Your editor had plans to write about something else. But President-Elect Donald Trump’s move today to nominate consumer products heiress Betsy DeVos as U.S. Secretary of Education requires me to comment. Under different circumstances with a different person as incoming president, it is likely I would politely commend her appointment. But in light of who is taking the White House in January, I can do no such thing.

Let’s start with this: At least on the matter of expanding school choice, the incoming Commander-in-Chief could have made a worse choice. DeVos has been one of the foremost philanthropists in advancing the expansion of vouchers, public charters and other opportunities for high-quality education. A longtime chairman of the American Federation for Children, DeVos has a long and admirable record of expanding school choice throughout the country.

Whether or not she would be strong on other aspects of reform, including overhauling school discipline and teacher quality, is an open question. Unfortunately, that she has flip-flopped on supporting Common Core reading and math standards that are helping more children succeed in traditional districts and charter schools. All in all, she is a mixed bag.

Beltway reformers, such as Chris Minnich of the Council of Chief State School Officers, have already issued the typical inside-the-Beltway statements declaring their interest in working with her. Traditionalists such as American Federation of Teachers President Rhonda (Randi) Weingarten decry her appointment, proclaiming that she’s the “most ideological, anti-public ed nominee” ever. Some reformers, most-notably Democrats for Education Reform and Teach For America, have correctly stood fast in not endorsing DeVos’ nomination because of Trump’s bigotry. [American Enterprise Institute education czar Rick Hess, as myopic as ever on issues regarding poor and minority children, is particularly angered by TFA’s move, accusing the teacher quality reform outfit of not “pretending to be nonpartisan”.] And conservative reformers are pleased as punch.

Meanwhile school choice advocates, especially hard-liners who oppose any efforts by states to hold those programs accountable, think that DeVos’ selection could prove to be a boon for supporting the expansion of vouchers and charters at the federal level. They are especially hoping that she will implement the long-discussed plan among such advocates to voucherize Title I funding, allowing those dollars to follow children.

Could we see a stronger federal effort on the expansion of choice? Possibly. Maybe. But as a moral men and women dedicated to building brighter futures for all children no matter their background, you have to wonder at what cost?

After all, DeVos is joining an incoming administration whose chief executive has had a long and ignominious record of race-baiting, rank demagoguery against undocumented and documented immigrants (including accusing Mexican emigres of being “rapists), and has shown little concern for black and other minority communities. Over the past week, Trump has proven even more-pronounced in his bigotry, first by naming white supremacist Steve Bannon as his top White House adviser; and then nominating Alabama U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, an opponent of all immigration with his own long history of bigotry, as U.S. Attorney General. Trump’s dedication to  more-restrictive immigration policy — including a declaration to deport three million undocumented immigrants that include children already in public schools — and pronounced opposition to criminal justice reform effectively makes his administration an opponent of the very children DeVos is supposed to serve.

As the likely head of a federal agency that is charged with protecting the civil rights of children black and brown, DeVos will have to work closely with both Bannon and Sessions on enforcing existing policies as well as implementing any proposed effort to expand school choice. How can DeVos effectively expand choice for these children when the men with which she must work have demonstrated records of opposing them and their families? How can DeVos enforce the Department of Education’s civil rights responsibilities as written under the Every Student Succeeds Act when Trump is likely to push for the gutting of the agency’s Office for Civil Rights?

This isn’t just a moral issue. Black, Latino, Muslim, and other socioeconomic minority children make up half of the 50 million school-age children in America. In both the American South and western states such as California, they are the majority of children in public and private schools. The policies the Trump Administration will likely promulgate — especially on education — can damage their futures, put them on the path to poverty and prison, and destroy the communities in which they live.

Certainly DeVos will argue that she can help children while working for this administration. But the long history of American public education has proven over and over again that good intentions are slender reeds against the political machinations of the immoral. More than likely, DeVos will be a figurehead within the administration with little real influence on policy when it matters.

