Eva Moskowitz

Robert Pondiscio, a teacher, who is pro-charter, pro-school choice, and who is also the author of How the Other Half Learns: Equality, Excellence, and the Battle over School Choice (2019), says that Success Academy Charter School system is "really a manifestation of who [Eva Moskowitz] is...[H]er ideas, her vision, her energy drives the model." Pondiscio added that he cannot stress enough how important she is to the school's success. Even though many of Success Schools' staff deeply share her vision—without her—it would be difficult to maintain the "level of excellence" that her schools have achieved.

In his Robert Pondiscio's 2019 book, How the Other Half Learns: Equality, Excellence, and the Battle over School Choice, responded to criticism that charter schools in general and Success Academy in particular use cream skimming through cost-efficiency practice of not accepting English-language learning, low-performing children and those who are eligible for government-mandated special education accommodation, or IEPs. Critics have claimed that some lower-grade children eligible for government-mandated special education accommodation, or IEPs, have been withdrawn, effectively winnowing students before third grade, the year state testing begins. Pondiscio responded that Success Academy uses an annual random lottery that anyone can enter, and almost all the students selected to Success Academy, are low-income families of color, that are "genuinely disadvantaged".

By 2019, according to The Washington Post, the Success Academy network of 47 schools serving 17,000 students, is the "highest-performing and most criticized educational institution in New York", and perhaps in the United States.

By 2019, the charter school movement the statewide cap on new charters was near capacity. Moskowitz works to repeal the cap on charters, which she calls a "cap on opportunity." contributing to New York and some other states caps on the creation of new charter schools".

In Midtown Manhattan June 2018, students from Success Academy's new flagship high school, took to the streets to protest Moskovitz's policies, including the "no excuses" disciplinary policies. They chanted, "Say our names, not our test scores." In January 2018, Moskowitz—who was concerned the high school's principal and teachers were not being strict enough—"installed her desk in the high school hallway and implemented tougher sanctions on students." As the number of new rules and severity of the consequences, increased, the students organized their first protest in the high school itself. These students and their parents had been attending protests against the Mayor of New York, organized by Mockowitz, for years. Moskowitz removed some rules and decreased the punishments. Gimlet described the final year of the first Success Academy's graduation class, as "very tumultuous" and "chaotic." At the end of the school year, Moskowitz faced the ire of some parents during a school meeting. Some of them were expressed feelings of guilt, worry and alarm at what was happening to their teenagers. One raised concerns about the school's "mean culture", that is in the "fabric of our school system", in another about "the harsh way" that "teachers talk to kids". They worry about the "emotional impact it may have." However, not all parents agreed. All sixteen of the first Success Academy high school graduation class were accepted into the college of their choice, including "Tufts, MIT, Bard, Tulane, Emory, Grinnell, the University of Southern California, Barnard, and others."

In her 2017 memoir, Moskowitz described an event in 2005, where potential donors could meet "aspiring charter school founders" held at Boyki Curry's Central Park apartment, that was organized by hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson, Bryan Lawrence, and Moskowitz's husband Eric Grannis, a business lawyer. Grannis, who worked pro bono for charter schools, had already co-founded the charter school, Girls Prep, in 2005 with Lawrence. Guests—including John Petry—at what became regular event at Curry's, eventually co-founded the highly-influential Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) a pro-charter advocacy group. Petry, who, along with his business partner, Joel Greenblatt, hedge fund managers at Gotham Capital, had later asked Grannis to assist them in their application for a charter school that would use the "simple, practical and effective" reading program "Success for All" (SFA), that had been developed in 1987 by former teachers, Bob Slavin and his wife Nancy Madden.

In her 2017 autobiography, The Education of Eva Moskowitz, Moskowitz referred to one of the "most celebrated educational experiments in history", in which the British historian James Mill, subjected his son, John Stuart Mill to a Jeremy Bentham-inspired utilitarian pedagogical approach.

