We know that states have granted charters to rappers (Pitbull in Florida) and to Andre Agassi, a high-school dropout), but this is the first instance where a state approved a charter led by a 22-year-old man. Given his resume, it appears that he has never taught or run a school. Perhaps he will prove that no experience is necessary to run a charter school.
It was only six years ago that he graduated from School Without Walls at age 16. Now, at 22, he’s armed with a freshly minted doctorate degree in education and permission from the state Board of Regents to open a charter high school in Rochester in 2015.
“I remember being in school and feeling I was a bit more advanced and (not having enough options),” he said. “I wanted to grow up and open a school that’s predicated on each student’s needs and interests. … I did it sooner than I expected.”
It will be called Greater Works Charter School, accepting about 100 ninth-graders in its first year and eventually expanding to about 400 students in grades 9-12.
One of the key tenets will be extensive use of online learning. Each class will have two certified teachers, or one teacher and one teacher’s assistant; at any given time, each of them will be working with a third of the students and the remaining third — in particular, the more advanced students — will be working on computers….
After graduating from School Without Walls in 2008, Morris got a bachelor’s degree at age 18 from Western Governors University, an online college based in Salt Lake City. He then received master’s and doctoral degrees from Concordia University near Chicago.
Morris has an educational consulting firm and said he has worked with the Rochester Prep schools, among others. He also helped start three non-profit organizations, he said: Sparq Rochester, a youth arts outfit; Greater Works Education Network, a fledgling statewide charter advocacy group; and Victory Living Christian Faith Center.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
So we’re saying if you’re in the top third of the class you don’t get a teacher. Brilliant (not).
Sounds like it’s the top third that *doesn’t* get a teacher.
OMG…more than insane.
The blind leading the blind!
Worse: The onlined leading the onlined!
The outliar leading the outlied to??
And the homeschooled leading the schooled. I’ve had several of them in my courses and when they describe what they are doing in their first jobs teaching children in schools, though they’ve never attended schools themselves and are taking online college courses, it’s very clear they have no clue how to do anything but lecture, use workbooks, go online and take field trips. And they are teaching preschoolers! Ugh.
Proof that snowball’s chances of surviving hell are better than this being a success. Lovely!
So cool…we have officially arrived at the Cracker Jacks era, where one could conceivably get a Cracker Jacks prize/high school diploma followed by multiple Cracker Jacks prize/fake college degrees and come full circle to living the dream of being the boss of a brand new Cracker Jack high based on a Cracker Jack resume. this kid is showing how easy it is these days to scam the entire system! big fat yuck!!!!
Concordia U advertizes itself as “100% online”! This is utter insanity.
I think this is the Concordia University near Chicago he attended: https://www.cuchicago.edu/ It may have online programs, but it also has a full campus.
And both a men’s and women’s lacrosse team next year.
So which Concordia did this kid attend? A real PhD at 22! I don’t buy it.
“The name of the school, Morris said, refers to the potential of its students. Rather than funneling them all toward college, he said there will be an emphasis on laying out a variety of post-graduation choices, including career paths and the military.”
Looks like this has been in the works since he was 18.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:deuiJ5OHNsoJ:rochester.twcnews.com/content/526295/local-man-unveils-plans-to-start-a-high-school-charter-school/+&cd=7&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
This idea that students in public schools are supposedly STRICTLY LIMITED to going to college is not something I have encountered.
It has never been true here that students are somehow steered away from skilled trades or a community college certificate program or the military. We have a 4 county vocational high school that is a wildly popular option and has been for the last 30 years. There are two skilled trades programs for high school graduates operated by labor unions in the closest urban area. They’re always fully enrolled and they’re competitive to get into.
I’ve never encountered anyone who felt they were ordered or pushed to go to college instead of opting to takes trades training. I don’t think national ed reformers should start with the assumption that we’re all just looking down our noses at anyone who doesn’t go the traditional 4 year college route. We’re not. I went into a job training program after high school and I was never made to feel the slightest bit less-than for doing that, and I’m 52. Later I did other things, but my choice was in no way “new” or unusual.
I think the push for online learning is going to be huge. The US Department of Ed heavily promotes it. This is what they’re pushing today:
“At Hart Middle School in Southeast, 200 students learn math at their own pace in one big room guided by a computer algorithm that generates a new “playlist” of tasks each day.
Some schools are seeing fast results. The approach at Hart has shown some learning gains but also a lot of teacher turnover. Whether it will stay there is an “open question,” Rice said.”
This is exactly what we read about with Rocketship. It’s the giant class with computers. Rocketship had huge teacher turnover too.
