Rocketship Education is a group of 501(c)(3)
non-profit charter schools created 12 years ago in Redwood City, California.
Preston Smith and John Danner were its two founders; the former had worked in
both the instructional side of teaching and its administrative counterpart,
whereas the latter had hands-on experience in building apps for tablets and
computers used in class as a means of accomplishing individualized lessons
without requiring extensive effort from teachers. The pair made a formidable
duo. While Smith has gone back into the tech industry, Preston Smith has stayed
with Rocketship Education through thick and thin - he's been its CEO in 2013
when Danner had resigned from the school system.
You won't believe what Rocketship Education became known for
As you almost certainly already know, the public
charter school network had almost all of its 19-odd locations in low-income
areas; further, kids who grow up in households whose parents or guardians don't
make much money are plentiful within the nearly-20-school-deep public charter
school system.
Most low-income school districts perform
notoriously poor every single year whenever it comes time for the
end-of-year standardized state tests. However, Preston Smith's co-creation has
since blossomed into one of the hottest schools around the nation.
Rocketship stands up for its personalized education measures
This school system is unique in that it relies on
technology on a regular basis for its personalized education applications and
programs that now-former CEO John Danner created during his earliest years with
Rocketship.
Students spend about 80 minutes each day on their
tablets and computers that were provided by the school - as such, they only
contain educational-oriented software and nothing else, which effectively makes
sure that kids can't log on programs or websites they're not supposed to when
they're not taking on their fully-customized lessons - these 80-minute daily
blocks in which students play with toys are completely different than
About two years ago, NPR - National Public Radio
- wrote a lengthy piece on Rocketship public school system. One of its major
criticisms of Rocketship was related to its groundbreaking personalized
education program. The author claimed that young children should spend as much
time away from tablets, laptops, computers, and other technological devices as
possible.
Rocketship and Preston Smith are both glad to
boast that schools of similar demographic makeup to RSED can't score as 12nearly
as high as Rocketship can on standardized tests carried out by the state that
are published at year's end.
RSED did something unique for its intervention program
In addition to claiming that the personalized
education program relied on technology too much, they also complained that the
lowest members of faculty and staff inside Rocketship facilities are tasked
with managing students during daily personalized education efforts.
Instead of having kids go to a traditional
intervention program, the use of technology and their employment of the
proprietary programs that John Danner brought to the table when he co-founded
Rocketship.
The last thing NPR had to say about the very-popular charter school
network of Rocketship Ed. facilities was...
Rocketeers - the nickname of all students,
teachers, and other employees that are a part of Rocketship Ed. - aren't
allowed to talk whenever it's learning time in class. Further, they typically
aren't allowed to go to the bathroom outside of already-scheduled bathroom
breaks.
Nobody would like having such strict policies at
school, though the strictness is probably one of the main reasons why its
students consistently score at the top of the cahrter - they even beat out a
lot of private school kids.
