August 1, 2018

Rocketship Education Gets Back At NPR



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.

Rocketship Education, education, school, non-profit network of public elementary charter schools


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.
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