According to Politico, who described Moskowitz as a "controversial charter school leader", she was on a short list of contenders for the position of United States Secretary of Education, when she met with United States President-Elect Donald Trump on November 16, 2016 . In an interview with MarketWatch, Moscowitz said that education was "mostly a state and local matter" and she would continue to focus on "reimagining public education", which she calls, "one of the most important civil rights issues of our time."

In 2015, hedge fund manager John Paulson, a major Trump ally, donated $8.5 million to Success. By December 2017, Success Academy included 45 schools, with schools in every borough of New York except Staten Island, with 17,000 students. According to a 2017 article in New Yorker, "Moskowitz said that, she hoped to be running 100 schools, "within a decade".

According to a 2015 article in Manhattan Institute for Policy Research's quarterly magazine on urban policy and culture, called City Journal, Moskowitz, describes Success Academy schools as "Catholic school on the outside, Bank Street on the inside". Pondiscio says that Moskowitz schools' "culture of high achievement", order, and discipline are reminiscent of Catholic schools in New York in the 1940s and 1950s. The Manhattan-based Bank Street school for children uses a constructivist pedagogy—an approach that traces its progressive philosophical roots to John Dewey, who rejected the more traditional approaches such as, a scripted behaviorist approach—repetitive, rote memorization, where students are tested on their ability to recall didactic content that their teachers had directed and presented. Pondiscio, in his book, said that math teachers at Success Academy do not use the traditional method most teachers use of simply having students memorize and practice algebraic and geometric algorithms, and the steps of long division, etc. They teach students to conceptualize long division. The network's science program is based on Brearley School's, according to Politico. Schools have a separate room for chess, to develop "higher-order thinking."

In an October 2015, PBS News Hour feature, PBS special correspondent for education, John Merrow, on New York City's "high-profile charter schools network". A representative of a Success Academy charter school that shares the same building with a zoned public school in Brooklyn, New York, said that they did use out-of-school suspension for "their scholars" who are kindergartners and first graders. In 2014, in one school alone, 44 out-of-school suspensions were issued to 203 kindergartners and first graders. Success Academy is a "very structured environment" with "very high academic and behavioral expectations for our scholars". A mother and her son, who was a student at the school, described the negative impact of theses suspensions and how this led her to transfer her son to another school. In response to the criticism, Moskowitz wrote a detailed letter which included the young boy's school records—and his offenses. Moskowitz sent the letter to PBS, to education reporters, posted it on the Success website, and included it in her 2017 book, The Education of Eva Moskowitz. Making the boy's school record public was a violation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).

In her May 15, 2015 acceptance speech of the Manhattan Institute's Alexander Hamilton Award, Moskowitz promoted "school choice" or the "right to choose", which was first proposed in 1955. Moskowitz praised the use of tax credits as a powerful tool that allows parents' to "vote with their feet."

In 2015 the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research's (MI) honored George Kelling, co-author of Broken Windows and Moskowitz as CEO of Success Academy at their annual Alexander Hamilton Award Dinner. The award—which celebrates individuals who help foster the revitalization of American cities and who promote commerce and civic life— has also been given to William F. Buckley Jr. in 2004, Rudolph Giuliani and Tom Wolfe in 2006, Edward Koch and Rupert Murdoch in 2007, Henry Kissinger in 2009, Joel Klein in 2011, Cardinal Timothy Dolan in 2012, and Betsy DeVos in 2019 among others. Both the Manhattan Institute and Alexander Hamilton fervently promoted commerce and civic life.

In an interview with the New York Sun, she described how the six years on City Council had helped her see what the Department of Education had done wrong. With Greenblatt and Petry she had "incredible opportunity to get it right the first time." By 2012, Success Academy Charter School Inc. had over "eight and a half million dollars in savings and temporary cash investments in 2012, and it spent at least 1.3 million dollars on outreach and consulting services." In the 2010 fiscal year, Success Charter Network has raised $4.8 million from private funding along public funds from three levels of government. By 2010, charter schools had become a "favorite cause of many of the founders of New York hedge funds, such as Anchorage Capital Partners, Greenlight Capital, and Pershing Square Capital Management with over $15 billion assets under management, who could "wield" their fortunes as members of Democrats for Education Reform, (DFER) to "influence educational policy in Albany." and push for education reform. These wealthy hedge fund executives provided a significant "political counterweight to the powerful teachers unions" who opposed charter schools. Joe Williams, author of Cheating Our Kids: How Politics and Greed Ruin Education, was DFER's CEO. On April 28, 2014, hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb, who is also chairman of Success Academy's board, hosted the second annual gala for Success Academy, where $7.75 million was raised for the schools.

