A Rocketship Charter in Nashville was slated to be part of the state’s failed Achievement School District but it closed a few months after opening.
The school expected to enroll 190 students but only 50 signed up. Demand isn’t there for a school once hailed as a national model.
To add to the woes of Rocketship charters in Nashville, the IRS filed a lien against their property because of unpaid taxes of about $19,000.. Rocketship officials said it was a clerical error.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
Does anyone know where charters get their projected enrollment figures?
They use the figures to justify the charter (contract).
We found out in Boston that the “waiting list” figures were exaggerated. Shouldn’t there be some kind of oversight besides self-reporting? Were did that “190” number come from?
I feel like McDonalds does more analysis before they open a restaurant than we get for publicly-funded contract businesses.
Is there any kind of system analysis? If Rocketship is planning on 190 children leaving another school what happens to that school? What about the families in that school? They’re just out of luck? Why doesn’t anyone in ed reform care what happens to those families? Their “choice” comes second to the prospective charter parents? Why?
“Does anyone know where charters get their projected enrollment figures?”
Too bad we have to keep it clean here. There’s one very obvious answer.
It’s really appalling that the US Department of Education is using public funding to sell blended learning product to public schools.
This is straight-up sales and it’s federally funded. I hope public school leaders will use their heads and NOT buy what DeVos is selling.
She is WILDLY over-valuing these programs. There will be a reckoning – this edtech bubble WILL burst and public school leaders will be left holding the bag. The public will hold THEM accountable, not DeVos or all these think tanks.
Just use your head. Betsy DeVos doesn’t value public schools. Don’t buy what she’s selling.
Read this stuff and tell me this is “science::
“I think personalized learning, competency, mastery, that’s a big shift from where education has been,” she said. “But it’s absolutely where most of education has to go.”
Betsy DeVos is a true believer in “personalized learning” and there isn’t a shred of evidence to support this evangelical fervor.
Ed reformers don’t even know if PARENTS like this, yet they’re all selling it like they’re on commission.
It’s reckless. These are PUBLIC investments and they act as if they’re putting money down at a casino.
You know who will pay if this experiment crashes and burns? Not ed reformers. LOCAL school leaders will pay, because the public will punish them for being dumb enough to buy a pig in a poke.
Another one bites the dust!
Rocketship is a favorite of Devos who just sent the test-centric franchise over $12 million for “replication and expansion” over the next five years.
ALL of the much-lauded charter school chains which do well in one case or another also have statistically significant failure/closure rates which are simply swept under the rug. With the instigation of a new charter-chain school, parents, kids, districts and communities are asked to take a “chance” — a gamble which should never be allowed on the table.
What a waste of our money!
Rocketship explodes on takeoff.
The Rocketship is landing in the city where I live (not teach). Billboards along the freeway call it a “public school”, which makes my blood boil.