What do you think?
Rate this book
The Education of Eva Moskowitz: A Memoir
From Eva Moskowitz, the outspoken founder and CEO of the charter school Success Academy, comes a frank, feisty memoir about the rough-and-tumble battles to reform America’s education system.
Eva Moskowitz is a fighter with a reputation for having "sharp elbows"— if that’s a synonym for getting the job done, she’ll take it. A born and bred New Yorker, former City Councilmember, and "charter czarina," Moskowitz has taken on powerful unions and politicians to establish and grow her astonishingly effective and popular charter school program in four of the city’s five boroughs.
In this unabashedly candid memoir, Moskowitz tells of how she became a forward-thinking education entrepreneur and her fight to establish nearly three dozen schools—activism that has made her into one of the most polarizing figures in New York City and beyond. Now, having established a remarkable, even unprecedented, track record for guiding the city’s most disadvantaged children to high academic performance, Moskowitz addresses the battles she has won and lost, writing candidly about the people who seek to undermine her work—most notably New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio—and celebrating the powerful allies who have aided her cause, including former Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Governor Andrew Cuomo.
Moskowitz’s insightful memoir is a deeply felt personal story and an impassioned call to action that bluntly identifies failing policies and the alarmingly powerful forces arrayed against improving an education system that is both deeply dysfunctional and prejudiced. The Education of Eva Moskowitz is sure to galvanize supporters, enrage her opponents, generate headlines, and urgently impact the national conversation on education.
Eva Moskowitz is a fighter with a reputation for having "sharp elbows"— if that’s a synonym for getting the job done, she’ll take it. A born and bred New Yorker, former City Councilmember, and "charter czarina," Moskowitz has taken on powerful unions and politicians to establish and grow her astonishingly effective and popular charter school program in four of the city’s five boroughs.
In this unabashedly candid memoir, Moskowitz tells of how she became a forward-thinking education entrepreneur and her fight to establish nearly three dozen schools—activism that has made her into one of the most polarizing figures in New York City and beyond. Now, having established a remarkable, even unprecedented, track record for guiding the city’s most disadvantaged children to high academic performance, Moskowitz addresses the battles she has won and lost, writing candidly about the people who seek to undermine her work—most notably New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio—and celebrating the powerful allies who have aided her cause, including former Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Governor Andrew Cuomo.
Moskowitz’s insightful memoir is a deeply felt personal story and an impassioned call to action that bluntly identifies failing policies and the alarmingly powerful forces arrayed against improving an education system that is both deeply dysfunctional and prejudiced. The Education of Eva Moskowitz is sure to galvanize supporters, enrage her opponents, generate headlines, and urgently impact the national conversation on education.
400 pages, Hardcover
First published September 12, 2017
37 people are currently reading
245 people want to read
About the author
Eva Moskowitz
5 books21 followersEva Moskowitz is the founder and CEO of Success Academy Charter Schools, and a former New York City council member. She has a PhD in American history from Johns Hopkins University, a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, and is a graduate of Stuyvesant High School. She lives in Harlem with her husband and their three children.
Learn more in her new memoir, The Education of Eva Moskowitz: http://bit.ly/EvaMMemoir
Learn more in her new memoir, The Education of Eva Moskowitz: http://bit.ly/EvaMMemoir
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
December 9, 2017
Because Eva Moskowitz is a model administrator in the current state of public education, this is perhaps the most important book for my professional life that I've read in a long time. I could write pages of meaningful quotes that should guide our work in education like "finding out what truly works in education takes real commitment, courage, and reflectiveness." When a public figures write a memoir, he or she controls the narrative and that is no different here. But it's hard to doubt her unequivocal focus on making improvements in a system that is nearly impossible to improve. I was surprised that she does not like engaging in conflict, but loved how she framed the need to engage. "I’m naturally a pretty cowardly person. I can’t stand to watch violent movies, I dread getting shots at the doctor, I jump five feet in the air if someone sneaks up on me, and I worry about everything," she writes. "But I wasn’t going to let (NY Mayor Bill) de Blasio take away our schools. The philosopher Lao Tzu said 'loving someone deeply gives you courage.' So does loving a cause." I'm a big fan of Eva's and we need many more educators and leaders like her. At some point in the book she quotes Ben Franklin, who said, "one should either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." She has done both.
