On the Rocketship: How Top Charter Schools Are Pushing the Envelope Hardcover – June 9, 2014
Author: Visit Amazon's Richard Whitmire Page | Language: English | ISBN: 1118607643 | Format: PDF, EPUB
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Review
"The eclectic, almost lyrical descriptions of each personality in the Rocketship saga provide the book with a vital human element. " Center for Education Reform.
From the Inside Flap
ON THE ROCKETSHIP
ON THE ROCKETSHIP examines the rise and expansion of leading charter school network Rocketship, revealing the “secret sauce” that makes a successful program. A strong narrative with a timely message, the book explores how Rocketship started and the difficulties encountered as it expands. Designing schools for children who have been failed by traditional schools is extremely challenging work. Setbacks are inevitable. As the story progresses, the narrative shifts to the national picture, exploring how high performing charter schools are changing the education landscape in cities such as Denver, Memphis, and Houston. The book emerges just as charter schools are running into stiff political opposition in New York City and elsewhere. Even in San Jose, California, Rocketship’s home base, the pushback against charter schools is gaining speed.
On the Rocketship becomes a valuable resource for explaining what’s at stake in this battle. Lose these schools, in New York, San Jose and other cities, and low-income and minority students lose their best shot at a quality education.
Written by a veteran journalist who followed Rocketship through a school year, the book explores some of the factors that make Rocketship and other charters successful, including the blended learning that was pioneered at charter schools.
Many schools around the country look to Rocketship as a model for implementing blended learning. Blended learning, itself a controversial topic, ultimately offers students a more active role in guiding their own education. At these schools, blended learning is leading to richer learning. The interplay between charter schools and blended learning is setting a change in motion, and the American education system is ready to evolve. On the Rocketship details this phenomenon, providing insights for educators across the nation.
On the Rocketship is written for school administrators, classroom teachers, parents, and anyone interested in transforming our schools into places where students discover their true potential.
Books with free ebook downloads available On the Rocketship: How Top Charter Schools Are Pushing the Envelope – June 9, 2014
- Hardcover: 352 pages
- Publisher: Jossey-Bass; 1 edition (June 9, 2014)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1118607643
- ISBN-13: 978-1118607640
- Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 1.5 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #102,279 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #68 in Books > Textbooks > Education > Educational Philosophy
Introduction 1
Part 1: The Players
Rocketship Finally Launches outside California 7
John Danner 9
Preston Smith 15
Danner’s Big Pivot 19
Part II: The Startup Years
A Charter Fund Designed to Nurture Top CMOs 25
Did the Butterfly Effect Give Wings to Rocketship? 27
Hurricane Katrina 29
Startup Meets Smokestack 31
Sci-Fi-Inspired Software 41
Joel Klein Does the Unexpected 43
Recruiting the Key (Outside) Players 45
The Hard Sell: Pitching the First Rocketship 53
Opening Mateo Sheedy: Tough Times 61
New Schools Launches Charter Accelerator Fund II 65
How to Build a Fibonacci School 67
Part III: The Growth Years
The Ideal Personnel Department? Not within Rocketship 73
Alum Rock Rejects Rocketship Is That a Bad Thing? 79
Rocketship Finds a Friend 81
Charter School Growth Fund Puts Rocketship on the Map 85
Slivka’s Sci-Fi Software Gets Shipped: DreamBox 87
Rocketship Wins Five More Charters 91
Finding Karen Martinez It’s an Art 93
Achievement Gaps in Fabulous Silicon Valley? 99
District-Charters Compact Launched 101
Danner (and Reed Hastings) Discover DreamBox 103
Yet Another Boring Education Book? Not Exactly? 105
States Repeal Charter Restrictions (Okay, a Bribe Was Involved) 107
Fresh Charter Strategy from the Department of Education 109
Growing the High-Performing (and Blended) Charters 111
Double Setbacks Rocketship Changes Course 113
A Corporate Jet Packed with Movers and Shakers Touches Down 117
Leaders of Top Charters Tapped as State Commissioners 123
Top Charters to Get Stiff Test 125
Blended Learning Rocketship Style: This Stuff Works! 127
KIPP Opens Its One-Hundredth School 129
A Discovery That Would Lead to Big Changes (and Bigger Drama) 131
Rocketship Bids Big: Give Us Twenty More Charters in Santa Clara County 133
Setting Up Rocketship to Fail? 137
Rocketship Doubles Down on a Reinvention 141
One Million Rocketship Students by 2030? Not Happening 147
Rocketship and Unions: It’s Complicated; A Rocketship Teacher Sits down with a Union Leader—Her Mother 149
