January 16, 2012: This morning's story by John Fensterwald, writing in the Silicon Valley Educational Foundation's "Educated Guess," carefully follows the story of "fast-expanding, innovative charter organization" Rocketship, which has five schools in San Jose and approval to open 25 more in Santa Clara County by school year 2017-18. (Rocketship describes itself as the "leading hybrid model" of education..."dedicated to eliminating the achievement gap"..."in high-need neighborhoods.)
(At left is a photo from Mateo Sheedy Elementary, a Rocketship charter in a low-income neighborhood of San Jose. The photo is from the blog of Mateo Sheedy teacher Bailey Thomson.)
Rocketship was granted a charter in the San Francisco Unified School District last week by the state Board of Education (BOE) over the previous denial of both the board of SFUSD and the state Department of Education (CDE) which upheld SFUSD's decision. The charter will be for a K-5 in the primarily black neighborhood of Hunter's Point, where there are currently several low-performing elementary schools. As Fensterwald writes:
(CDE] staff ... found no basis to justify San Francisco’s denial on academic grounds. Rocketship's ... three [San Jose] schools that have been open long enough to be tested had an average API score of 868, nearly 200 points above the average of the neighborhood schools it was targeting in San Francisco...
Among [CDE's] reasons, [were criticism of] Rocketship’s English immersion approach and said its hybrid model, which integrates the use of computers in a Learning Lab to supplement the work of classroom teachers, sounded like a “drill and kill” approach. (No trustees actually visited the school or heard a presentation by Rocketship.) Department staff pointed to Rocketship’s track record and said that, as a charter school, it can choose different approaches to learning and curricula from the district. (Isn’t that a reason for a charter school?)
Instead, [CDE] staff pointed to four flaws in Rocketship’s financial plan, a combination of lack of clarity or missing information, that led it to doubt the proposal’s viability. In a clear departure from past practice, CDE staff and a consultant hired to do the review took the position that they were legally restricted from asking Rocketship any follow-up questions for answers could have met their concerns.
That approach confused members of the State Board as well as the Advisory Commission on Charter Schools, which recommended that the State Board grant the charter after listening to the Department’s reasons and hearing directly from Rocketship’s chief financial officer and CEO (watch the hearing)....
“Rocketship,” said Eric Premack, executive director of the Charter Schools Development Center in Sacramento and author of the financial disclosure regulations for charters, “risked being caught in the charter arms race where authorities keep upping the ante so that it broadens the target they can shoot at. Do you need to go into the financial minutiae of [a hypothetical] school closure?”
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