According to the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative-learning think tank, while cohort shrinkage is the norm at SA schools, with the first school experiencing a very high level of shrinkage—a 57 percent drop in the first Grade 1 cohort in 2007 at Harlem 1 by Grade 8, the SA schools' average was 10 percent, which is not exceptional.

Moskowitz has been in a battle with Bill de Blasio, who has served as Mayor of New York City since 2014, since they both served on the New York City Council. In 2018, the New York Daily News called it a "long-running war between Moskowitz and New York's charter-skeptic mayor. Under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the number of charter schools in New York increased from 17 charter schools in 2002, to 183 in 2013.

De Blasio is a strong supporter of teachers unions, whereas charter schools can "hire—and fire—nonunionized teachers at will." Although the concept of charter schools was first introduced by a president of the largest teachers union in the United States, by the 1990s, American charter schools were firmly against teachers' unions. At that time "social-justice-minded liberals" worked with conservatives, to promote "charters as part of a more open marketplace from which families could choose schools." Open market policies included competition to provide the lowest cost. Teachers' pensions, tenure, and contracts were denounced by charter school advocates, such as Moskowitz. By 2014, only about 12 percent of the charter schools were unionized.

In December 2014 interview with the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute's (AEI) Frederick Hess, Moskowitz said that public education in the U.S. is lacking in rigor. She said that children must be challenged, as well as engaged, in order for them to want to be at school.

Moskowitz's opposition to de Blasio intensified as she advocated for an end to caps on charter schools in general, and for Success Academy in particular. During his mayoral campaign de Blasio, in June 2013, said that he would end the policy of providing free rent for charter schools that shared buildings with district zoned public schools run by the Department of Education. Charter schools, such as Success Academy are co-housed with public schools and have access to utilities, janitorial services, and school-safety officials for free. De Blasio, said that he would end free rent for some co-located charter schools. Charter schools are "publicly funded but autonomously owned and operated, accountable for results but largely free of government oversight". Charter schools can "add revenue from private sources, lengthen their academic day and year," and "create their own curricula". De Balsio, who had served on City of New York's Council Education Committee with Moskowitz for four years, singled out Success Academy in his comments.

As New York Mayor, de Blasio announced in March 2014, that he was disapproving three of Success Academy's co-locations that had been approved under his predecessor, Bloomberg, due to concerns of placing young children in high schools or displacing special needs public school students. Some in the media called this de Blasio's war on charter schools and minority students. Moskowitz, who was called one of de Balsio's "fiercest critics", closed all of 22 Success Academy schools on March 4, 2013 and encouraged the staff, students to participate in "the largest civic field trip in history" with "thousands of students, parents and teachers" rallying in Albany, the state capital. Moskowitz was criticized for seeking the support of hedge fund managers and other influential financial leaders on Wall Street in her fight against de Blasio. Moskowitz, along with the allied charter school PAC StudentsFirst, contributed over $4 million to New York State Senate Republican campaigns, helping them maintain control of the chamber, to foster legislation for further privatization.

In 2012, she co-authored Mission Possible: How the Secrets of the Success Academies Can Work in Any School with Arin Lavinia.

In a November 28, 2011 interview with the New York Daily News Editorial Board, Moskowitz "spoke passionately of the need to create more great schools with the help of a reform-minded administration" in the Mayor's office. By November 2011, Moskowitz was concerned about Bloomberg's potential replacement in the 2013 mayoral election. At that time de Blasio was already dubbed a "dedicated obstructionist" of the charter schools, by the Daily News. Bloomberg had proven to be a "zealous education reformer" and a strong effective advocate for charter schools in the City. By 2011, Moskowitz already had "opened nine high-performing charter schools" and had five more schools that she was preparing for opening. She told the Daily News that she was considering running for the office of mayor.

