The Rocketship charter chain is known for replacing teachers with computers, relying on Teach for America to cut costs, and eliminating the arts to have more time for test prep. The chain is backed by the rich and powerful California corporate charter industry, and it is opening more test prep charters across the country. But it is heavily colonizing San Jose, California. The rich entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley would not put their own children in a Rocketship school; they prefer Waldorf schools, with lots of arts and imagination, and no technology.
Here is a plea from San Jose parents:
Dear Diane,
I wanted to encourage all of your readers to check out a new website dedicated to stopping the incredible growth of the Rocketship charter school network:
We’d love to invite you and your readers to support us by sending San Jose’s city council an email against the unchecked growth of Rocketships.
http://www.stoprocketship.com/take-action-now/
We are a small, low income, Latino community in downtown San Jose with two Rocketship schools in an 8 block span (one of which was the first Rocketship school, Mateo Sheedy). Rocketship has created deep divisions and animosity in our community. Now there is a plan to add a third Rocketship — all three just a few blocks from our thriving and successful public school, Washington Elementary. Our city councilman is married to Rocketship’s head of community relations, and they’ve hired a big money lobbyist to drive this through against the wishes of the community. We need some support!
Regards,
StopRocketShip.com
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Today’s print version of the New York Times–at least the one delivered in Athens, GA–has two full-page, full-color ads from Exxon/Mobile in support of Education Nation and the Commn Core Standards. Awfully hard for parent groups to match this kind of fire power! But do not give up!
Thanks for posting this. Sometimes I feel frustrated and powerless, so it is great to get a call to action for a simple task to support public schools.
I already sent my email to the San Jose City Council!
Unfortunately traditional zoned public schools can not be Waldorf schools because not every parent in the catchment area will agree. I suppose the rich entrepreneurs must send their students to private, charter, or magnet schools which can gather all the families that see value in that type of education together.
I don’t know about Waldorf, but I do know there are public Montessori, progressive and military schools. How is this possible? Did every parent in the catchment area of those schools agree to this?
I suspect they are magnet schools, not the “all and only” model of traditional zoned schools.
So why couldn’t there be a Waldorf magnet school?
Waldorf schools have play-based kindergartens and strongly encourage parents to reduce (or eliminate) exposure to television, movies and video games until adolescence. Reading instruction doesn’t begin until first grade. While this has proven to be an effective educational method, it is different from the mainstream and many parents expect that their local public school will begin reading instruction in kindergarten and that the school won’t have anything to say about students’ recreational activities. I have never heard of a (non-magnet) public Montessori or military school. I would strongly object if my neighborhood school was a military academy. Education should be for peace, and all. 🙂
Oops. Didn’t see the latter comment. Magnets would work. There are montessori magnets, progressive magnets, and military magnets. I’ve known hs students who have appreciated the opportunity to go to a military magnet.
Dienne,
Don’t waste your time.
TE has been told numerous times that there have been progressive, Montessori, single gender and all manner of other types of environments within traditional zoned (non magnet) public schools.
TE for some reason continues to “forget” we have been down this road many times.
Prior to the testing mania, which forced more standardization, my district and several districts in the area experimented with quite a few specialized classrooms within schools. The entire school was not military or single gender or whatever, but some classrooms within the traditional school were and parents could elect to place their kids in these classes. This was done at the request of parents in the zone for that school. A lot of this disappeared following the massive obsession (by parents and the district) with test scores. By the way, several other commenters have said they experienced similar setups in their districts prior to NCLB etc.
Ang,
These programs operated like imbedded magnet schools where students had a choice to participate or not. That seems like the functional equivalent of a magnet program, and exactly the sort of program that I have advocated.
The problem arises when there is only a half a class of students attending school A that wish to participate in a specialized program and half a class of students attending school B who wish to participate. Put them together and the class can be taught, but that requires an alternative to zoned school attendance.
Magnets aside, if these board members have their children in Waldorf schools, they should create Waldorf charters. I wonder why they don’t.
“all three just a few blocks from our thriving and successful public school, Washington Elementary”
Remember folks, school reform was sold as “improving public education”. That’s what we’ve spent billions of dollars and a decade on. They just forgot to tell us they had to destroy existing public schools to “save” them. There will be winners and losers in this market-based system, and kids who are in existing public schools are the designated losers.
I knew “blended learning” would be sold hard to the poorest kids. That was entirely predictable. Any idea about the student-teacher ratio in these schools? I saw the latest for-profit charter in NJ that was shoved off on poor kids has 60 to 1.
“We have brought hundreds of people to City Council and Board of Education meetings, we have written letters in English and Spanish, and nearly 500 people signed a petition in protest against the development of a 3rd Rocketship in our community. However, our elected City Councilman, Sam Liccardo, is married to Rocketship’s head of community relations, and Rocketship has poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into political campaigns. Rocketship primarily serves low income Latino residents, however, their leadership team and board of directors are mostly composed of affluent white people with fancy offices in distant Redwood City. Unfortunately, it seems that so far, money and political connections have been more powerful than dozens of eloquent speeches in Spanish to our elected officials.”