I think pushing this so hard is unwise, particularly for a government agency. It just has the feeling of crash and burn and, ultimately, regrets, when it doesn’t live up to the hype. It’s a huge investment for schools too. They save on staffing, I’m sure, but the start-up investment is huge. They won’t get that money back, and they won’t know what the opportunity cost is – what they could have invested in rather than online learning.
I know it’s fruitless to urge caution with ed reformers. The movement seems to specialize in “reckless investment and over-hyped miracle claims” 🙂
I am strongly advocating that my own district go more slowly, though, just as a parent and a member of the public and an ordinarily careful person. They don’t have the capacity to absorb all this risk. They can’t take the hit if it’s a big flop.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/blended-learning-programs-grow-in-dc-with-students-relying-more-on-computers/2014/11/23/e7b84ce2-7197-11e4-8808-afaa1e3a33ef_story.html
I expect the results to be limited to the area “math facts” – where computers and rote learning are most efficacious. Then, after they discover that the students have no sense of what the numbers mean after they have completed their plug-and-chug, parents and “experts” will decry the dearth of math knowledge and move on to something else. Heck, this already happens in my children’s schools. Te pendulum swings back and forth between facts and meaning, whole language and phonics, etc
The difference here is that there big money to be made…
How much do the current levels of instruction go beyond math facts?
You might look at the website The Art of Problem Solving. It is an attempt to teach mathematics to students, not calculation.
Everyone should support two year schools that offer technical training. Germany has a fantastic system that involves learning and apprenticeship. I’ve have seen some innovative technical training in TX as well. When they finish, they can get a higher paying job than many liberal arts graduates. My daughter is an honor graduate in political science and gets paid $11.50 per hr. as an assistant in TX. She would have been better off in trade school!
What???!!!
You can’t make this stuff up.
retired teacher,
That is what I have in mind, but with a twist. Middle class families blindly believe in Higher Education as in their own year in 1950. However, we should make sure that our children have licences to earn good pay check in their first 5 years, then we support them to continue on with a higher education, in order to handle the leadership role in international level.
School system intentionally creates a privilege in job qualification from higher education in the old time. In the past, engineer can create and invent concrete design to serve society, and PhD person can theorize some principles that are useful to human beings.
In the present time, all drop out business tycoons promote idiots with big payday and all useless paper degree from their own created universities.
It is not too late for all true “grass-rooted” educators in PUBLIC HIGHER EDUCATION to turn table around. Please be patient and intelligent to train FUTURE LEADERS with honesty, integrity, and being considerate. As a result, in the next 10 or 20 years, these future leaders can sustain and revive the INDEPENDENCE and DEMOCRACY in America against “monkey see monkey do” from all idiots created by drop-out tycoons.
I hope that some people in this thread would share with all readers information about the family background of 22 yrs old PhD, and the background of the administrative staff of university where 22 yrs old PhD major in education graduated. It is useful to let all parents = tax payers in USA to know where American Public Education FUND is and WHY it is not properly used to strengthen American Public Education in training high quality educators, as well as support all needy children for free education in their first 13 years of learning from kindergarten to grade 12. Back2basic
I am happy that my daughter received her BA. She is well read and an excellent writer. She is somewhat shy so many entry level sales jobs are not for her. When I said she would have been better off as a graduate of a trade school, I meant that she would have been able to make a better living with an associates degree and specific training that would have made her more employable.
Students who take and fully complete an online class must be motivated and independent. My son took 3 online classes in high school, and he worked hours completing homework and tests. He explained that you must read about 20 pages to get what the teacher would have explained in class that day. Students who are unmotivated will not do well with online classes at all. I just say good luck to the evil politicians who think everything we do every day in the classroom can easily be replaced by online instruction.
I generally think that NYSED and SUNY are excellent gatekeepers, and Rochester families certainly could use good options, but this is one of the weakest proposals I’ve seen approved, from the quality of how the application was put together to the credentials of the board. This is also the fourth time this group applied for a charter–twice they were rejected, once they voluntarily withdrew their proposal.
I wish them luck. It is indeed very strange that the people who teach K-12 teachers don’t need to have experience teaching k-12.
Maybe it was like one of those “my parents say I can’t have a cell phone until I’m 13” things.
“Can I have a charter school?”
“No, you’re only 18!”
. . . .
“Can I have one when I’m 22?”
“Fine, just leave me alone!”
