Success Academy Accuses New York Times of 'Gotcha Tactics'

Success Academy founder and CEO Eva Moskowitz at a Friday press conference. Screenshot via Success Academy/Periscope

COBBLE HILL, BROOKLYN — Success Academy Charter Schools held an emotional press conference at its Wall Street headquarters Friday afternoon to address a disturbing video released by the New York Times that morning.

In the video, reportedly shot in 2014, Charlotte Dial, an elementary-school teacher at Success Academy’s campus in Cobble Hill, unleashes her rage on a young female student struggling with a math problem.

“Go to the calm-down chair and sit!” Dial yells at the girl in the video. Also, in the same angry shout: “You’re confusing everybody. I’m very upset and very disappointed.”

The Times story then suggests that this harsh handling of young children may be an epidemic throughout the Success Academy network — one that could be harming more children than it helps.

To counter these claims, Success Academy officials managed to rally around 170 teachers and parents for a 2 p.m. press conference aimed directly at the New York Times. (At least by the count of Eva Moskowitz, founder and CEO of the schools network.)

Moskowitz accused the Times of “gotcha tactics” and claimed that Ms. Dial apologized to her students directly after the video’s cutoff point.

“Charlotte doesn’t condone what’s in the video,” Moskowitz said. “No educator standing here condones what’s in the video. But we’re all human and we all have emotions.”

The Success Academy CEO said she found it “disappointing that we can’t seem to get a fair shake from the so-called paper of record” — referring not only to the video of Ms. Dial, but to nine previous New York Times stories questioning Success Academy’s managerial and educational tactics. (Again, by Moskowitz’ count.)

“When I read this thing this morning and I was home alone, you don’t want to hear what I was saying,” one Success Academy father said at the podium.

Another mom added: “I don’t need the New York Times to tell me what my children are getting from Success Academy, which is a quality public education.”

Times reporter Kate Taylor wrote in her most recent piece that “several” of 20 current and former Success Academy teachers she interviewed “said that the network’s culture encouraged teachers to make students fear them in order to motivate them.”

At Success Academy Prospect Heights, for example, former teacher Carly Ginsberg, 22, claimed she watched fellow teachers rip up the papers of multiple children, including some kindergartners — not unlike what Ms. Dial did in the Cobble Hill video.

“It felt like I was witnessing child abuse,” Ginsberg told the Times.

Moskowitz insisted at the press conference that Success Academy teachers do not make a habit of ripping up student work.

“Is ’rip and redo’ part of your tough love approach?” a reporter asked from the audience.

“It is not our policy to rip student work,“ Moskowitz replied. “It is our policy to insist that children redo it. We make no apologies for the need to redo work.”

At this, the crowd of parents, teachers and students behind her broke into a roaring applause.

Kerri Nichols, principal of Success Academy’s Cobble Hill campus, called Ms. Dial’s on-camera outburst a “momentary lapse.”

“She was reprimanded within 24 hours of [us] getting that video,” Moskowitz said. “Charlotte was reprimanded and suspended ... and she got a week of additional training. However, I am not going to throw Charlotte Dial under the bus. She has helped hundreds of children thrive and be successful.”

Dial has since been reinstated as a full-time teacher at Success Academy Cobble Hill.