This includes expanding school choice. As mentioned, Trump has declared he supports voucherizing Title I funding, an idea championed by congressional Republicans that didn’t make it into ESSA last year. The challenges of making it reality still remain: That the dollars yielded from such a move would not be enough to help poor and minority families in choosing high-quality schools; that it would require congressional Republicans to write language forcing states to voucherize their own state funding systems (an idea that runs counter to the conservative demands that the federal government retreat from an active role in education policy); and that it would be opposed by suburban districts represented by those very congressional Republicans (as well as by urban districts represented by Democrat counterparts). Given the state of play these days on Capitol Hill, DeVos will likely talk a lot about choice without being able to actually help expand it.

Meanwhile DeVos’ long association with the school choice faction of the school reform movement may actually damage both. This is because DeVos’ presence essentially associates the laudable goal of helping poor and minority families gain access to high-quality educational opportunities with an incoming administration already associated with bigotry, nativism, and anti-Semitism. Certainly some reformers will argue that the laudable ends justify the means.  But the ends are corrupted by the means, especially in the form of negative perception of those solutions by the very children and communities for which you proclaim concern. This will be especially troublesome for choice activists at a time in which it is becoming politically harder to make the case for expanding charters, charters, and other efforts.

Your editor cannot congratulate DeVos on her nomination. What I, along with other reformers such as Democrats for Education Reform, can do is pray that she does the right thing for all of our children, no matter who they are or where they live, in spite of being part of an incoming administration that has not one concern for them. And stand up against any efforts by the Trump Administration to damage their futures.

Read more of Dropout Nation‘s thoughts about DeVos. 

Contrary to the opinions of many traditionalists and more than a few reformers, the much-necessary discussion about overuse of harsh school discipline in traditional districts and public charter schools should be understood as an opportunity for people in schools to revisit their practices and results, and to consider how they might adjust strategies. For those of us who focus on policy and research, it is helpful to appreciate how many people are already working on the issue.

Since the New York Times and other outlets raised new questions about the school discipline practices of Success Academy last year, I’ve heard from lots of school leaders and teachers who have been wrestling with student discipline. These are men and women who have taken great pains to engage in introspection, both about discipline as well as other practices related to instruction and leadership.

These people talk about discipline. But they also talk about school culture and how to make their schools more successful with all students. We may not always agree with the practices they may use. The criticisms, regardless of who lodges them, may be valid. At the same time, let’s admit that these people are not engaging in surprising or novel exercises.

Personal observations can never substitute for objective data and evidence. But in my own research and interactions, the school leaders and teachers I deal with are downright obsessed with keeping kids on task and with thinking about how to help more kids succeed. They truly “own” the issue of student discipline. They examine data. They look at what they are doing in their classrooms and hallways. They talk together about their values, their practices, and how to adjust what they do. They try to figure out how their practices affect how children behave.  They want children to learn, want to reduce the likelihood that a few kids will act out in ways that make it hard for all kids to learn, and also keep children who are misbehaving from failing and leaving school.

Last month, the U.S. Department of Education convened leaders from charter school operators that receive replication and expansion grants under the Charter School Program.  This was a group of very successful charter operators with impressive academic performance. The issue of student discipline was a big priority for the U.S. Department. I honestly came to the meeting a little anxious that there might be too much “talking down” to school people about what they needed to do, or too much defensiveness from the school operators. I was wrong on both fronts.

To its credit, the Obama Administration brought forward the issue as a real challenge that we must collectively address both in charters as well as within traditional districts. They presented the issue as one on which we should all problem-solve. Charter school operators, in turn, came to the topic equally ready to talk about the work. Perhaps because of the careful set-up, there was no defensiveness, no denial of the issues’ importance, or bemoaning how opponents were blowing a few cases out of proportion.

Instead, leaders talked about the conversations they were having with their staff, the examination of data, their brainstorming around what they do when children misbehave, and the ways they can adjust their procedures and programs to support strong learning environments while reducing the practices that lead to suspension or expulsion.  They were talking about how to build consensus about the need for change, and the details of work that might make things better.

