Success Academy’s Eva Moskowitz Tells Congress About Her “Secret Sauce“

“She literally does God’s work,“ Ken Griffin tells Michael Milken. “She's incredible.“

Eva Moskowitz testifying before a House of Representatives Committee today.

The CEO of Success Academy Charter Schools, Eva Moskowitz, testified today before the House Committee on Education and Workforce. The hearing was about the High-Quality Charter Schools Act, which, as Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education Subcommittee Chairman Kevin Kiley described it, “through strategic tax credits aims to vastly expand the numbers of proven, successful charters across the country. Specifically, the bill establishes a 75 percent federal tax credit for charitable contributions toward the start-up costs of nonprofit charter school organizations with a proven track record of excellence.”

Here’s what Moskowitz said (if you want an expanded version, her prepared written testimony is also available):

Thank you chairman and members of the committee for having me. It’s a great opportunity and I appreciate being here.

My name is Eva Moskowitz. I’m the founder and CEO of Success Academies. I started 19 years ago with 165 kindergarteners and first graders. Today, I am educating 22,000 children across K through 12. Success Academy is the fourth largest school district in the state of New York.

But what I am most proud of is the academic outcomes. So we are number one in the state of New York in mathematics, including outperforming the most affluent school districts in the state of New York. We are number three in reading, again, not just closing the achievement gap, but actually reversing the achievement gap. 100% of our students for eight years in a row have gone off to four year colleges.

Whereas in America, only 22% of students take at least one AP, at Success academies 95% of our students have taken and passed one AP.

I'm here today to talk about what is that secret sauce? Because it’s much simpler than I think sometimes policy makers or the American public make it seem to be. There are lots of tools in the tool kit, from small class-size to more money. I would argue that providing a structured, joyful, focused learning environment with an exceptional teacher-training and education-training program is really our secret sauce. Not only do we have rigorous academics in elementary school, but we have robust arts and athletics. And I should just clarify that 94% of our kids are black and brown. 80% live below the poverty line. And I'm sure as you can appreciate, living just below the poverty line doesn't mean that if you are slightly above it, you are a wealthy person. Our kids come from economically disadvantaged neighborhoods, and yet the bar is held high, and they do exceptionally well.

I appreciate, Chairman, your advocacy of the High Quality Charter Schools Act. I don't see how we can be for universal school choice if we don't include both private school choice and public school choice. And that was left out of the equation, and I'm hoping that it can be put back in, because this is a unique opportunity to materially impact the lives of children. This bill would benefit up to 6 million children, and we can talk about policies in the future, but we are losing the global educational competition now. America is at a historic low point when it comes to educational outcomes. And so I feel a tremendous sense of urgency to correct course quickly, and these companion bills would give us an opportunity to, pragmatically, in a common-sense way, advance the cause of children. Thank you very much.

Relatedly, Citadel CEO Ken Griffin was at the Milken Institute Global Conference on May 7 in a conversation with Michael Milken, and part of the conversation went like this:

Michael Milken: … You've been a major supporter of Success Academy and Eva. We know what the results are of hers and others around the country today, relative to others. Why haven't we moved faster?

Ken Griffin: So I see in front of us, the Success Academy middle schools, high school Regents Exam scores. Is this right?

These are the middle school students at Success Academy versus the high school students in the state public schools.

Michael Milken: Yeah.

Ken Griffin: Everybody sees these numbers?

Michael Milken: Yeah.

Ken Griffin: So you can see that the Success Academy students do far better at passing the New York Regents Exams. But what's really profound about this graph, is these are the middle school students at Success Academy versus the high school students in the state public schools.

Milken: Why don’t you repeat that for the audience?

Griffin: Alright. Just in case it got lost. These are the middle school students at Success Academy, a student body which truly represents the demographic of inner city New York—that's the student body at Success Academy—compared to the public high school students of New York State. So Eva Moskowitz—I mean, she literally does God’s work. I have been in her classrooms, the children are so dialed in, it is almost hard to imagine.

And one of my colleagues was in a New York public school and he posed the question, to whom did the United States go to war with for its independence? And a number of the sophomores are like, “We fought for our independence?” And he goes, “Yeah, we did. We went to war for our independence. Do you know who?” and one of the students said, “Well, it was Germany?” And he goes, “Well, it’s the right continent.”

If you walked in a Success Academy class—so I was there with Dan Loeb, the hedge fund manager of Third Point, and we were in the AP art class, and Dan and I are both big art collectors. And they would put up a painting, name the artist, name, the era, name sort of this—the zeitgeist of society at that moment in time. They put up a painting, and Dan and I looked at each other and we're like, “No idea.” And some, some African-American student puts her hand up and goes, “That’s so and so, 1830, this would have been the main cultural issues at that moment in time.” It is so impressive. You go from art, to macroeconomics, to AP calculus, you see the same enthusiasm and energy and command of knowledge in each and every one of those rooms.

So why am I saying this in such belabored points? We know how to educate children. She educates tens of thousands of kids over the years at Success Academy. We know how to do it. We simply must choose to do it. And this is where the public sector, teachers’ unions, and the body politic get sideways with what’s in the interest of society.

You know, we’re in the state of California. I was one of the funders of litigation …California enshrines in its Constitution a student’s right to a good education. Well, what we learned in the state of California is that the teachers in the elite communities who are the poor teachers are pushed out of those schools. They’re pushed into the schools of middle-class communities. And within middle-class communities, the poor teachers who are not delivering the job are pushed out into the inner-city schools. So you have a wildly disproportionate number of your weakest teachers in the state of California, our inner city schools, and you perpetuate the cycle of poverty. You don't break it, you perpetuate it. And Eva Moskowitz demonstrates, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that any student from any household—almost every one of her kids goes on to a four-year college—can be taught the skills and knowledge to be an incredibly contributing member to society. She’s incredible.