School Under Attack: Why Success Academy’s Results Are Being Buried

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Welcome to Old School, New School, Next School with Dom Giordano, a podcast devoted to shedding light on issues pertaining to making America smart again. These include, among many topics, school choice and parental rights. This podcast is dedicated to reversing the deeply disturbing trend known as the dumbing down of America. Now, here's your host, Educator.
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and noted talk media commentator, Dom Giordano.
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Hey, everyone. Welcome in to this week's edition of Old School, New School, Next School with Dom Giordano.
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And this week, we have something that should not be happening in America.
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How should it be happening in America that a public school charter school called the Success Academy,
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It has about 20,000 students in New York. It's by all accounts that we have succeeding tremendously, and yet America is not allowed to know about that. And the reason is these big teachers' unions, they are the enemy of progress in the public schools and in the country. I'll play you, in fact, an old school, new school, next school. I'll play you a little bit, just some of the antics of their principals,
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of their leaders, of their directors, Becky Pringle of the NEA, National Education Association, and of course, Randi Weingarten, American Federation of Teachers. The Success Academy Charter School Network is suing the New York Education Commissioner, Betty Rosa, accusing her of blocking the release of advanced placement test score results in part of what the lawsuit calls a gullible
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Government Created Information Blockade. That's right. The charge is, the lawsuit, that the New York officials are blocking this information from getting out about how successful this school network, this charter school in New York is doing. And all the reporting, all the stuff around that say it's because the teachers unions don't want that out there. I know you're saying, but it's a public school, Tom.
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Wouldn't they want it? No, they don't want charter schools to be successful either. They just want to keep their hands on top of these failing, entirely public school beachheads they have. The suit says that Rosa, the education committer, at the behest of the teachers unions, blocked the college board. Now, these advanced placement tests, these are hard tests that kids take to get advanced placement in college.
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which may be, you know, not have to pay for some courses. And they measure tremendously your academic achievements. And U.S. News and World Report, periodical, you don't hear about quite as much anymore. They still have one brand. They rank the top, I don't know, it might be in the hundreds, public schools and private schools in America. So imagine, imagine if this charter school in New York, which I think it is,
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is the number one rated school in America. Now, why does the advanced placement, why do they use that metric? Well, they use it because you can't fudge anything. You can't make it up. You can't have any political juice of anything here. The kids take the test, they score them, and then we know how that school does on the advanced placement test for a college. Let me give you some of the figures here. And these are astounding in my experience.
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and I'll try to put them in context for you. The Washington Free Beacon reporting 95% of Success Academy's 2026 graduating class passed three or more advanced placement exams. 95%. I don't know in some of these big time public schools even if 20% or 25% did that. I'd be a little bit surprised. I don't think they can match them.
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There's more. 79% of the Success Academy graduating class passed five or more. 79%? That's astounding. 60% are you ready for this? 60% passed seven or more, the lawsuit says. These results are among the most objective and compelling evidence of the rigor of Success Academy's high school program and its students' ready-natured
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for college.
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Quote,
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Success Academy therefore wants those results known.
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It wants them known.
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So families of prospective students who are seeking a rigorous education for their children to the colleges and universities to which Success Academy students are applying and to journalists, educators, policymakers, philanthropists, and the public.
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Success Academy, particularly once these results known to U.S News and World Report, which publishes one of the country's most widely disseminated high school ratings. So in this battle to make America smart again, I'm on the side of celebrating the best and the brightest. I'm convinced it's possible, maybe even probable, that Success Academy students, this charter school network in New
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York City might be by these rankings, and this is the most objective thing we have, they might be the number one school, number one in America. Doesn't America still want to be number one? Doesn't America want to be smarter again? They are actually succeeding. Success Academy. I hope to get them on the show, old school, new school, next school. So you hear what their suit says, and they provide a lot of evidence.
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We know that state of New York is blocking the U.S. News and World Report from seeing them and others, blocking the College Board from releasing them. They claim it's a privacy matter. Have you ever, I have this smoking gun here, have we seen anything than what we talk about it, the more compelling than this, than what we talk about each week, that what we're seeing in front of us is making America dumb. We're not going to go for number one. If this were in sports, I don't even know what it would be announcing.
