Eva Moskowitz on Fighting Unions, Politicians, and The New York Times

An in-depth interview with school choice pioneer Eva Moskowitz, who's the founder of New York City's Success Academy charter school network.

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Success Academy in New York City is the nation's most celebrated—and controversial—charter school network, where the kids beat the rest of the city on the annual standardized English and math exams by an enormous margin.

Its founder and CEO is Eva Moskowitz, a former City Council member who sank her own political career back in 2003 by speaking out about how unions stifle schools.

So she left politics, and in 2006 started a charter school. A decade later, Success has grown into a network of 34 schools serving 11,000 kids, and it’s often hailed as a shining example of what the school choice movement can achieve at its very best. This month, Moskowitz received the 2016 Savas Award for Public Private Partnerships, from the Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes Reason magazine and Reason TV.

At that event, we sat down with Moskowitz for an interview. The discussion touched on the barrage of negative stories in the press on Success in the past year, including a video of a first-grade teacher berating a child that was published on The New York Times website, and the revelation that a Success Academy principal maintained a secret “got-to-go” list, naming 16 kids with behavioral problems that his staff should encourage to leave the school. We also discussed Moskowitz’ recent ideological evolution from liberal to somewhat libertarian.

About 14 minutes.

Produced and edited by Jim Epstein, who also conducted the interview.

Interview cameras by Meredith Bragg and Izzy Skenazy.

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