December 4, 2017
What an exciting and inspiring book! Eva Moskowitz tells her own story and the story of Success Academy Charter Schools in parallel threads. Both accounts are fascinating and ultimately triumphant.
Allow me to make my own views quite clear. New York is considered a great city, although Geoffrey West shows in Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies, that it falls short in almost every measure of excellence for a city of its size. It is much loved by many, but I believe that labor unions and the corrupt politics and bureaucracy that they feed have destroyed much of its greatness. None more than the unions for teachers and other employees of K-12 education, which have enabled massive waste of taxpayer funds, mediocre, metastatic bureaucracy that would make the Soviet system look efficient, and a criminal failure to educate its students. The Darth Vader of this race to the bottom has been Randi Weingarten, a no-holds-barred lawyer who co-founded and headed the United Federation of Teachers to protect the teachers and myriad administrators of New York from any reasonable expectation of performance, at the expense of the students. Generations of poor students, in particular, have suffered, and failed to fulfill their potential as a result.
Ms. Moskowitz worked briefly as a professor after completing a PhD in American History at Johns Hopkins, but she is clearly a person who needs to be doing a thousand things at once—including fighting a few battles—and she quickly gravitated to New York politics. She is morally uncompromising, full of chutzpah, and endlessly energetic. Her primary interest as a local politician was in education, and its improvement. Having grown up in Harlem, the daughter of left-wing academics, and a product of the New York public schools, I expected her (as I would) to get out of the city in adulthood, or at least to settle in an upscale neighborhood with good schools or ready access to private schools. Instead, she and her high-school sweetheart husband settled back in Harlem. Her political power, as head of the Education Committee, grew under Mike Bloomberg, and she and her allies seemed primed to make real change in education. She bravely headed a series of hearings on the union contracts for the system's teachers, administrators, custodians, paraprofessionals, and guidance counsellors. Never before had the Education Committee (or any governing body) dared to question any detail of union contracts, and most of the politicians ran like rats from slaughter. Her brave efforts seemed ready to result in real reform, but Bloomberg had to back down in the face of threats from Weingarten, backed by all of the New York unions.
Moskowitz recognized that New York's deeply corrupt politics and unions would always win, and for the first time this supporter of the existing New York public school system had to admit that charter schools (non-union by definition) seemed to offer the only possible way to offer excellent, free public education. Moskowitz was beaten in the next election, helped by the endorsement of her opponent by the New York Times and the backing of the UFT. In the wake of her defeat, one of the job offers she received was from investors Joel Greenblatt and John Petry to run a charter school. The Success Academy Charter School was born, and the Moskowitz tornado unleashed.
Ms. Moskowitz's account of Success Academy's remarkable growth in the face of a multitude of challenges is quite detailed in many parts and yet very broad. Only a world-class micromanager could have her hands on so many details, let alone remember them, but she also provides a surprising amount of supporting data. It's a cliché that politics is a dirty game, but hearing about New York politics can be nauseating. I am sure that Eva Moskowitz is no less imperfect than the rest of us, but I believe that she has achieved great things for the people of New York and the United States. Her ambition and aggressiveness are prerequisites for playing a tough game against dirty players. I hope to see her as President of the Unites States.
Allow me to make my own views quite clear. New York is considered a great city, although Geoffrey West shows in Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies, that it falls short in almost every measure of excellence for a city of its size. It is much loved by many, but I believe that labor unions and the corrupt politics and bureaucracy that they feed have destroyed much of its greatness. None more than the unions for teachers and other employees of K-12 education, which have enabled massive waste of taxpayer funds, mediocre, metastatic bureaucracy that would make the Soviet system look efficient, and a criminal failure to educate its students. The Darth Vader of this race to the bottom has been Randi Weingarten, a no-holds-barred lawyer who co-founded and headed the United Federation of Teachers to protect the teachers and myriad administrators of New York from any reasonable expectation of performance, at the expense of the students. Generations of poor students, in particular, have suffered, and failed to fulfill their potential as a result.