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This is behavior that has to be called out, publicized, and stopped. And I can hardly wait to have these people on and give them their number one crown. Imagine, imagine three out of five of their students. And again, a lot of these kids are coming from lower middle class, low income, poverty in New York. So how is Success Academy able to do that?
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Versus the New York Public Schools spending $42,000 a year.
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Just like in Mississippi, the Mississippi miracle.
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We know how to do this.
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And parents want this, many of them for their kids.
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If they don't, then they can go to the fraudulent public schools that don't work.
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Is it any wonder why this week I can report to you?
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I'm looking at this from the Wall Street Journal.
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Opinion of U.S. schools hits a new level.
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Americans are increasingly dissatisfied with U.S. schools, and no wonder the latest worldwide testing results are just as depressing as the ones conducted only in the United States. The United States math scores are among the lowest since the test began in 2000, even as students have held their ground in science. The reading scores of Americans' 15-year-olds hit an all-time low last 25 years.
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And the dissatisfaction rate, only 8% of U.S. adults are completely satisfied or somewhat satisfied with the quality of K-12 education overall, while 36% somewhat dissatisfied, 31% completely dissatisfied. These findings are for an August 3rd through the 24th Walton Family Foundation Gallup telephone poll.
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U.S. spending.
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Rose, we are spending.
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Here's another number for you.
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Americans are spending a trillion dollars a year on public schools,
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yet fewer than 10 percent of adults view the results with unqualified support.
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A trillion dollars a year.
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You have to ask yourself, what else could a trillion dollars buy us?
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Maybe a heck of a lot more than that.
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Why don't we just skate on this?
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Imagine if the Success Academy in New York had a trillion dollars to spend. So without further ado, who's running these teachers unions doing this? Well, the NEA, National Education Association, Becky Pringle, and the AFT, the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten. Here are Ms. Pringle and Ms. Weingarten. This is the way they speak at public events. Listen to these two. Listen to how crazed they are.
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And they are leading upwards of 4 million teachers nationwide. They are political for a second to none. They're both paid around $500,000 or more per year. It's a little hard to tell. Here's Becky Pringle and Randi Weingarten. You are the community to this president's chaos. And together we build a future of opportunity and justice. All right.
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Those are the people that we're dealing with. How in the world is America going to be made smarter again? Massa. How are we going to make America smart again with these two leading their prospective unions and trying to block a success story, not even of a private school, but of a public charter school Success Academy in New York? Just picture the insanity of this.
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You would hear this story all over the place. It's stunning that in America, we can't tout success. Now, where I am in Pennsylvania, we're coming up on the governor's race. We have Josh Shapiro, who is a national contender, our governor. You probably have heard of him for the presidential stakes versus Stacy Garrity. Stacy Garrity is school choice. Josh Shapiro is not. And I want to play you Kim Ward. She is the president.
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of our Senate in Pennsylvania. Listen to what she says. Now, Pennsylvania is critical. It's the ultimate swing state. We have about 31 states now, when January checks in, that are going to take the money in the big, beautiful bill that the President Trump administration passed that can go toward even public schools, but a lot of it toward private schools, school choice with parents and kids. All right. You know the play on that. Listen to what Kim Ward told me.
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about Josh Shapiro and again the teachers unions preventing him from signing off now so that parents can be looking to get their kids settled sooner rather than later. The clock is ticking with this guy. I would predict because of the teachers unions he will not accept the money. And the surrounding states almost all of them have. So there's going to be a lot of tension over this. Here's what Pennsylvania Senate President Senator Kim Ward,
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told me about all that. Wanted to start by talking about this amazing stuff happening with school choice. You're a big proponent, as am I. We're down to 19 states left. Josh Shapiro is one. Mikey Sherrill's one. The numbers are staggering. And I'm not sure, because you're busy with a lot of stuff going on in Harrisburg, if you happen to see this in the Washington Post yesterday, an editorial saying the billions under this that would go to the Washington Post.
