The Metro Nashville School Board took the bold, brave step of rejecting a proposed Rocketship charter school.
The Nashville school board denied charter school network Rocketship Education a new school — despite receiving its first recommendation to approve an application in years.
The Metro Nashville Public Schools board bucked the district’s charter school review recommendation for the resubmitted application with seven votes to deny it. Only Gini Pupo-Walker did not vote to deny. Board member Sharon Gentry was not present on Tuesday night.
James Robinson, Rocketship’s Tennessee director, said the charter school network will appeal the decision to the Tennessee State Board of Education, which hears all charter school appeals…
Newly-appointed Board Vice Chair Amy Frogge criticized the school for its computer-based learning model and the way it uses investors to pay for its property.
The model, she said, “creates fertile ground for investors to reap millions.” Frogge also cited news reports, saying the school follows an “extreme militaristic” behavioral model.
“Assuming Rocketship is producing higher test scores, I must ask at what cost,” Frogge says. She said the school is a “drill and kill” instruction model.
Board member Christiane Buggs said her reasons for denying the school were purely financial.
“We don’t have the funding right now to outsource,” she said.
Amy Frogge is a parent activist and lawyer. She is featured as a leader of the Resistance in my new book Slaying Goliath. It will be published in January.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Board member Christiane Buggs said her reasons for denying the school were purely financial.
“We don’t have the funding right now to outsource,” she said.
Heretic.
How dare she consider the other students and schools in the system. Each school is an island, indeed, each STUDENT is an island with no connection whatsoever to the whole.
The students in the “status quo government schools” may NOT be considered.
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In NJ, so far as I know, no one consults with the district or local school board when a charter school is dumped on the community. The NJDOE just does it and the school board has to accommodate to the new charter school. However, there can be fierce blowback from the local community, city council and school board. The residents should at least have a vote or voice as to whether a charter school should be imposed on their community. As things stand now, they do not have a vote or voice in the matter unless they band together and organize protests against the proposed charter school. Good on the Metro Nashville School Board for rejecting the charter school. Too bad NJ school boards don’t have this official right to reject a charter school.
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“residents” “community” “voice” — all concepts neatly ignored when legislators and modern day state school boards step up to CARE about their state’s kids
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Rocketship is so foul. The classes are more like Amazon warehouses than places of learning. They’re screen time sweatshops for children. Good for Nashville!
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Nashville inaugurates a new mayor today. I am watching this with interest since his family comes from our county and from political royalty, at least where Tennessee is concerned. His brother is a democratic congressional representative from Nashville in a state about as conservative and republican as you can get. Their father was a governor many years ago and ambassador to Peru during the Second World War. He was older than most fathers. I remember him from the barbershop, bringing Jim, his boy about my age and now the representative, into the barbershop for a haircut. The man was old even by comparison to my own father, who turned 43 a week after I was born. For years their mother was a mainstay in our local historical society, swallowing my own bucolic style with grace I did not deserve.
Realizing that my musings are perhaps off subject, I need to explain my stream of thought. Nashville is in the throes of a dramatic expansion. Cranes fill the downtown sky like tin soldiers being lined up by little boys on the floor. We went down to the ballet last week and I saw six cranes in a view that was no more than ten degrees wide, looking south over the city. Last night the news reported that local hospitals were having to reorganize maternity wards due to the regional baby boom. John Cooper, the new mayor, has sounded like he is all in on local neighborhoods and good schools. This will be a hard fight. Real estate is making some wealthy, and development is fighting tradition and neighborhood lifestyle. In five years, all these babies will flood into schools, mostly from families that moved to the region for work.
These families will value an education and demand that their children have maximum opportunity. Will they be willing to pay for opportunity for all? Will they accept the argument that providing opportunity for all is a rising tide that floats all ships? Or will they answer the siren call of the Right. Some believe that educating ten percent of the population is a really good plan. This attitude I encountered in a public school teacher when I was young. I suspect it lies behind the proliferation of charters and the support garnered by truly private schools, the ones that do not accept public money. Will these young families join political leaders courageous enough to ask for the revenue that will be needed? Now is the time to react to expansion. It takes time to build schools, and the community often grows faster than its political will. I hope new mayor Cooper can handle all this. For the sake of the kids.
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