Ms. Moskowitz worked briefly as a professor after completing a PhD in American History at Johns Hopkins, but she is clearly a person who needs to be doing a thousand things at once—including fighting a few battles—and she quickly gravitated to New York politics. She is morally uncompromising, full of chutzpah, and endlessly energetic. Her primary interest as a local politician was in education, and its improvement. Having grown up in Harlem, the daughter of left-wing academics, and a product of the New York public schools, I expected her (as I would) to get out of the city in adulthood, or at least to settle in an upscale neighborhood with good schools or ready access to private schools. Instead, she and her high-school sweetheart husband settled back in Harlem. Her political power, as head of the Education Committee, grew under Mike Bloomberg, and she and her allies seemed primed to make real change in education. She bravely headed a series of hearings on the union contracts for the system's teachers, administrators, custodians, paraprofessionals, and guidance counsellors. Never before had the Education Committee (or any governing body) dared to question any detail of union contracts, and most of the politicians ran like rats from slaughter. Her brave efforts seemed ready to result in real reform, but Bloomberg had to back down in the face of threats from Weingarten, backed by all of the New York unions.
Moskowitz recognized that New York's deeply corrupt politics and unions would always win, and for the first time this supporter of the existing New York public school system had to admit that charter schools (non-union by definition) seemed to offer the only possible way to offer excellent, free public education. Moskowitz was beaten in the next election, helped by the endorsement of her opponent by the New York Times and the backing of the UFT. In the wake of her defeat, one of the job offers she received was from investors Joel Greenblatt and John Petry to run a charter school. The Success Academy Charter School was born, and the Moskowitz tornado unleashed.
Ms. Moskowitz's account of Success Academy's remarkable growth in the face of a multitude of challenges is quite detailed in many parts and yet very broad. Only a world-class micromanager could have her hands on so many details, let alone remember them, but she also provides a surprising amount of supporting data. It's a cliché that politics is a dirty game, but hearing about New York politics can be nauseating. I am sure that Eva Moskowitz is no less imperfect than the rest of us, but I believe that she has achieved great things for the people of New York and the United States. Her ambition and aggressiveness are prerequisites for playing a tough game against dirty players. I hope to see her as President of the Unites States.
Read
January 14, 2018I tried. I really did. I heard Moskowitz on NPR and wanted to get some insight on how she thinks and how Success Charters schools are viewed from her perspective. As a Special Education Teacher, who works in NYC public schools, I have seen how Success treats their students with behavioral difficulties. Suspending Kindergarteners is one big issue I have with Success Charters. Last year, in the span of a month and a half, five students from Success enrolled in our school due to being forced out because of behavioral issues. These students are now excelling and are receiving the support they need. The model that Moskowitz boasts about in her book is false and the attitude that I have encountered with teachers working in these specific charter schools is disgusting and elitist. Moskowitz drones on in her book (within the few chapters that I could stomach) about how she is helping our children, specifically students of Color in disadvantaged areas. I can sum up my feelings about Moskowitz, Success Charters, and this book in one simple sentence. Full of Bullshit.
March 26, 2018
I am not enamored of the current public school unions or the methodology (or lack of) used in public schools. This book is a must read for everyone who would like all of our schools to actually educate our future leaders. She calls for more rigor in the curriculum, responsibility for their learning by students and parents, respectful behavior toward teachers and each other...in other words, a polite educational setting for all involved. We need to buy this for our schools, school boards, and administrations,then require all involved therein to read it and ask themselves why their school isn't doing this and how they can work to get to this spot.
June 17, 2019
Going into this, I honestly had no idea what to expect. Although I live in upstate NY, I’d never heard of Eva Moskowitz or the Success Academy charter schools. The book had been suggested by my library when I was looking for a book that was already checked out, so I figured I’d read it and see.