Early Fallout from Model Change 157
The Pushback Gets Real: The Fight over Tamien 159
Part IV: The Push to Expand outside San Jose
Welcome to South Milwaukee 171
A Power Play Backfires 173
School Starts in Seven Months—but Only Three Sign-ups! 177
Danner Steps Down; Smith Steps Up 181
Milwaukee Gets a Shakeup 183
Stretching to Lure Top Charters: The San Antonio Story 187
Smith’s Worst Monday Ever 193
Exactly What Kind of a Difference Can a Fibonacci School Make? 199
Milwaukee Looking Up (a Bit) 201
Two Charters Make the Top Five List 205
If Rocketship Is the Digital Future Why Do Its Schools Look So Ordinary? 207
Fibonacci Developments in Massachusetts 211
More Progress in Milwaukee 213
A Day in the Life: Rocketship’s Flagship School, Mateo Sheedy 215
Fresh Turbulence in Milwaukee 225
Surprise Shift on TFA 233
Milwaukee Parents Name Their School: Southside Prep 237
Rumor Just In: Rocketship Falls through the Ice 241
A Fibonacci Charter Group Is Honored 243
Build, Measure, Learn, Rinse, Repeat 245
One Month before Southside Prep Opens 251
How Many Sharon Kims Are out There? 253
Eva Makes Life Hard for Her Many Critics 263
Opening Week at Southside Prep 265
California Test Scores Released 267
Part V: The Future for Rocketship and Other High Performers
Answering the Fibonacci Question: Will Rocketship Make It Big? 271
Fibonacci Charters Summoned to Memphis 279
Houston’s Spring Branch Schools: The Future? 287
Where’s the Tipping Point? 293
The Tennessee Launch 299
Conclusion 301
Acknowledgments 311
About the Author 313
Epilogue 315
Index 319
Whitmire tells the story of how K-5 (rationale - closing the achievement gap in the early grades) charter school network 'Rocketship' (founded in 2006) and the difficulties encountered since then while expanding. Rocketship originally used a 'blended learning' model in which pupils spend about a quarter of their day watching videos and practicing skills on individual PC terminals (individualized/adaptive-learning computerized instruction, augmented by paraprofessionals in small group instruction activities) located in a large computer room (about 2,000 square-feet, with 100 cubicles) with the remainder in a traditional classroom grade level setting augmented by low-cost tutoring and 10-30% higher teacher pay. Its lead teachers are used for the large-group presentations. It is now experimenting with variations of that model that provide more small-group instruction time; students are re-grouped based on ability every six weeks or so.
Early Rocketship plans were to serve at least 25,000 pupils by 2017, one million by 2030. Early results far exceeded state (California) targets, especially in math, and brought immense parental demand for expansion. As the network added schools and pupils, the percentage of pupils scoring proficient on California state tests steadily declined (30 percentage points over the past five years to 51% in English/language arts, 14 points to 77% in math); these declines also coincided with revisions to its flexible classroom approach (increased learning lab time to 50%, largely because reduced state funding required financial cuts).
Teacher unions were seen as something to be avoided - at the very least because of their limitations on flexibility. While the eg.
This book fully hits my two criteria for non-fiction five stars: (1) it is a great read that keeps you entertained and interested throughout; and (2) it is very important reporting that told me about things I wanted to know more about and about things I had never heard of but should know about.
GREAT READ: Richard Whitmire reports and writes very well. The book is hard to put down and you really get a sense for the characters and circumstances he is describing. For example, he writes of the first visit that the Rocketship charter school's Silicon Valley based team paid to a gritty site in Milwaukee where they would be locating their first out-of-state school. After a hilarious description of the environment and a woman who flagged them down to talk to them, he concludes, "An omen about rough times ahead in Milwaukee? At the moment, the deer carcass lecture from the cat-hunting lady in the motorcycle jacket was nothing more than a great story for entertaining others. But, in fact, trying times were ahead in Milwaukee. Maybe the wild cat lady knew something." I gulped this book down in part because it was just a fun read.
IMPORTANT READ, Part 1: Whitmire takes us into two of the most important cutting edge aspects of this moment in education reform. After about twenty years of charter schools and other reform work, it has become clear that a number of non-profit charter networks are able to produce schools where high poverty students dramatically outperform expectations and past trajectories. These Charter Management Organizations (CMOs) include KIPP, Uncommon Schools, YES Prep, Aspire, Achievement First, IDEA and a number of others.
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