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to public schools also a good thing for computers extra tutoring but they actually laid out we finally have the figures so they're stiffing not just stopping kids from getting to a better school but the public schools won't get that money correct and tutoring it's good for tutoring it's good for so many things for the kids and it's really really a huge loss to these kids if the governor doesn't opt
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or we can't pass the legislation. Because the folks that want the deduction, the federal deduction for their income tax, because to be clear, it doesn't cost Pennsylvania one penny. They can still make the deduction, and that just goes to another state. It should be a slam dunk no-brainer. But for some reason, it's not happening yet. So I did put out legislation with a bunch of my colleagues, bipartisanly. Senator Anthony Williams joined on. He's a Democrat from Philly.
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to try to get something moving in hopes that the governor, you know, says, I'll forget the fact that he can't stand President Trump. He's going to let that go and do what's right for Pennsylvania. Yeah. And you made a couple of big arguments here. This is bipartisan. Williams always has been. And there's other Democrats, I think, that would go along. And two, this helps everybody across the board. And if not done, then the states surrounding us and even other states are going to opt to get something moving.
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in and get that money.
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They are.
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I don't know what the governor is waiting for.
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Everything is out there pretty clear.
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I know that I think that the PSEA told them, no way, Jose, should you do this?
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And I don't know if he's scared of, is he afraid of them or, or if he's just waiting for,
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he usually follows suit with what some of the governors surrounding,
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Democratic governors surrounding Pennsylvania do.
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He doesn't lead.
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He follows, right?
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You can look at it with multiple issues. So maybe he's waiting for one of them to come in so that he can then have cover. I have no idea what he's waiting for. But I, you know, would respectfully ask him to consider these students in Pennsylvania. And if you are if you're terrified of the teachers union, please consider Pennsylvania instead of the nation as you pursue your dream to become president.
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All right. That is damning stuff. So this week on old school, new school, next school, where we attempt to make America smart again through parental rights, through school choice. Those are two of the best vehicles driving this. Okay. Here we have Success Academy might be the number one school in America. Rigorous beyond belief.
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They are a public school. They're a charter school. Parents want to go to that. They can't get in. There's not enough seats. And yet we have a governor who might be president blocking so far the ability of people in Pennsylvania to take advantage of private schools if that is what they choose. This is something that has to be called out. And I'll close with this. And all this year I'm going to talk about this.
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We talked about the Mississippi miracle, where lowly Mississippi, the public schools there, used to be ranked 49th, 50th in achievement in reading and math, now is on their way to possibly being number one. Across the board, poor kids, minority kids, it does not matter. How did they do it? Science of reading. They rely on phonics. Two, bipartisan buy-in, both parties into this. Three, teachers are trained thoroughly in all
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this. Four, if a student's not achieving reading first time that we see this, there's an intervention with a one-on-one tutor. Five, you get to the end of third grade and you're not reading on grade level, then you don't graduate from third grade. You don't move on until we rectify this. That's just, I'm digging deeper. I might even go to Mississippi because there's some invitations and all that, but we're going to get somebody on from that.
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because this is so compelling. Why can't we do this state by state with our own values, their own system? They can tweak it a bit. We know what works. Success Academy obviously knows what works. Why are we not making America smart again by using these successes that are right here in front of us? There's a lot of reasons, ideology. The teachers unions, though, are probably the number one problem.
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They do not want to engage in these things for a host of reasons that we've talked about.
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They must be stopped. We must get more teachers out of them to join other groups that are forming to protect teachers, but not to make them hostage to people that you heard screaming like Becky Pringle and Randi Weingarten.
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So I hope you join us in this movement to make America smart again.
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It's doable.
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The stories I told you this week are the prime example of this.
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All that we have to do is have the will to do it.
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Now, if you want to send me a critique, an email, a question, whatever it might be,
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just go to domshow, D-O-M-S-H-O-W, at AOL.com.
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Domshow at AOL.com.
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I'll be happy to answer.
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And again, hopefully we'll get the Success Academy and these other ones so you can hear them.
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What's the secret sauce here? All that each and every week. Let others know about it. Old School. New School. Next School. Old School. New School. Next School with Dom Giordano is a presentation of Giordano Productions LLC. Copyright 2026. All rights reserved.