Eva Moskowitz
Eva Moskowitz is the founder and CEO of Success Academy Charter Schools, a flourishing network of charter schools in New York City that teaches nearly 9,500 mostly low-income black and Latino students. By skirting the control of the teachers union and creating highly disciplined, serious environments for students, Moskowitz’s schools have managed to outscore on standardized tests not only the city’s public schools but also its most highly regarded charters.
In the past year, Moskowitz, 50, with her hard-driving style, has also made a powerful enemy of New York City’s progressive new mayor, Bill de Blasio. While she points to the success of her network — including its first high school that opened in September — the mayor and other critics have continued to slam Moskowitz for taking public funds and space from the many in order to educate the few or, as Diane Ravitch, the educational policy analyst, recently put it, for “undermining the public’s commitment to public education.”
Growing up in Harlem, Moskowitz went to New York public schools and graduated from Stuyvesant High School. It was an educational experience she would later claim was riddled with teaching incompetence and spurred her to provide students with more opportunity.
Agree with her charter school philosophy or despise it, one has to acknowledge that Moskowitz raises legitimate questions about our children’s education: Can teachers be trained to be better? Are poor children capable of improving their learning skills? What environment should a school provide? We may not always like Moskowitz’s answers, but there’s no doubt she is pushing the conversation forward.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
