If it sounds too good to be true, it
probably is not true.
This common sense adage ought to
prevent intelligent people from falling for costly scams. Yet otherwise smart
people continue to get suckered at an alarming rate. This is particularly true
in politics and education “reform,” where people seem to prefer the fantasy of
a quick, magic bullet “fix” to social problems, than having to do a little
research or critical analysis to determine if the proposal has any merit.
Consider John Danner, former school
teacher and Silicon Valley entrepreneur, who claims to have found the solution
to the academic achievement gap with his Rocketship charter schools.
Rocketship’s students, who are predominately poor and Latino, have recently outscored
the county and state averages on standardized exams, making Danner and
Rocketship extremely popular within the Ed Deform movement as it has seemingly
overcome the intractable negative effects of poverty on educational outcomes.
Danner now wants to take his Silicon
Valley model on the road and expand it to 50 cities by 2020. Cities across the
U.S. on jumping on the bandwagon, begging Rocketship to set up shop in their
districts, while the Obama
administration has put up $2 million to facilitate its spread. Milwaukee
has approved the opening of Rocketship schools, as have New Orleans, Nashville
and Indianapolis. It also has approval to open another 20 schools in the San
Francisco Bay Area.
For the Kids or the Bosses?
What really makes the Rocketship model
popular among the Ed Deformers is not its seeming success at educating lower
income students. This is certainly a great selling point and way to increase
public support and startup donations. However, what the Ed Deform movement is
really after is the billions of taxpayer dollars that are still nominally under
public control. Charter schools are, of course, one of their favorite tools to
accomplish this. And a charter school that can quickly wean itself from
philanthropic donations and become self-sufficient or start turning a profit is
like gold to these vultures.
Here is where Rocketship has done some
magic. Like other charter schools, Rocketship receives public funds, but is
liberated from many of the limitations of traditional public schools, like
having to hire unionized teachers and paying union wages. However, Rocketship
doesn’t just slash wages—it slashes jobs, replacing teachers with computers and
low-paid clerks and volunteers. Superintendent Maria De La Vega, of East Palo
Alto's Ravenswood City School District, who opposed Rocketship moving into her
district, was quoted in Palo Alto
Online calling the Rocketship model ". . . a business design, not an
educational program design that is constructed to promote literacy and
academics. . ."
According to the Washington Post, students spend 2 hours per day in front of computers,
cutting labor costs by 25%, allowing the schools to “extend the school day to
eight hours [and] pay higher salaries to its nonunion teachers.” The computer
labs are monitored by volunteers who have “experience with children,” according
to Education Next, but
no teaching credential (nor even bachelor’s degree) is required.
It should be emphasized that the “higher
salary” does not translate into a higher hourly rate. Rather, teachers work
longer hours (about 25% more to accommodate the longer school day) at a
slightly higher yearly salary (10% more, according to the Post) that does not
fully compensate them for the longer work day.
Additionally, 75% of its teachers come
from Teach for America (TFA), which places teachers in the classroom after only
5 weeks of training. TFA teachers have a higher attrition rate than
certificated teachers (69%
quit within their first two years, while 88% leave within three years). Theoretically,
this should result in a higher turnover rate, though the Post says that
Rockeship’s rate of 25% is in line with the national average for low income
schools (though not necessarily for low income schools in Silicon Valley). Even
if their turnover rate is typical, their tendency to hire predominantly inexperienced
TFA teachers still allows them to trim labor costs, since the pay scale is
based on years of experience and they keep replacing low wage TFA teachers with
other inexperienced teachers.
Even though Rocketship is considered a
“nonprofit” charter school, it still helps facilitate the transfer of wealth
from the taxpayer to private businesses. The emphasis on computer technology,
for example, is a cash cow for tech giants that not only get to sell more
hardware to the schools, but also software and service contracts, which can
lock the schools into long term financial commitments. The replacement of unionized,
credentialed teachers with poorly trained, nonunionized TFA novices and
volunteer monitors contributes to the deskilling of the teaching profession, which
undermines union strength and drives down wages (see here
and here),
not only for teachers, but others in the region. Danner, who is not a teacher
or a principal at any of his schools, still skims off $150,000 per year in
salary, according to the Post.
Higher Test Scores—The Jury is Still Out.
Rocketship currently has only 5
schools up and running, two of which recently completed their first years and
lack test score data. Thus, all the excitement over their ability to close the
achievement gap is based on very limited data, with only nominal
reproducibility. And even one of their “successful” schools had a recent
decline in test scores.
It is also questionable whether Rocketship’s
study body accurately represents the full range of lower income students. Unlike
traditional public schools, which are required to accept all students and
cannot kick them out unless they have committed serious infractions, charter
schools can exclude students for things like insufficient parental involvement.
Indeed, Rocketship requires parents to attend monthly meetings and volunteer 30
hours each year. Even if these requirements were not strictly enforced after
the fact, they would still likely cause some lower income families to avoid
enrolling in the first place, thus skewing the demographics and test data.
Furthermore, like many other charter
schools, Rocketship enrolls fewer students with learning disabilities, which also
skews their data. According to the Post, only 6% of Rocketship’s students have
learning disabilities—roughly half the rate of the traditional public schools
in the area.
High Tech Vs. Health, Thinking and
Independence
Considering that Rocketship is
currently only in the K-5 business, its heavy reliance on computers should give
pause. The American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended that young children spend
no more than 2 hours in front any type of screen or monitor, including
television, videos and computers, as it promotes obesity, sleep and
behavior problems, and can even impair academic performance. More screen time
also means less active, creative play and learning, and less time to develop
healthy social relationships with other children and adults.
Even if Rocketship did limit screen
time to 2 hours per day, its students are still returning home after school and
most likely spending more time in front of the television and computer.
However, Danner has predicted that his students could spend up to 50% of their
school days in front of computers as he develops better software.
On a final note, it is important to
consider how a school is being judged as successful. Rocketship, like all
schools nowadays, is being deemed a success by its test scores. In order to
boost its state test scores, it compels its students to take numerous internal
exams throughout the year to prepare them for the official exams and to provide
the staff with data. Thus, Rocketeers (as Danner likes to call his students)
are losing meaningful instructional time with well-trained teachers to test
prep and practice tests, in addition to the time lost in front of computer
screens.
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