The charter school operators at the session weren’t looking to abandon their approaches to schooling. Their schools are highly successful. They have developed innovative programs — and their approaches produce results. At the same time, they realized that the current debate over discipline as an opportunity to leverage what is working well, to engage in serious introspection about their own practices, and to encourage their colleagues to change particular practices that may not always be helpful in improving student learning. All this was in order to design changes that they believe will lead to even better results for even more children.

What we have here is not a “gotcha” for opponents of school choice.  The notion that some single unified approach to schooling has been shown to be unacceptable and that now we will abandon “no excuses” schooling is an incredibly simplistic and unreasonable characterization of what is going on. It is equally simplistic to argue that no introspection or rethinking of how we educate children isn’t in order. Instead, people who work in schools — people that live and breathe student behavior every day — have been stirred by events and a little external pressure to start important conversations.

There are of important mid-course adjustments in the works, and I look forward to talking with them about these changes as they make them.

Just when you thought that the latest controversy involving Success Academy was about to die down, it fans even more flames with its latest effort to blame the media. But in the process of arguing the New York Times fails to cover incidents of teachers engaging in educational and physical abuse of children in their care, the charter school operator (along with today’s report in the Times on how Success addressed the incident) once again reminds us of how it has failed to adequately address the abuses of Charlotte Dial, the teacher whose actions were revealed by the paper two weeks ago.

Since the revelation by the Times of Dial snatching and ripping the class work of the then-six year old daughter of Nadya Miranda for not answering a question to her satisfaction, then ranting that “there’s nothing that infuriates me more than when you don’t do what’s on your paper”, Success and its founder, Eva Moskowitz, have worked overtime with its allies among school reformers to argue that the newspaper has some kind of vendetta against it. On Tuesday, Success upped the ante by issuing an 11-page letter to the paper’s editor in charge of Big Apple education news coverage, Amy Virshup, complaining that the Times has focused undue attention on the operator while ignoring criminal and educational abuse of children by teachers working within New York City’s traditional district.

In the letter, Moskowitz argues that the Timeshas done little more than provide “feel-good” stories on district schools while ignoring incidents such as the arrest of Mark Valentinetti, a teacher who worked at P.S. 83 in the Bronx, for slapping of his students, as well as the return of teacher Richard Parlini to the classrooms of another district school in spite of being previously removed for spanking his students. Declares Moskowitz: “the so-called “paper of record” has to date devoted none of its considerable resources to cover these stories, let alone investigate this systemic pattern of abuses.”

Let’s give Moskowitz and her public relations staff some credit: It didn’t violate the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, as her previous effort last year against PBS NewsHour. Just as importantly, the letter is another reminder of the need to overhaul teacher dismissal rules and end near-lifetime employment laws that protect laggard and criminally-abusive teachers. Oddly enough, this is an issue on which the Times, along with the Daily News and the New York Post, has covered for the past few years. There are far too many criminally-abusive teachers like those cited in the letter working in classrooms and they shouldn’t be there. [If Success Academy was setting a good example on its own, its commentary on educational malpractice would come off as anything but hypocritical.]

Yet Moskowitz hasn’t proven her argument that the Times is somehow biased against the schools Success operates. For one, the paper has shed plenty of light on educational abuses throughout the district. One simple search on the paper’s own Web site reveals stories on the city’s test-cheating scandal, which has led to the firing of now-former John Dewey High School Principal Kathleen Elvin as well as the suicide of another principal, Jeanene Worrell-Breeden, who ran Teachers College Community School. The Times also covered the arrest of a school leader, John DiFiore, on charges of criminally-abusing a 14-year-old student in his care. The Times also took aim at the district’s continuing failure to do well by children trapped in its special education ghettos, as well as its failure to disclose a third of violent incidents that happened in its school buildings.

