom except during breaks.
Regarding the praise for Success Academy’s test results, we must be mindful of overstating the quality of an education based on test score evidence alone.
In 2003, the inaugural class at KIPP had the fifth highest math scores in New York City and many of those students attended respected high schools. Yet only 21% of that cohort would go on to graduate college six years after enrolling. Second, in the book “Crossing the Finish Line,” Matthew Chingos, William G. Bowen (former president of Princeton) and Michael S. McPherson (former president of Macalester College) found that high school grade point average was more predictive of college success than standardized test scores.
Let’s return to the sixth grader’s description of Success as “torturous” for a moment and consider the following. As reported by Juan Gonzalez in the Daily News, the first Success Academy opened in 2006 with 73 first graders. By 2014, only 32 of the 73 had graduated from the school.
What happened to most of that student cohort? Did they leave willingly just because their families were moving? Did they leave for other schools because Success Academy wasn’t right for them? Were they pushed out?
Further, school suspensions and teacher turnover at Success are disproportionately higher than district schools. Said one teacher in a recent New York Times article, “I dreaded going into work.” Another teacher, when requesting to leave work at 4:55 p.m. to tend to her sick and vomiting child, was told, “it’s not 5 o’clock yet.”
There are many amazing public schools in New York City that are the antithesis of the schools run by Success Academy and other charter networks. Cornerstone Academy for Social Action Middle School (C.A.S.A.), located in the northeast Bronx, where I am proud to serve as the principal, is one of those schools. We are a Title 1 school and 99% of our students are black or Latino.
Although 90% of our students enter sixth grade below grade level, we’ve had success on the state standardized tests, ranking number one in New York City in combined math and English Language Arts test growth score average in 2015.
But testing is not how we measure success.
Our mission is to create a learning environment anchored in multiple intelligences. Student voice and passion are embedded into the curriculum. In addition to traditional courses like mathematics and humanities, S.T.E.A.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art of Architecture, Mathematics), computer science, the arts, leadership and physical education provide a rich and robust learning environment.
A favorite course of both the staff and students of C.A.S.A. is “Genius Hour.” Borrowing from the 20% time concept of Google, Apple and Facebook, we give students two 60-minute blocks per week to work on “passion projects.” Using design thinking, students explore issues within their community that frustrate them and conduct research into how to create solutions to identified problems.
Finally, at C.A.S.A., during the 2014-15 school year, only 2.3% of our students received a suspension. Our teacher turnover rate is 1.5% annually. We also have an average of less than a 1% student attrition rate annually over a six-year period.
Parents and students of Success Academy schools will rally Wednesday against Mayor de Blasio’s agenda of investing in public schools to turn them into community schools and otherwise improve their learning environments. Their goal instead is presumably to turn ever more schools into privately run charter schools — though it’s unlikely Moskowitz would agree to take over any struggling schools if she had to keep the student body intact.
Our city needs more public schools that serve the whole child without an obsessive focus on tests. Only then will our children truly feel at home. This is a cause worth rallying for.
Bowman is principal of the Cornerstone Academy for Social Action in the Bronx.