Eva mixes history (going back to her great grandparents and moving forward to present day) with a detailed story of the trials and triumphs of Success Academy. Occasionally, I found the switch in perspectives a little confusing and had to take a second and realize we’d gone back in time again (especially as the historical tale starts to catch up with the present day story of Success Academy), but that’s easily forgivable.
To be honest, I wish I’d had this book to read years ago when I started homeschooling my sons. The notes on how children learn and how we need to allow them to struggle to reach their potential (which reminds me a bit why it’s important that a chick is allowed to break free from it’s own shell whenever possible, and why a butterfly must fight to get out of it’s cocoon) would have been knowledge worth having.
Eva mixes history (going back to her great grandparents and moving forward to present day) with a detailed story of the trials and triumphs of Success Academy. Occasionally, I found the switch in perspectives a little confusing and had to take a second and realize we’d gone back in time again (especially as the historical tale starts to catch up with the present day story of Success Academy), but that’s easily forgivable.
To be honest, I wish I’d had this book to read years ago when I started homeschooling my sons. The notes on how children learn and how we need to allow them to struggle to reach their potential (which reminds me a bit why it’s important that a chick is allowed to break free from it’s own shell whenever possible, and why a butterfly must fight to get out of it’s cocoon) would have been knowledge worth having.
February 21, 2018
I stumbled across this book because it was briefly quoted in a National Association of Scholars newsletter, a quote about her physics teacher at Stuyvesant High School who was too drunk to teach. I bought the book on a whim, having never heard about her before. I agree with the 5 star reviews at Amazon.
By coincidence, I was nearly done with the book when I saw William Ayers mention it on C-Span. He said that Eva Moskowitz "contradicts herself on every other page". I read every other page, and all the pages in between. Mr. Ayers sees some sort of contradiction that she often cites the extraordinarily high standardized test scores of the students in Success Academy Charter Schools. Supposedly she is contradicting something... I forget what Ayers said. But that's it? That is all William Ayers can fault? I take William Ayers remark as another reason for a 5 star endorsement.
Wow. What an inspirational book. I am not quite in a position to quit my job and go work for her. But I understand why people who read the book might want to do so.
By coincidence, I was nearly done with the book when I saw William Ayers mention it on C-Span. He said that Eva Moskowitz "contradicts herself on every other page". I read every other page, and all the pages in between. Mr. Ayers sees some sort of contradiction that she often cites the extraordinarily high standardized test scores of the students in Success Academy Charter Schools. Supposedly she is contradicting something... I forget what Ayers said. But that's it? That is all William Ayers can fault? I take William Ayers remark as another reason for a 5 star endorsement.
Wow. What an inspirational book. I am not quite in a position to quit my job and go work for her. But I understand why people who read the book might want to do so.
April 20, 2021
Honestly, even though my career was in education, I knew very little about charter schools. This memoir gave me some basic background. For one thing, these Sucess Academies in NYC had a lottery system for choosing students which meant they took in students with both learning and behavioral problems. For another, they demanded parent involvement and a lot of communication from teachers to parents about progress- both positive and negative. They relied on standardized testing. They suspended students. In NYC, they still are only 2% of the schools in the city but early successes show that they are improving education which is remarkable since the first SA schools were in Harlem.
As for Eva Moskowitz, she is a powerhouse with boundless energy, ambition, and passion for her goals. Of the reviews I've read, she is controversial, biased, and driven. I got the feeling that if you were teaching in one of her schools your job would be 24/7- and more. With that formula, I'd be burned out in a couple of years.
As for Eva Moskowitz, she is a powerhouse with boundless energy, ambition, and passion for her goals. Of the reviews I've read, she is controversial, biased, and driven. I got the feeling that if you were teaching in one of her schools your job would be 24/7- and more. With that formula, I'd be burned out in a couple of years.