Then there’s the Times‘s two year-long coverage of the crimes of Sean Shaynak, a former teacher at the prestigious Brooklyn Tech, who pled guilty in December to abducting and showing nude photos of himself to one of the students in his care. In 2014 alone, the Old Gray Lady wrote two extensive profiles on how Shaynak managed to get hired by the district spite of a record that included having been charged (though not convicted) of beating up the son of one of his neighbors. [Both profiles, by the way, were cowritten by Kate Taylor, the reporter who is the source of Moskowitz’s ire.]

Moskowitz cites none of these stories in her letter decrying the Times‘ coverage. In fact, she seems to go out of her way not to do so. Apparently the school operator complaining about fairness doesn’t believe in extending such courtesy itself. Lucky for Success that it is a school operator, not a media outlet that subjects itself to the traditional rules of objective journalism.

One can argue that the Times could spend more time covering every incident of abuse by teachers. I wouldn’t disagree one bit. But media outlets, as entities that have deal with limited space (and even smaller budgets), have to make choices on coverage. Let’s also keep in mind that the Times is also covering other issues that also affect children beyond classroom walls. This includes reports on abuse and killing of inmates at Riker’s Island and Clinton Correctional, two major prisons that house many parents of children who attend traditional district and public charter schools. Again, Moskowitz’s argument about the Times‘ coverage has no merit.

But while Moskowitz cites examples of educational and criminal abuse of children by teachers in traditional districts, she downplays Dial’s own abuse as well as the school operator’s refusal to deal with it properly by kicking her out of its classrooms. As far as Moskowitz is concerned, firing Dial would have been nothing more than the pursuit of “better PR” at the expense of what Success considers to be a model teacher “dedicated to teaching and improving”.

But in simply suspending Dial and returning her to the classroom, Moskowitz has done little more than tolerate the kind of educational malpractice that happens far too often in traditional districts. In fact, one can argue it is even worse because Success isn’t governed by collective bargaining agreements or by state laws governing tenure and dismissal, and therefore, can more-easily rid its schools of laggard and abusive teachers. Moskowitz has actually behaved worse in this situation than your average district superintendent.

What Success has done instead is engage in a crisis management strategy geared toward protecting Dial and its own practices from scrutiny. This becomes clear from the Times‘ latest story on the teacher’s malpractice, which features an interview with Nadya Miranda, the mother of the harmed girl. As the Times reports, after Success finally showed the video to Miranda, she was asked by Success staffers to sign on to an e-mail it drafted telling the paper that she didn’t want the video released to the public. When Miranda confronted Moskowitz during a meeting about the video a week later, Miranda said the school leader told her curtly that “you had enough to say”. Miranda, along with several other parents, walked out of the meeting, then pulled her daughter from the school. The fact that Miranda and her children are homeless, and thus, struggling with other issues, makes Dial’s malpractice even more unacceptable.

Anyone who has paid attention to Success’ crisis management tactics over the past few months shouldn’t be surprised — nor should anyone else. Through actions such as Moskowitz’s unauthorized release of school discipline data on the son of Faida Geidi, Success has proven more interested in defending the outfit than in doing right by the children and families it serves. That its board members, including CNN anchor-turned-reform advocate Campbell Brown have used their own media outlets to defend Success from criticism makes clear that the organization will not address its issues even when a media outlet shines light on them.

These issues are deeply-ingrained. As former Success teachers and school leaders such as Jessica Reid Sliwerski have noted in the Times first story on Dial’s misdeed, the practice of ripping papers and embarrassing children for their learning struggles has been common practice within the operator for some time, and has been taught in professional development courses it has held. Moskowitz, in particular, is unwilling to consider that Dial’s “model” is damaging children in the operator’s care, an issue pointed out by Miranda in her interview. Add in Success’ long-documented overuse of out-of-school suspensions and other forms of harsh school discipline, and it becomes clear that the operator approaches teaching poor and minority children from a Poverty Myth thinking similar to that of far too many traditionalists.