Speaking of credentials, I just read that most people on TV talking about education are not educators. This is one of the reasons it is difficult to get a pro-public education message out to the public.http://mediamatters.org/research/2014/11/20/report-only-9-percent-of-guests-discussing-educ/201659
Everyone thinks they are experts at education just because they went to school. How many of them also think you can become a master chef just from eating meals prepared by others?
This is Onion level insanity. He looks like a he’s in high school himself.
Onion is a lot lower than this insanity.
One thing we know for sure: it will be a complete failure, but it will not be the fault of the wunderkind charter founder/owner, operator and CEO. Instead, we will learn that the young genious is ahead of his time, and that none of the teachers /parents/ students/ investors were willing to make the committment and/or sacrifice necessary to make his vision a reality.
This insanity is getting into L. Black’s realm except that one has to be tripping to attempt to understand this shit.
Is there a proportional relationship between inexperience and unaccountable accountability? This insanity is way beyond my comprehension.
You know, you can’t “graduate” beauty school and immediately open up your own salon.
This kid, doctor and all at 22, is going to use tax payer dollars to open up a school and educate kids via computers. Oh, and 2 teachers per class to pay attention to 1/3rd of the kids, oh, and that’s more attention then they would get in traditional public schools…did I read that right?
Perhaps this well-educated young man will get a correspondence diploma from medical school and open up a hospital… taxpayer funded, of course. I don’t mean to be snarky, he might be an amazing Einstein of a kid, but something about this is just……….wrong.
It isn’t like he had a genius invention at this age that can be peddled to the public for consumption. That would be a different story.
Education has gone to hell – this is a perfect example. If his school fails, it will just close up shop, and perhaps he will be appointed by a mayor somewhere to be Chancellor of Schools, at 24. Washington DC–here is your next wunderkind.
Taxpayer dollars should NOT be spent on this kid’s school. Period. God Bless America.
To Reteach 4 America:
I guess that the short training (5 weeks?) requires you to reteach, and there is no time to learn or relearn, correct?
Have you ever questioned those food critics who did not need to be chef, but having good judgment on taste, look, and the right to award the contest to the winning contestant on behalf of Frozen Food Corporation? This is called money talk.
Have you acknowledged that all educators in this website have more experienced years in learning and teaching than your age? This is called knowledge, experience, and wisdom in education. Back2basic
I am not from Teach for America. I have three degrees in education and I’ve been teaching for over 40 years. My handle mocks the notion that new college graduates with 5 weeks of training are experts in education, cooking or anything else.
BTW, m4potw, you totally missed my point. TFAers and others who believe that having been a student is enough to become a teacher are the ones who are most likely to think that anyone who has eaten their mother’s meals is qualified to be a chef.
I don’t use Twitter much, but my self description there states, “Veteran educator aiming 2 set the record straight on best educational practices & policies & reteach those impacted by deceptive shock doctrine/crony capitalism” https://twitter.com/reteach4america
To Reteach 4 America:
I am sorry to miss your sarcasm to TFA. It is frustrated for me to acknowledge business tycoons impose their money power on those “buy out” government officials who choose to be silent and to look on all hell broken sides.
It is no time to be sarcasm, but to tell as it is. Please tell them where to go because money cannot control educated people. I would rather be in the shark’s mouth than to live under any dictatorship even if from my own smart and caring MOTHER, left alone under stupid criminal mind.
In America, being as experienced educators, if all of American Higher Education leaders cannot put a stop on this kind of madness, all of these leaders should realize their fates as in Chinese history (in the past and 20th century), and Germany recent WWII history.
Yes, the weak get used to moan, complain, and suffer without strength and intelligence to fight back for their NEEDS. However, educators cultivate these business tycoons without means to control their madness. Who can be above the law?
It is time to let all business tycoons out of the country to live with savage people. We can handle our lives better without them. Back2basic
Do you say the same thing to people like EduShyster and Peter Greene? Please, I have been fighting the battle against all of the negative propaganda that is put out by our government and corporations about US teachers and schools for decades, ever since the 1983 publication of “A Nation at Risk.” When people refuse to acknowledge the truth that is presented to them up front, we have to find other ways to get through.
Though this whole thing is sad, damaging, etc., I wonder how well this kid did in math….He mentions the top third, and another third, but what about the “third third”?? Perhaps he should be in remedial math?
The second teacher or assistant will be working with the other third of the class:
“One of the key tenets will be extensive use of online learning. Each class will have two certified teachers, or one teacher and one teacher’s assistant; at any given time, each of them will be working with a third of the students and the remaining third — in particular, the more advanced students — will be working on computers….”
My concern is that, in my career, I never had a class where an entire third of the students were “advanced” –and could be left alone on computers.