High-Profile New York Charter School Kept List of Kids It Wanted to Force Into Quitting

[KamaAina]

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/10/29/harlem_success_academy_got_to_go_list_named_undesirable_students.html

Charter schools! They're controversial. Some think they are the future of public education. Others believe that by separating themselves from "normal" public schools, charters undermine the idea of public education itself. An alarming report today in the New York Times about the Success Academy Fort Greene, a school in the high-profile Success Academy group founded by education activist Eva Moskowitz, tends to support latter interpretation....

At Success Academy Fort Greene, the same day that Ms. Ogundiran heard from the principal, her daughter’s name was one of 16 placed on a list drawn up at his direction and shared by school leaders.

The heading on the list was “Got to Go.”

Nine of the students on the list later withdrew from the school. Some of their parents said in interviews that while their children attended Success, their lives were upended by repeated suspensions and frequent demands that they pick up their children early or meet with school or network staff members. Four of the parents said that school or network employees told them explicitly that the school, whose oldest students are now in the third grade, was not right for their children and that they should go elsewhere.

I wonder if this kid was on Eva Moskowitz's "enemies list".

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027300219

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. Don't even try to tell me this was an isolated case at the one school.

Really explains the whole rash of students of all ages being "arrested" by 'School Resource officers" across the country.

and the end result will be segregation all over again.

[KamaAina]

2. Well, most of those arrests have been at traditional public schools, not charters

but you may have a point: those schools could be using the po-pos to get rid of their "troublesome" students, since they can't pressure parents to withdraw them the way charters can.

[CincyDem]

3. How is this different that any corporate job...

...if you've ever worked in a major US corporation, you know there are two lists.

My experience was with Top Development Candidates and Challenged/Challenging Leaders. The first group, often identified while they were still in training pants from a job experience point of view, were the chosen few. The second group were those we wanted to see choose another organization. We were usually successful in getting the Top Development Candidates promoted and the Challenged Leaders to leave.

Results didn't seem to matter once you were "on the list". Weak performance from Top Development Candidates was clouded with the noise of difficult business environments or tough economies, etc, etc, etc. Challenged Leaders could cure cancer and the reviews would focus on all the tailwinds that helped make it happen. For Top Development Candidates, the organization personalized success and socialized failure. For Challenged Leaders, exactly the reverse - successes were attributed to "the system" while failure was personal.

The funny thing about it was that top managers never seemed to realize that when you had middle managers do the lists, the middle managers figured out pretty quickly that there was a similar pair of lists for their names.

Ahhhhh - can't say that I miss the rat race of the forced bell curve of performance distributions.


This is just another example of misguided policies of bringing corporatism to education.