It doesn’t take long to play “find the captured lawmaker.”
These poor people.
These parasites always target poor minorities:
http://www.usatoday.com/picture-gallery/news/nation/2012/10/12/a-new-kind-of-elementary-school-rocketship-si-se-puede-academy/1630549/
Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO and author of the book “Lean In,” is listed on the Rocketship website as a supporter, and so is the owner of Netflix. Of course they would never subject her own children to an “education” like this. I don’t think the assault on public schools will stop unless people boycott. These people only care about money, and if they stand to lose money because of school privatization, they will move on.
Sheryl Sandberg has children and she has publicly said that she feels guilty when she drops her kids off and sees other mothers volunteering at the school all day. I doubt there is much need for parent volunteering in the cubicle factory photo you shared with us, Susan! So, my guess is her children do not go to a rocketship school.
We need to make these 1%- ers just pay their fare share in taxes so they have to choose their vanity projects more judiciously.
Susan,
From the captions, this looks like it’s some kind of “Learning Lab” with 130 stations. Do you know if this is representative of the general classrooms at Rocketship or is this a centralized resource for students from multiple classes? Kind of like PE where multiple classrooms come together to learn collectively, but for the mind.
Continuing reading the captions, each of the students is said to be learning at an individualized pace and getting help when they need it from the teacher(s) present. It might be that this is the educational equivalent of a CAFO, but in the absence of knowing whether or if there is other classroom time, I’d be wary of judging the entire Rocketship book by this single USAToday cover.
Regards,
Rob
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/10/13/charter-schools-future-classroom/1631387/
“For one thing, students spend as much as two hours a day one-on-one with a computer, learning virtually all of their basic skills through games.”
Unfortunately, this vile model of education that consists of little more than hooking low-income, minority kids up to computers and headphones is spreading to San Antonio, Texas.
“Unfortunately, this vile model of education that consists of little more than hooking low-income, minority kids up to computers and headphones is spreading to San Antonio, Texas.”
I work with juveniles in the court system. About 5 years ago, they replaced teachers in juvenile detention centers with computers. It’s cheaper. The kids of course need human interaction more than an ordinary high schooler, if anything, but they are throw-aways, so no one batted an eye.
I cannot believe this is now a charter model that is sold by high profile business people in minority communities, and it’s used on small children.
Sounds like the White Hat model. The CEO started this model because he claimed the local public school weren’t educating people properly to work in his factory. His answer-have students sit in front of a computer and try to teach themselves. The USA allows people to make money off of children this way.
This is already how many smaller school districts deal with ELL students. Hook em up to a computer and hope they manage to learn. Small wonder their STAAR pass rates are 20% of Anglo students.
Am I the only one who thinks Rocketship Charter is a goofy name for a school? It sounds like a school Wile E. Coyote would attend.
http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/223914811.html
It seems like this charter chain is growing its business similar to the way a fast food chain increase market share and that doesn’t seem right.
The difference is that a fast food chain doesn’t get free rent because of crony capitalism. Bill DeBlasio has proposed charging charter schools rent, and we need Mayor Eric Garcetti and Governor Jerry Brown to propose that too.
Nah,
Wile E. Coyote isn’t a student but is the founder and principal. His “inventions” always come back to bite him.
“Our city councilman is married to Rocketship’s head of community relations…”
This makes me wonder about the marriage of Michelle Rhee to the mayor of Sacramento.
The Washington elem takeover by Rocketship has more to do with the out-of-control Santa Clara County Board of Education than the San Jose City Council. The county board authorized 20+ Rocketship charters and they’re now pushing into healthy neighborhood schools to skim off just the cream students. Then you’ll see segregated API score differentials that justify the whole sham. http://www.sanjoseinside.com/news/entries/9_4_12_santa_clara_county_charter_schools_rocketship/
Diane, I have looked up to you for a while, but this type of comment is really beneath you: “…The rich entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley would not put their own children in a Rocketship school; they prefer Waldorf schools…” I know plenty of rich Silicon Valley types who do not send their kids to Waldorf type of schools as do many people out here in the Bay Area. Sure, many of them send kids to private schools, but that is much different than a Waldorf School and you surely know that. Meanwhile, many of them send their kids to public schools in places like Palo Alto, something you also surely know from your work at Stanford..turning New York Times article examples into broad statements of fact and churlish commentary belies your academic pedigree.
Do you know any Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who send their children to Rocketship charters?
I don’t. Do you know any Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who DON’T send their kids to Waldorf School? Of course you do because I know some of your colleagues that you dealt with at Stanford. See, two can play this silly game, which, again, is beneath you. In short, you know your tone and churlishness in your original piece belies your academic pedigree just like I said above…