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 four 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.

This candid look inside the fight for school choice reveals:

• The Battle for Charter Schools: A behind-the-scenes account of taking on powerful politicians like Mayor Bill de Blasio and entrenched unions to establish dozens of schools for disadvantaged children.
• A Leader’s Memoir: The personal journey of a former City Councilmember who earned a reputation for "sharp elbows" as she became one of the most polarizing figures in New York.
• Inside Urban Education: A frank look at the rough-and-tumble politics of improving a dysfunctional public school system from the founder of Success Academy.
• Educational Policy in Action: An impassioned call to action that exposes failing policies and the forces arrayed against giving parents better educational options for their children.

Eva 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 and 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.