Moskowitz founded and directs the Great Public Schools Political Action Committee (PAC) that supports charter schools, following an election in which a pro-Success Academy candidate lost. In the 2011–2012, the Great Public Schools (PAC) gave $50,000 to Andrew Cuomo 2014, Inc.

The charter school movement had many opponents, including the state senator representing Harlem, Bill Perkins, who was "vehemently opposed to them". On April 22, 2010, Perkins, held a state senate hearing to investigate the charter-school industry.

In 2010, Moskowitz was featured in the documentaries The Lottery and Waiting for "Superman", which followed students applying to Success Academy as well as protests and legal disputes associated with charter schools.

The 2010 documentary film The Lottery tells the story of the battle for charter schools through the lens of parents and their children as they compete in the high-stakes lottery for a place in one of Moscowitz's charter schools. The Lottery describes the "charter-school wars" with pitting those who support and those who oppose charter schools. The UTF disagrees with the typically non-unionized charter schools; traditional zoned public schools battle with charter schools over "scarce building space." The New York Times called the film a "marketing tool", a "one-sided" "charter-school commercial" that featured Moskowitz, who "delighted" in "vilifying" the United Federation of Teachers' "thuggish" tactics. The Times review said that the film ignored "critical issues like financial transparency", instead focusing on "four admirable, striving families" whose five-year-old children were competing for a place in one of Moskowitz schools.

The 2010 American documentary film Waiting for "Superman", directed and written by Davis Guggenheim, starred Geoffrey Canada, who is the founder of Harlem Children's Zone. Canada describes the journey made by five families who are trying to get their children into better schools. Two of the children hope to attend Harlem Success Academy. There were 700 children in that lottery for 40 spots. His zoned public school is failing, and Franciso was struggling with reading. Neither of them was successful. It was highly critical of teachers' unions, which are blamed for the public schools failures—charter schools are promoted as the solution. Then-Secretary of Education Arne Duncan called the documentary a "Rosa Parks moment" for education. The documentary is also narrated by Bill Gates and by Michelle Rhee, who founded the lobbying organization "StudentsFirst". As superintendent of Washington, DC schools from 2007 to 2010, Rhee was known for standing up to teacher's unions, firing teachers, and closing schools. Rhee's wanted remove tenured teacher's contracts and to introduce merit-based pay. Former New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein was also featured. Thousands joined the Save Our Schools March in Washington in July 2011 to support teachers.

The first Success Academy Charter School opened in 2006, with Moskowitz serving as Principal—there were 165 students and SA was co-located in a building in Harlem with two other zoned district public schools. According to the StartUp, Moskowitz had succeeded in closing the achievement gap with "disadvantaged kids performing on par with the very top tier public-school students" in New York in standardized tests as required by the New York State Education Department for students in grades three and eight. With these unprecedented test scores, Moskowitz earned the support of the media, wealthy donors, including Wall Street hedge fund executives, and those with political power, such New York's Governor, David Paterson, and Mayor Bloomberg, who said that the Harlem Success Academy was "the poster child for this country." President Barack Obama considered charter schools to be a "crucial component of education reform". In March 2010, The Economist said that Harlem was the "ground zero of the charter-school movement".

During the hearings, Moskowitz found that New York City's public schools lacked teachers, supplies and facilities to support art and music, that many schools lacked appropriate facilities for physical education, schools were being overcharged for supplies because they were required to use a city-mandated online purchasing system, science education was being "treated with second-class status for decades", there were too few qualified science teachers and insufficient science facilities. that social studies and civics instruction was below par, that only 10 percent of black and Hispanic students were eligible for Regents diplomas, and that parents were being asked to donate basic supplies for basic hygiene, such as toilet paper and paper towels, In 2005, approximately 30 students appeared at a hearing to testify about school conditions including complaints about filthy bathrooms and broken toilets.

