Charter Schools, Rocket Science and Rocketships

Charter Schools: Rocket Science or Rocketships?

One person's charter school is another persons local educational sandbox. Rob McKenna suggests on his guber website that we look at Rocketship charter schools. (From McKenna's website: "Permit and encourage highly innovative charter schools, drawing on the most successful models from around America such as KIPP, Rocketship and Harlem Success Academy.")

Rocketship Schools Here: http://rsed.org/index.php?page=mission.

Presently and for the -- who knows -- tenth time? the legislature is looking at charter schools. The WEA will spin them as the toy of the rich where well-heeled parents in Land Rovers siphon off the meager amount of state funding, add a few thousand dollars of their own and create elitist Wonder Bread learning centers. There is so much confusion that the general public said no to the elusive concept in a test vote a few years ago. McKenna seems to come at it from a more realistic angle if, as he suggests on his website, Rocketship is an example

Rocketship schools lead out with this statement: “We strive to eliminate the achievement gap in our lifetimes, so that no student’s life is subject to the “destiny of demographics”. We believe that the racial and socio-economic disparity of educational outcomes and opportunities remain our country’s greatest injustice, with crippling downstream effects on America’s standard of living, societal welfare, and long-term viability.”

If this is the furthest the Legislature will go it would be a giant and maybe complete step in the right direction. Do we have to continue to chatter about what's going on in the real world, the demands being placed on future generations of students, the drag on success created by 20^th century education unions, the desire of most educators to do the right thing, and the current lack of courage by Washington's elected to step up? This train is leaving the station, we better be on it. Education realignment (better than reform) is not an option, it is a survival tool.

The Washington Roundtable, Washington Stand for Children, the League of Education Voters,the Partnership for Learning, and a group of brave bi-partisan legislators are working to advance a needed options; including some form of new chartered school in Washington State.

We need to watch the next few weeks to see if new tools are granted by the legislative committees. We hope they are.

Here is more about Rocketship Charter Schools:

Rocketship Education is a national, non-profit elementary charter school network that opened the nation’s first hybrid school in 2007. We are building a school model that delivers on these four ambitions; it includes exceptional classroom teaching and individualized learning to enable students to master basic skills and higher order thinking skills, and an operational approach that minimizes expensive, unnecessary redundancy, while supporting academic innovation and excellence.

We intend to expand across the U.S to serve more low-income students in cities which have the urgency to eliminate the achievement gap.  By bringing the unique Rocketship Model to millions of students and inspiring other school systems to adopt similar practices for high quality, scalable impact eliminating the achievement gap in our lifetimes is attainable.

We invite you to learn more about existing and upcoming Rocketship Schools.