Dear Eva (a/k/a the Charter School Queen),
I recently received an email letter from you generously inviting me to view, and learn from, the Success Academy Charter School Network’s “rich, challenging” middle school literacy curriculum. In your letter you called it “the essential foundation to great schooling.” You also explained that Eva and your Success Academy are making it available online because, you believe, “too many educators lack access to high-quality classroom materials.”
In your letter, you claim that in its first year online, the Success Academy Education Institute’s “digital hub” had “30,000 visitors from 49 states and more than 90 countries.”
As a Success Academy critic, I have repeatedly written about the network’s inability to hold onto teachers, its mistreatment of children and families, its political machinations, and questionable“success.” I decided I had an obligation to give your curriculum gift a fair read. I focused on the seventh grade literacy curriculum because I work with classroom teachers and student teachers grappling with engaging seventh graders to read with understanding and write with clarity. Eva, I confess reviewing your curriculum was not an easy task. I ask for forgiveness in advance for any sarcastic comments.
Just in case the parents, teachers, and other educators visiting the site have their own ideas about literacy and learning, Eva opens with a section for each grade labeled, “What you must know before you go!” which is basically a defense of questionable Success teaching practices. Eva wants us to know that “Parental investment is critical to our success,” which is why they are justified in weeding out families where parents are not involved up to the Success standard; that their “behavior management” protocols are justified because kids must be kept under control to ensure good test scores; that “Excellent behavior management, though necessary, is insufficient,” so at Success they get 100% of their scholars “to put forth their best intellectual effort to succeed,” or else they kick them out. Component four discusses the role of the teacher, which is “to inspire your scholars to fall in love with reading and to make your scholars significantly better readers every month!” However, once again, it is the job of the parent to ensure success of the child, so we “demand their support for all we do.”
Once a visitor understands the basic components of Success’ pedagogical practices, they are ready to read their “Top 5 Reading Tactics” for “great readers.” There is nothing wrong with these “tactics,” but also nothing original. At this point we are introduced to broad statements, not literacy tactics. (1) Great readers always make mind movies. (2) Great readers always notice vocabulary words whose meaning they don’t know. (3) Great readers always read the title and think about the title as they read. (4) Great readers always look for the big idea and the evidence to support it. (5) Great readers always notice interesting language and structures that support the big idea.
Eva follows the tactics for building “great readers” with five tactics for building great writers. At Success Academy, like in Dondald Trump’s claims for his presidency, everything is “great.”
According to Eva’s “great” curriculum, (1) Great writers always have a strong, key idea; (2) Great writers always include evidence that develops, supports, or proves their idea; (3) Great writers always organize their writing so that it’s simple and clear and avoids redundancy; (4) Great writers always reread their writing and make it better by revising; (5) Great writers always check that their grammar, punctuation, and spelling are correct.
I think Eva should have included a sixth component in her guidelines for “great writers.” Great writers do not plagiarize. These “tactics” appear to come come straight from the New York State Next Generation English Language Arts Learning Standards without any citation.
Eva’s grade 7 curriculum has five units. Each is based on a different central reading. Teachers are instructed that they are responsible to “get 100% of your scholars independently reading at least four books per month”; to get “100% of your scholars completing nightly literacy homework that will develop them as readers and writers,” and “getting any of your scholars who are still reading below grade level, as measured by the Fountas & Pinnell Reading Assessment, to a Level Z.”
I have been a teacher for almost fifty years and my goal has always been to reach each and every one of my students. But I know it is an impossible task because life, theirs and mine, always intervenes. Yet Eva’s teachers are “responsible” for every student to do all the work and reach “Level Z.” Impossible to meet expectations might explain why Success Academy has such a high teacher turnover rate and why so many Success Academy students disappear long before graduation. Maybe Eva and her staff should read Robert Burn’s poem “To a Mouse” ( The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men Gang aft agley).
Although New York State recommends seventh graders read Lyddie by Katherine Paterson, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water, and Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw, Success Academy students start with The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, “an enthralling novel about rival gangs grappling with loyalty and belonging.”
During this unit teachers are supposed to help “scholars uncover the poignant messages in this incredible work of fiction” as they “enlist the basic tools of great readers — envisioning, reading with fluency, engaging in word attack, and, of course, using plot, setting, and character development — to understand the book’s provocative ideas.”
Through eight scripted and timed “seminars” students examine the concept of character. The guiding questions for the readings are actually good, such as “How has Ponyboys attitude changed?” A problem, however, is that Success Academy did not invent these questions and did not cite a source, which is not a path to success. Many of the questions and teaching ideas seem to come directly from the webpage Enotes. To quote William Shakespeare, with citation and reference to Hamlet (Act 1, Scene 4), “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”
Unit Two is organized around the non-fiction book Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler’s Shadow, “a gripping text that gives scholars a window into a painful and important time in history.” The big problem with this unit, and a major problem with the National Common Core Standards, is what I call “detextualization.” Success Academy scholars tudents are assigned to read about Nazi Germany without first being taught anything about Nazi Germany, a topic that is not explored in depth in social studies classes until high school. The goals in Eva’s unit are not really to learn about Nazism and the Holocaust, but to develop a “passion for nonfiction literature” and determining the “big idea of a section of text.” The highly disturbing content of this unit is only incidental. None of the eight “seminars” even mentions the word “Jew,” although interviews with Jews are included in the book. Once again, Enotes also has very similar lesson material and questions.
So what does Eva offer students and teachers? Certainly not a curriculum “centered on great works of literature and nonfiction” designed to inspire students to read and write. It is a close copy of Common Core and New York Next Generation standards with scripted, timed lessons lacking content and context, designed to prepare students for high-stakes assessments, and supplemented by what appear to be “plagiarized” lesson material.
Eva, is this what success looks like to you?
In a previous post I asked why the online education journal Chalkbeat has been so mild in reporting on the SuccessAcademy Charter School Network. I wonder what Chalkbeat thinks about Eva’s literacy program and my critique?
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