May 28, 2018
Excellent narrative on public school education
This is a great narrative on NYC public school education system, its ills and challenges, and how charter schools attempt to address it- and succeeding at it. The author is a passionate educator, almost maniacal and unstoppable in her drive to reform the school system. Moskowitz’s zealous mission is to give New York City’s most underserved districts’ children a great education, and a chance at a future.
The book details the author’s life and journey to discovery of her passion for education, and a story of the launch and evolution of the city’s most successful charter school, Success Academy.
The book is well written and is very informative. Knowing that principled and driven people like Eva Moskowitz keep fighting and raising the bar for excellence makes one hopeful for the future of education.
This is a great narrative on NYC public school education system, its ills and challenges, and how charter schools attempt to address it- and succeeding at it. The author is a passionate educator, almost maniacal and unstoppable in her drive to reform the school system. Moskowitz’s zealous mission is to give New York City’s most underserved districts’ children a great education, and a chance at a future.
The book details the author’s life and journey to discovery of her passion for education, and a story of the launch and evolution of the city’s most successful charter school, Success Academy.
The book is well written and is very informative. Knowing that principled and driven people like Eva Moskowitz keep fighting and raising the bar for excellence makes one hopeful for the future of education.
August 27, 2018
Having founded a school, the first few chapters brought laughter and tears as the process is so very arduous and joyful. The stories in this book are real and gruesome details are not withheld. I was surprised at just how much of the book described the political battles, however this is and was the reality of running high performing schools. There are few people with the skills, resources, and tenacity of Eva, and this is a must-read for anyone who is passionate about improving public education.
January 7, 2018
I have always had conflicted, though mostly positive feelings about Eva. She seems like someone getting a lot of great things done, but maybe not quite my style. This book left me ready to drop everything and go work for her. She's so reasonable! There must be another side to some of these things, but she sure does a good job of convincing you that there isn't.
September 23, 2017
Full disclosure, I work at Success Academy, but I just have to say that chapter 33, How Many Unions Does It Take to Screw in a Light Bulb?, highlights my day to day frustrations better than anything I've ever read.
January 22, 2022
In some ways Moskowitz is very impressive and she does explain a lot about NYC charter schools that I didn't know (battles over colocating district schools and charters, various city council hearings, blah blah) but a good chunk of the book is about settling scores with old nemeses and bashing unions. Both to be expected, obviously, but it gets tiresome after a while. She often makes it sound like her charter school network is a scrappy homegrown project in contrast to the horrible machine of district schools and teacher unions, but she's someone with connections and private donors are part of what made her project possible. As a charter school skeptic I wanted her to engage in good faith with the arguments of charter school opponents and union members, because I think that would be interesting, but this book is supposed to be a victory lap more than anything else. I still have a lot of questions about the curriculum/teacher training that Success Academy uses
December 25, 2017
I had no idea how many challenges and road blocks Eva was up against throughout her personal, political, and educational life. I tend to agree with her on most things, and think Success Academy is an impressive network. I’ll look forward to reading different perspectives in the future.
July 5, 2018
About to send my son to SA so I found this helpful in our preparation. After sending two kids to DOE elementary schools, and having taught briefly in NYC schools, I can appreciate all her details about the classroom, testing and the teachers union.
October 26, 2017
Inspiring
As an educator in NYC, this book has been very inspiring. Eva's commitment to the children of this city and her approach give me hope for the future.
As an educator in NYC, this book has been very inspiring. Eva's commitment to the children of this city and her approach give me hope for the future.
December 9, 2017
Very interesting exposing of the political underbelly of education and the fight for reform.
January 2, 2018
Well written, personal, sometimes score-settling, but very much worth reading...
February 19, 2018
Stellar book if you are into high performing schools.
May 30, 2018
the very entertaining and an instructive history of the founding of Success Academy and the most daunting challenges facing public education.
Above all else, a love letter to the city.
Above all else, a love letter to the city.
September 21, 2020
Part autobiography, part history of Success Acadamies. Very interesting, even fun. Made me really love charters, and hate politics.