The day after her electoral defeat on September 15, 2005, Moskowitz met with Petry and Greenblatt who convinced her to lead their proposed charter school network. They became the Success Academy network's "founding funders" starting with Harlem Success Academy. In 2008, three more schools opened.

United Federation of Teachers (UFT) members were "enraged" by the 2003 City Council hearings on teachers' contracts, seniority rights, work rules and on other education issues. When she ran for the Democratic party nomination to be the Manhattan Borough President to succeed C. Virginia Fields, under a campaign emphasizing education and transportation issues, she lost—partly because of the strong UFT opposition, who campaigned for Scott Stringer.

Moskowitz's tenure in City County was set against the backdrop of a call for "national education-reform", where she became known as "the reliable scourge of the public-education establishment in New York City" and a "favorite" of the national movement. President George W. Bush's 2002 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), imposed standards-based education reform, including annual standard testing of all students as a condition for accessing federal school funding. New York City schools high school graduation rate was less than 50 percent for years, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg was calling for sweeping reform with more private-public partnerships.

New York's City's nation Council Education Committee guides the largest school system in the United States. When Moskowitz first returned to New York after a year in Vanderbilt, she volunteered in Gifford Miller's City Council campaign and served as his field director. When he became speaker in 2002, Miller made Moskowitz the chair of the City's Council Education Committee, where she served until 2005.

In the three years in the position of chair, Moskowitz held over oversight hearings focused on New York City's public school system. While Moskowitz had the support of the Joel Klein, who was Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education from 2002 to 2010, she developed a reputation for being "abrasive" even with those who admired and supported her.

In 2001, Moskowitz released the book In Therapy We Trust. The book argued that the American emphasis on self-fulfillment damages civic engagement.

Moskovitz served on New York City Council as the member for the Upper East Side of Manhattan from 1999 until 2006. Between 2002 and 2004, Moskowitz wrote six laws, including laws on health care and campaign finance reform.

In 1993, Moskowitz wrote, produced and directed the VHS-only Some Spirit in Me, which examined the feminist movement from non-prominent activists. In 1996 she published a Journal of Women's History article on the work of Betty Friedan.

She taught women's history at University of Virginia as a visiting professor of communications and mass culture in 1989–1990, Vanderbilt University as an assistant professor of history in 1992–1993, and City University of New York (College of Staten Island) as an assistant professor of history in 1994–1995 and chaired the faculty seminar in American studies at Columbia University in 1996–1999. She was the director of the children's literacy program ReadNet and taught civics at the Prep for Prep school, where she was also the director of public affairs.

Moskowitz graduated from the public magnet Stuyvesant High School in 1982, received a Bachelor of Arts with honors in history from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Ph.D. in American history from Johns Hopkins University with her 1991 dissertation, Naming the Problem: How Popular Culture and Experts Paved the Way For "Personal Politics".

Another approach that Moskowitz uses in Success Academy schools, is the implementation of the broken windows theory, that was first introduced by social scientists James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling in 1982, and popularized in the 1990s by Rudy Giuliani as mayor of New York. The broken window policies were implemented by police, which allegedly led to a decline of crime in New York. In every Success school there is a special business operations manager (BOM) team of several full-time staff, who are responsible for "everything non-instructional", such as maintenance of the school and courtyard. The BOS team undertake multiple "walkthroughs" to ensure that the schools' "coherent culture" with "bright, cheerful, well lit, inviting", and "warm" physical surroundings.

Eva Sarah Moskowitz (born March 4, 1964) is the founder and CEO of the Success Academy Charter Schools. Moskowitz served on City Council representing the Upper East Side from 1999 to 2005. She has written articles and books including In Therapy We Trust, Mission Possible: How the Secrets of the Success Academies Can Work in Any School and the memoir, The Education of Eva Moskowitz (2017).

On March 4, 1964, Moskowitz was born in New York City to Martin, a mathematician, and Anita, an art historian who fled Europe during the Holocaust. She was raised near Columbia University on 118th Street and Morningside Drive in Morningside Heights, Manhattan.