Firing Dial would have been a tacit admission by Success that all isn’t well within it. Such humility isn’t possible, either for the institution, its founder, and its allies. For traditionalists looking to halt the expansion of school choice in both New York City and the rest of the nation, Success’ unwillingness to address the damage its educational malpractice does to futures of children gives them the ammunition they need to continue their own.

There is a difference between an anomaly — or a rare event or incident within a system or institution that will almost never happen again — and what is normal or tends to be the established practice within that very organization. Based on the responses to the latest revelation about the practices of Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy chain of charter schools, this is something that the school reform movement must learn, especially if it is to remain a moral movement that builds brighter futures for all children.

As some of you already know, the charter school operator once again went on the defensive last week after the New York Times released a video showing Charlotte Dial berating one of her first-grade students for failing to properly show how she answered a math problem. After the six-year-old, confused by the question, began to count, Dial snatched a paper the young girl had did the work on, ripped in half, then screamed at the girl and told her to go to a chair and sit. Dial then ranted that “there’s nothing that infuriates me more than when you don’t do what’s on your paper.”

Was there anything that the young girl did that merited Dial’s response? Not according to the video. She didn’t misbehave. In fact, she said nothing. As Dial screamed at her and engaged in her own tolerated brand of misbehavior, the child meekly walked over to the chair and sat. Put simply, Dial’s behavior was educational malpractice, abusive, intolerable, and just plain unacceptable.

But as bad as Dial’s behavior was, Success’ response was even worse. After New York Times reporter Kate Taylor, who obtained the video from a former teacher’s aide, brought it to the attention of the operator, it didn’t dismiss her or even put her on a long-term suspension. Instead, Success Academy took her off the job for a week, then put her back into the classroom. After the Times ran the story this past Thursday, Moskowitz and her crisis management flunkies hastily put together a press conference in which they accused Taylor and the newspaper of teacher-bashing. [Success also put together a hashtag on Twitter, #StopBashingTeachers, that was quickly hijacked by traditionalists who have long considered Success a bete noire.]

As far as Moskowitz was concerned, Dial’s misbehavior was just another “anomaly” that didn’t represent how Success conducts its business. If anything, as far as Moskowitz was concerned, Dial was still a “model teacher” deserving of being considered an example of high-quality instruction for her colleagues. Save for a few reformers, most-notably Valentina Korkes of the otherwise reliably pro-Moskowitz Education Post, most reformers lined up behind Moskowitz’ party line. This included former CNN anchor-turned-reform advocate Campbell Brown, who sits on Success Academy’s board and runs reform-oriented media outlet 74. Despite the piece quoting one parent supportive of Dial and Success Academy, Brown accused Taylor and the Times of failing to balance the piece with even more quotes from supporters. [The Times editor overseeing Taylor’s coverage, Amy Virshup, took apart Brown’s logic.]

One would believe that Dial’s misbehavior was an anomaly — until you review the long and well-reported record of Success Academy’s bad practices.

As Jessica Reid Sliwerski, a former teacher and school leader-turned-education technologist, confirmed to the Times, ripping up student papers and embarrassing them has always been a common practice within the operator’s schools. Sliwerski should know. After all, she was one of Success’ golden children. Her work as a teacher and school leader at one of Success’ Harlem schools was profiled four years ago by Steve Brill in Class Struggle, his considerable tome on the battles over transforming American public education, as well as a companion piece in the Wall Street Journal. Sliwerski notes that ripping student papers was taught to teachers by the professional development Success runs with Touro College, while making children cry was considered within a key to having them learn. [Your editor moderated a panel featuring Sliwerski last year at SXSWEdu.]

Another sign that Dial’s action was no anomaly lies in the Times revelation last November that Success’ school in the Fort Greene section of New York City’s Brooklyn had kept a list of 16 kids who it deemed had “got to go”. Those students, by the way, were suspended multiple times by the school over the year. Nine of those children ultimately left the school. [Since the Times revelations, several families have filed suit against Success over the effort to push their children.] As she did last week amid the revelation of Dial’s misdeed, Moskowitz claimed that the “got to go” list was just an “anomaly”, even as the chain kept the principal who oversaw the effort, Candido Brown, on the job, albeit in a teaching role.

