Dive Brief:
- San Jose charter school darling Rocketship Education announced plans to scale back its goal of educating one million students in 50 cities — a move that would have made it one of the nation's largest school districts.
- Rocketship has been around for eight years and was celebrated early on for its ability to produce high test scores from a predominantly minority and immigrant student-base, but test scores have fallen in recent years. CEO and Co-Founder Preston Smith indicated that this was one of the reasons for slowed expansion.
- According to Smith one of the reasons scores dropped was because of a failed teaching innovation: Rocketship relies heavily on individualized computer-based instruction and tested out a "no walls" model where 100 students were placed in a large room with two instructors.
Dive Insight:
The failures of Rocketship are a blow not just for the charter community and its advocates, but for the network's investors. Silicon Valley bigwigs like Reed Hastings and Sheryl Sandberg invested capital in Rocketship Education with the expectation that they were not only doing a good thing, but would also hopefully see returns as the districts expanded.
While this decision to slow expansion does point out various flaws in Rocketship's education model — namely showing what an overemphasis on technology can do — it's also important to recognize the network is allowing its mistakes to be known. This public acknowledgement of areas of improvement is commendable, as it provides more transparency in the sometime murky waters of school decision-making and provides opportunities for those watching to learn from the mistakes.