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According to Richard Whitmire, the author of the generally positive 2013 book On the Rocketship: How Top Charter Schools Are Pushing the Envelope, a major cost-saving solution was for students to spend significant time working on laptops in large groups supervised by noncertified, lower-paid "instructional lab specialists." To achieve his goal of scaling quickly, Danner couldn't rely on philanthropic money to supplement school budgets, as other charter schools do. The heart of the Rocketship model is the daily rotation of students between classrooms and laptop work in what the company calls Learning Labs. As more and more public schools are now turning to laptop programs and data-driven policies, the allegations against Rocketship pose the question: At what cost innovation? The common thread, the employees said, is a culture of producing test scores at all costs. "Everyone wants to get higher and higher percentages, and fudge the data, more or less." "It's a really competitive environment," says Wesley Borja, who worked from 2013 to 2015 at Rocketship Alma Academy in San Jose. The current and former educators linked that practice to the company's policy of tying 50 percent of teachers' pay to growth in student test scores. Several current and former staffers said this practice, in effect, amounted to hours of enforced silence.Ī handful of the employees also reported, and internal emails corroborated, a practice of having students retake standardized tests to increase scores. They recounted instances of inadequate supervision, bathroom accidents and even infections due to denial of restroom visits.Īnd they voiced concerns about a disciplinary measure the company calls Zone Zero.
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In interviews over the past two months, current and former employees at Rocketship Schools emphasized the pressures on employees and students. Yet despite its successes, as Rocketship has pushed to expand, some parents, teachers and community members have objected in public meetings, raising concerns about the school's tech-heavy instruction model, student-teacher ratio, and student health and safety. I have never seen that on any other campus I myself went to school or that my children had attended." The company says that 91 percent of families return each year. She says from her very first visit, what she saw was, "Every single teacher and administrator. The school has impressed parents like Lety Gomez, who grew up in East San Jose and whose child attends Rocketship Fuerza Community Prep there. The students, largely low-income and Hispanic, outperform their peers on state tests. Today there are 13 Rocketship schools, with 6,000 students, in the San Francisco Bay Area, Nashville, Tenn., and Milwaukee, with one scheduled to open in Washington, D.C., this fall. Since its inception nearly a decade ago in Silicon Valley, Rocketship has been among the most nationally applauded charter networks, hailed as an innovative model of blended learning.įounder John Danner, who made a fortune in Internet advertising, originally envisioned enrolling 1 million students by 2020, relying on the strength of three pillars - "personalized learning" with software, excellent teachers and parent involvement - to raise the achievement of underserved students. Students get motivated during the morning "Launch" assembly.Ĭourtesy of Nikki David/Rocketship Education