| Diane Ravitch posted a look behind the scenes at a high-flying New York charter school….
“I received an emai “I asked the teacher about what happens inside these hallowed halls. The teacher said the typical work day is 7 am-6 pm at school, plus work at home. And here are the methods:…” Here’s how we have success locally, at MATCH. This piece originally appeared in EduShyster. “Last December, I drove down to Boston from Middlebury College in Vermont where I was finishing my senior year. On a crisp Monday morning, I parallel parked, straightened my tie and walked into an interview to become a tutor at a ‘no excuses’ charter school. A week later I had an offer sitting in my inbox, inviting me to become a member of the ‘Corps,’ so called because the program used to be part of AmeriCorps. I was the first of my roommates to receive a job offer and joining the Corps sounded pretty damn good.
“In fact it seemed too good to be true: living with a community of other Corps members, tutoring middle school students in mathematics and English, serving as a teaching assistant, and leading clubs, sports and elective classes. While I’d heard sharp criticisms of charter schools, I was looking forward to seeing what one was really like. Best of all, whatever skills I learned would only help me realize my goal of becoming a teacher. So I signed the brief one-page contract and officially became a ‘volunteer member’ of the Corps, entitling me to a stipend totaling $7,500 a year and housing. I wouldn’t be making much but this was a year of service and I couldn’t wait to get started.
Reality check
“Signs of trouble emerged before the school year even began. The stipend we’d been promised had been changed and now included an additional $5,000 for housing, which was then deducted from our pay. It may sound trivial but it meant that on paper at least some Corps members were now making too much money to have their student loans deferred. And we no longer qualified for food stamps, something school officials had assured us would be available to supplement our small stipends…” |
l from an anonymous teacher in Eva Moskowitz’s charter chain called Success Academy (formerly known as Harlem Success Academy until Eva decided to move into other neighborhoods in New York City). When everyone else in the state bombed on the Common Core tests, Eva’s schools had high scores.