The first thing you notice when you walk by a Success Academy building on a weekday morning is the silence. It’s not so much the lack of kids as it is their peculiar orderliness. With their backpacks stacked against a wall like soldiers’ gear, kindergarteners dressed in orange and navy file down the narrow sidewalks of Harlem. Parents were waiting right outside the door; some were holding coffee, others were looking at their phones, and the majority were silently optimistic. Observing this gives me the impression that something is working. Additionally, something might be breaking.
Eva Moskowitz started the network in 2006, and it has since expanded to become the city’s biggest charter business. 46 educational institutions. over fifteen thousand children. a test-score record that municipal schools secretly hate and publicly envy. According to the latest data, 95% of Success Academy students achieved math proficiency, compared to a citywide rate of about 36%. Such numbers are not disregarded. They are praised, scrutinized, and increasingly questioned.
Moskowitz is the type of person who splits dinner tables. She went to public school, served on the City Council, and eventually became the most outspoken critic of the very system she grew up in. She was raised in Morningside Heights by what she has described as leftist intellectuals. Strangely enough, her memoir dates back to a nineteenth-century experiment in maximum exposure when James Mill taught his three-year-old son Greek. For an operator of a children’s school, it’s an odd reference. However, it reveals her perspective on the work, which is whether regular children can be elevated to extraordinary levels with unwavering structure.
Opponents see things differently. Historian Diane Ravitch, who has emerged as the most vocal opponent of charter schools, has long maintained that Success Academy silently eliminates the kids it is unable to shape. She acknowledges that the lottery is real, but the more difficult question is what happens after the lottery. Families discuss suspensions that happen almost without warning and behavioral standards that are so strict that young children are labeled disruptive before they have learned to read. As students depart, class sizes decrease. After the fourth grade, replacement enrollment is uncommon. To put it another way, the numbers might not be lying. However, it’s also possible that they aren’t telling the whole story.
The rallies come next. Do well on the test. Before standardized tests, kids are stomping and chanting in scenes that resemble a pep rally but are more difficult to describe. Supporters see this as a community that views education as something to be proud of. It’s drilling dressed in costume, according to critics. If there is a truth, it lies in the uncomfortable middle.
The larger city context is important. Out of hundreds of spots, only seven Black students were accepted into Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, and Brooklyn Tech, New York’s specialized high schools, in a recent year. That percentage was three percent across all eight elite schools in a city where Black students make up about 25% of the student body. In light of this, a network that produces high test scores in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods is likely to be perceived by some as progress and by others as a refined reflection of the same flawed meritocracy.
It’s difficult to ignore how isolated the middle ground has become as you watch this develop. Teachers I’ve talked to over the years—some former Success employees, some seasoned public school teachers—rarely agree on anything other than the fact that open communication has ceased. Miracles are defended by one side. The other one smells like coercion. While this is going on, kids are sitting somewhere in the real classroom and working.
Within ten years, Moskowitz hopes to have one hundred schools. It’s still unclear if the model can grow without breaking. The experiment is undoubtedly ongoing. It’s getting worse. On the way there, the city is arguing as usual.