But as the families of 13 children who attended Success’ schools have detailed in a complaint filed last month with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, efforts to push out children weren’t limited to the operator’s Fort Greene locale. The parent of A, for example, noted that the principal of Success’ Harlem 4 “urged her” to pull her now-12-year-old son out of the school. Another parent, whose six-year-old attended the Harlem 3 school, was asked numerous times to withdraw the kid from the school (and wasn’t even given a re-enrollment notice). And as documented four years ago by now-former New York Times columnist Michael Winerip, Success seems to thrive on pushing out struggling and supposedly troublesome children.

Then there is Success Academy’s long-documented overuse of out-of-school suspensions and other forms of harsh school discipline. A year ago, the New York City branch of education news chain Chalkbeat reported that Moskowitz’s charters suspended 17 percent of its students in 2011-2012, the sixth-highest among the 12 charter operators surveyed in the outlet’s analysis of data supplied to the Big Apple’s traditional district; the 27 percent suspension rate for the outfit’s Harlem 1 school is higher than all but 13 charters surveyed. As former PBS NewsHour correspondent John Merrow noted in his controversial report on the operator last October, one Success Academy school (with 203 children enrolled) meted out 44 suspensions to just 11 kindergartners and first-graders; essentially each child was suspended at least four times during the school year.

Particularly damning is the case of a kindergartner at Success’ Crown Heights school who had issues using the bathroom. Her family is among the 13 who filed last month’s civil rights complaint against the operator. Because of her issues and Success’ unwillingness to provide the child with an aide as required under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the young girls was often marked as being a discipline case for not following school rules. That it would be hard to follow school rules when you have a disability didn’t seem to occur to Success’ teachers and school leaders.

As saddening as these incidents are, they aren’t shocking. Why? Because Success has long-embraced overusing harsh discipline as a component of instruction and building its school culture. The operator’s own school discipline code gives teachers and school leaders wide leeway to suspend and expel children. Even worse, it is so arbitrary that a child can be suspended for any reason. This includes failing to sit in the “Ready to Succeed” position, “Being off-task”, or forgetting to bring a pencil to school. Despite the overwhelming evidence that overuse of harsh school discipline does little to improve student achievement, Moskowitz, with help of allies within the school reform movement such as Michael Petrilli and Robert Pondiscio of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, has strongly defended these practices and implicitly argue that Success cannot improve student achievement without them.

The most-damning evidence that Dial’s misbehavior is no anomaly became clear last October when Moskowitz released the school discipline record of one of the operators former students, the son of Fatima Geidi, a parent interviewed by Merrow for his report on Success, as part of the operator’s crisis management campaign against the piece. By doing this, Moskowitz likely violate the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, the federal law that governs the privacy of student records, which bars Success from releasing discipline records without the permission of families. Even worse, by citing the discipline record of Geidi’s son, Moskowitz betrayed the school reform movement’s mission of nurturing and protecting the lives and futures of children. She used the life of a child who may be in need of real help as ammunition against a negative media report.

But again, this is nothing new. Over the past five months, Moskowitz has shown that she will always choose to preserve the institution she founded over being a champion for children and their families. In that time, she has shown that she is more-willing to protect the teachers and school leaders that work for Success than be defenders of the young lives who sit in its classrooms. And over and over again, like a traditionalist superintendent in a failing district, Moskowitz has demonstrated that she will explain away any incident as an “anomaly” instead of acknowledging that there may be some deep-seated issues within the institution and its model of educational practice.

At a certain point, either Moskowitz or Success Academy’s star-studded board, must acknowledge that when the institution has several incidents of educational malpractice, they are no longer anomalies. They represent the norm for the institution itself. Success Academy no longer merits a defense, especially from school reformers who, like Born-Again Christians, know better and should no longer tolerate its malpractice.

Featured photo courtesy of Chalkbeat New York.