Harlem charter school spent $1.3 million to advertise itself to the community.

madfloridian

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Sat Oct-02-10 08:22 PM
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Harlem charter school spent $1.3 million to advertise itself to the community.

From Juan Gonzalez at New York Daily News.

Local charter schools like Harlem Success are big business as millions are poured into marketing

Zalcman for News. Awaiting results at Harlem Success charter lottery.

The image of hundreds of black and Latino parents packed in an auditorium desperately hoping their child would "win" the lottery and get into a local charter school has assumed mythic status in media reports on education reform.

Two new two documentaries, "The Lottery" and "Waiting for Superman," made such events the emotional climax of their narratives. The former centered on Harlem Success, the charter network Schools Chancellor Joel Klein hails when he points to the demand for more charter schools.

But a Daily News review of Harlem Success financial reports suggests the network's huge backlog of applicants is the result of a carefully crafted Madison Ave.-style promotional campaign. In the two-year period between July 2007 and June 2009, Harlem Success spent $1.3 million to market itself to the Harlem community, the group's most recent financial filings show.

Very astute observation by Gonzalez and the Daily News. They point out that by advertising so much they got a huge waiting list, and that enables them to ask for more and more money. And they are getting it from the DOE.

When she launched Harlem Success four years ago with the backing of a group of hedge fund millionaires, Moskowitz vowed to expand to more than 20 schools in a few years. By generating a huge waiting list, she has been able to pressure state officials to let her open more schools.

Moskowitz and other reformers also have the media on their side, and they really got a boost from Education Nation this week.

The public schools have no such amount to spend advertising themselves.

Eva Moskowitz has all that PR money, and it is said she is one of the worst at demonizing public education.

One of the faces of the charter school movement is the "spokesperson in demonizing public schools"

At the crux of this sea change stands Moskowitz. At 47, she is feared, revered, and reviled in like proportions. As the face of the social-Darwinist wing of the local charter movement, she’s been cast as the grim reaper of moribund neighborhood schools, a witting tool of privatizing billionaires, and a Machiavellian schemer with her sights set on the mayoralty. “She’s the spokesperson in demonizing the public schools,” says Noah Gotbaum, president of District 3’s Community Education Council. “Eva’s philosophy is that you’ve got to burn the village to save it.”

(Photo: Marco Grob) Eva Moskowitz, the controversial leader of the fastest-growing charter network in the city, wants to save New York public education by, in a sense, destroying it.

..."Bold, indeed. Most charter operators, observes Sy Fliegel, president of the Center for Educational Innovation, “ask for space very quietly and hope they can get it. Eva asks for schools.” Co-location, as she once put it, is a “Middle East war.” As her beachheads roll out and roll up, one grade per year, her need for real estate sparks resistance. Police were called last summer when she brought movers to take another floor at P.S. 123, piling the zoned school’s belongings in the gym after it neglected to vacate on time. Stringer flayed her “thug tactics”; Moskowitz dismissed him as a “UFT hack.”

NY Magazine

One of the hardest parts to accept is that Eva Moskowitz, like another reformer Michelle Rhee, takes pleasure in being pictured as tough and inflexible toward public schools and teachers.

It is not a good atmosphere. It is hard for public school teachers to feel confident about the future while such attitudes continue.