October 21, 2020
very interesting how Eva fought to establish Success Academy - thousands of parents and children must be grateful to her and her team!
May 8, 2021
Five stars for all that she has done for New York City kids. Deeply grateful.
January 3, 2018
Loved this. I didn't know much about her, or really even about how charter schools operate in NYC. Amazing account of her own life as well as her work of the past 20 years challenging the [failed] NYC public school system. She is a visionary and a relentless advocate for education and for children.
January 4, 2018
It's clear that this book is an attempt by Moskowitz to humanize herself to her many critics, however, it fails at this and acts purely as a medium to settle scores with her perceived enemies (including any media outlet that criticizes her and every union ever apparently).
April 20, 2020
Like breaking the 4 minute mile, she gives a vision of what’s possible. I’m a fan.
By the end of the second week, I was exhausted. We’d had a parent with a nervous breakdown, broken glass on our play yard, parents not reading to their children, an incompetent uniform company, failing electricity and Internet, a librarian work slowdown, a broken air conditioner, belligerent parents, nonworking toilets, a police stakeout, a cash crisis, a sick nurse, frozen milk, and weevils. Weevils!!! If this was just two weeks, what would a year be like? And what would it be like when we had not 165 students, but 500 or, God forbid, dozens of schools with thousands of kids as Joel and John wanted? Maybe I wasn’t cut out for this work. Maybe I’d been naïve to think I could run a school with so little experience. But I couldn’t just fold up my tent, so we went about solving our problems one by one.
Our job was to get the kids to care about their academic work just as much as they cared about other things in their life such as being popular or playing basketball well. To do this, we’d praise students for improving their scores and confront them if they were being lazy. Did this sometimes make them feel bad? Of course! That’s normal. If you want to go through life never feeling bad, don’t aspire to accomplish anything, root for a sports team, or fall in love.
I don’t enjoy conflict and I’m naturally a pretty cowardly person. I can’t stand to watch violent movies, I dread getting shots at the doctor, I jump five feet in the air if someone sneaks up on me, and I worry about everything. But I wasn’t going to let de Blasio take away our schools. The philosopher Lao Tzu said “loving someone deeply gives you courage.” So does loving a cause.
As writing this book has made me profoundly aware....
By the end of the second week, I was exhausted. We’d had a parent with a nervous breakdown, broken glass on our play yard, parents not reading to their children, an incompetent uniform company, failing electricity and Internet, a librarian work slowdown, a broken air conditioner, belligerent parents, nonworking toilets, a police stakeout, a cash crisis, a sick nurse, frozen milk, and weevils. Weevils!!! If this was just two weeks, what would a year be like? And what would it be like when we had not 165 students, but 500 or, God forbid, dozens of schools with thousands of kids as Joel and John wanted? Maybe I wasn’t cut out for this work. Maybe I’d been naïve to think I could run a school with so little experience. But I couldn’t just fold up my tent, so we went about solving our problems one by one.
Our job was to get the kids to care about their academic work just as much as they cared about other things in their life such as being popular or playing basketball well. To do this, we’d praise students for improving their scores and confront them if they were being lazy. Did this sometimes make them feel bad? Of course! That’s normal. If you want to go through life never feeling bad, don’t aspire to accomplish anything, root for a sports team, or fall in love.
I don’t enjoy conflict and I’m naturally a pretty cowardly person. I can’t stand to watch violent movies, I dread getting shots at the doctor, I jump five feet in the air if someone sneaks up on me, and I worry about everything. But I wasn’t going to let de Blasio take away our schools. The philosopher Lao Tzu said “loving someone deeply gives you courage.” So does loving a cause.
As writing this book has made me profoundly aware....
June 25, 2020
I picked this up, since she's the leader of my new organization. It is good insight into her philosophy on education and her views about politics generally. She certainly has her convictions and the work being done at her schools is amazing, though I am not sure this book is helpful to anyone looking to figure out the secret sauce behind Success. For that, they should go to their open source curriculum and try that.
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews