Libby Sobic:

Rocketship Public Schools in Milwaukee is a network of two campuses around the City of Milwaukee that are serving more than 700 K4-5th grade students. Rocketship embraces their students and families to ensure that they are supported in and beyond the classroom. For Ms. Oliver and her daughter, a six-year-old with special needs, Rocketship has been a source of support, not only for her daughter’s academic needs, but ensuring that her daughter’s social needs are met.

Erin Richards:

The Milwaukee Common Council is considering a proposal from Rocketship charter school to buy an empty Milwaukee Public Schools building, and a new state law is on the charter school’s side.

But there’s a possibility the district could be, too: Rocketship leaders say they’ll seek a charter from MPS to revive a school program in the building, which could bolster the district’s enrollment numbers.

The Common Council is scheduled to take up the proposal at its meeting Tuesday.

If the sale of the empty Carleton Elementary School, 4116 W. Silver Spring Drive, goes through, it would pave the way for Rocketship Education to open its second school in Milwaukee, and its first on the north side. Rocketship, a nonprofit charter-management company based in California, would eventually enroll about 500 students in kindergarten through fifth grade there. But it would first need to raise $2 million, leaders say, and obtain a charter from a state-authorized authority to run the program.

Erin Richards:

t’s midmorning on a Saturday in June when Will Reichardt unlocks the front door of a south side office and grabs the day’s supplies: clipboard, school fliers in Spanish and English, some enrollment applications.
Just in case.
Then Reichardt drives his minivan to the local laundromats, where he circles dryers and washers and toddlers and parents, asking each family, in Spanish, to consider the opportunities at a new school opening in August called Rocketship.
A newcomer to Milwaukee, Rocketship Education is a nonprofit elementary charter-school network based in San Jose, Calif., that’s attracting national attention for its low-cost schools that blend traditional instruction with technological intervention.
Rocketship’s first national expansion site is Southside Community Prep, a new school at 3003 W. Cleveland Ave. which will operate under a special charter with the City of Milwaukee. If successful, Rocketship may open up to eight schools serving up to 4,000 children in Milwaukee.
The organization’s mission is to eliminate the achievement gap by rapidly replicating schools that perform better and cost less than local options. It intends to grow from 3,800 students in California to 25,000 students in six states by 2018.
In a decade, leaders estimate, they could be educating 200,000 students in 30 cities.
But in Milwaukee, Rocketship is an unknown, and the hurdles to recruiting students in a highly competitive school landscape have it scrambling to enroll at least 300 students by an Aug. 19 start date — now four weeks away.

Related: A majority of the Madison school board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school last year.

Rocketship:

Rocketship Milwaukee is Rocketship Education’s first expansion city outside of California. This is a unique opportunity to collaborate and contribute – with Rocketship Education’s executive staff – on the development of a regional entity, ensuring success for not only the city of Milwaukee and its communities, but many cities to come.
Rocketship Milwaukee’s Managing Director is responsible for the academic, operational and financial success of Milwaukee’s Rocketship schools and continued growth. The Managing Director leads a team of Rocketeers including regional staff, school leaders and teachers towards closing the achievement gap for students and the Milwaukee community. The Managing Director will grow Rocketship Education’s impact from one school in 2012 to 8 schools within 5 years as it works to eliminate the elementary achievement gap in Milwaukee. Internally, the Managing Director manages the regional leadership team that supports school staff, ensures strong and strategic financial management, and partners with national staff to build the best supports for schools possible.
Externally, the Managing Director builds deep community engagement and fosters public and political support for Rocketship to expand its impact as it works with the Milwaukee community to build first class options for all parents. Specifically, the Managing Director will oversee all community development, funder and authorizer relationships in order to drive regional growth.

Valerie Strauss:

The Rocketship network of charter schools has made a name for itself in the world of school choice — and attracted $2 million from the Obama administration to help it grow — with its “blended learning” model that incorporates traditional classroom settings with a computer “Learning Lab” for students.
The idea behind the lab was that students could learn basic lessons in math and reading while teachers could work with students on more complicated material. Part of the attraction, too, was that the computers would cost less than hiring more teachers. Well, it turns out that the vaunted “Learning Lab” isn’t working so well. In fact, it has turned out to be so much less than expected that Rocketship is revamping it.
Here’s what my colleague Lyndsey Layton wrote about the Learning Lab in this 2012 story about Rocketship and its co-founder and chief executive officer, John Danner:
In each Rocketship school, children file into a “Learning Lab” every day, where they sit at computer carrels that line the perimeter of the room.

PBS NewsHour:

JEFFREY BROWN: Now we look to a California education experiment called the Rocketship Model that involves teachers, kids and parents and aims to expand one day to serve a million students.
NewsHour’s special correspondent for education, John Merrow, has our report.
JOHN MERROW: The Model T was the first, the first innovative and affordable car available to the masses. Others had built good cars, but Henry Ford figured out how to build a lot of them. He and his moving assembly line proved that quality can be mass-produced.
Mass production is a problem the auto industry solved over 100 years ago, but it’s an issue our education system has yet to figure out. America has lots of terrific schools. People open great schools every year, but typically open just one. Nobody has figured out how to mass-produce high-quality, cost-effective schools.
John Danner is the latest to give it a shot. He created an innovative charter school model with replication in mind. Charter schools receive public funding, but are privately managed and operate outside of the traditional public system.
…..
JOHN MERROW: New Orleans, Nashville, Indianapolis, and Memphis have all approved charters for Rocketship schools to be built in their cities. Next year, two new schools will open in San Jose and one in Milwaukee. Danner plans to have 46 schools up and running in five years, with a vision of someday serving 50 cities and a million students. If he succeeds, Rocketship could become the Model T of education.

Notes and links on Rocketship’s arrival in Milwaukee.

Greg Toppo:

The fourth-grader, his dark hair cropped close, has been staring at a computer screen for close to 20 minutes, trying again and again to solve a devilish little puzzle built around rectangles’ axes of symmetry.
Two friends appear, offering unsolicited advice and urging him to try their solutions. Nothing works, and their teacher, who could offer help, is nowhere in sight.
“This one’s hard,” classmate Brian Aguilera says. Zepeda keeps trying. Finally, after 15 minutes’ more work, he cracks the puzzle. His reward: another, harder puzzle.
Another morning in Learning Lab at Rocketship Si Se Puede Academy, a 3-year-old charter school built on a sliver of city-owned land in the shadow of the I-680 off-ramp. Si Se Puede — Spanish for “Yes It’s Possible” or “Yes We Can” — is part of a tiny chain of schools set to expand nationwide.

Rocketship will be opening in Milwaukee during the fall of 2013.

Natalie Wexler:

In fact, the evidence is equivocal at best. Some studies have found positive effects, at least from moderate amounts of computer use, especially in math. But much of the data shows a negative impact at a range of grade levels. A study of millions of high school students in the 36 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found that those who used computers heavily at school “do a lot worse in most learning outcomes, even after accounting for social background and student demographics.” According to other studies, college students in the US who used laptops or digital devices in their classes did worse on exams. Eighth graders who took Algebra I online did much worse than those who took the course in person. And fourth graders who used tablets in all or almost all their classes had, on average, reading scores 14 points lower than those who never used them—a differential equivalent to an entire grade level. In some states, the gap was significantly larger.

A 2019 report from the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado on personalized learning—a loosely defined term that is largely synonymous with education technology—issued a sweeping condemnation. It found “questionable educational assumptions embedded in influential programs, self-interested advocacy by the technology industry, serious threats to student privacy, and a lack of research support.”

Judging from the evidence, the most vulnerable students can be harmed the most by a heavy dose of technology—or, at best, not helped. The OECD study found that “technology is of little help in bridging the skills divide between advantaged and disadvantaged students.” In the United States, the test score gap between students who use technology frequently and those who don’t is largest among students from low-income families. A similar effect has been found for “flipped” courses, which have students watch lectures at home via technology and use class time for discussion and problem-solving. A flipped college math class resulted in short-term gains for white students, male students, and those who were already strong in math. Others saw no benefit, with the result that performance gaps became wider.

College students who used laptops or digital devices in their classes did worse on exams. Eighth graders who took Algebra I online did much worse than those who took the course in person.

Even more troubling, there’s evidence that vulnerable students are spending more time on digital devices than their more privileged counterparts. High school students in questionable online “credit recovery” courses are disproportionately likely to be poor or members of minority groups (or both). “Virtual” charter schools—which offer online classes and generally produce dismal results—often enroll struggling students. A national charter network called Rocketship Public Schools, which serves low-income communities, relies heavily on technology, with even students in kindergarten spending 80 to 100 minutes a day in front of screens. One study found that in schools serving relatively affluent populations, 44% of fourth graders never used computers, compared with 34% in poorer areas.

At least one education entrepreneur agrees. Larry Berger is CEO of Amplify, a company that develops digitally enhanced curricula in math, science, and literacy for kindergarten through eighth grade. Berger observes that while technology can do a credible job of imparting information, it’s not so good at demonstrating the “social usefulness” of knowledge. “For that,” he says, “you have to be getting that knowledge in a social context with other kids and a teacher, and ideally a teacher you want to be like someday.” While that may be a problem at schools that use a relatively modest amount of technology, it could be an even bigger one at schools like those in the Rocketship network, where one or two minimally trained supervisors oversee as many as 90 students during “Learning Lab” time. The schools have achieved impressive test results, especially in math, but an NPR investigation in 2016 found a repressive environment at many Rocketship schools. According to some parents and teachers, harsh discipline was used to keep students on task.

Laura Waters:

Yesterday I posted a letter (read it here) from the New Jersey Public Charter Schools Association to the Democratic National Committee. The 65 signatories express grave disappointment at the DNC’s anti-charter  stance, which the signatories call “especially egregious” in light of powerful support from Black and Latino parents. Today the Fordham Institute published a report called “Schooling Covid-19: Lessons from Leading Charter networks from Their Transition to Remote Learning.” Here, Gregg Vanourek examines the successful approach of eight charter management organizations (CMO’s) during pandemic-induced remote instruction and what traditional districts can learn from them.

Sometimes timing is everything. 

There’s just so much at stake. McKinsey projects that by the time school starts back up, whether in-person, remotely, or some kind of hybrid, low-income students will have fallen by over a year, Black students by 10.3 months and Hispanic students by 9.2 months. Public charters (both nationwide and in NJ) disproportionately enroll these high-risk students. So what can traditional districts learn from them? What can we do differently in these challenging circumstances so that all students stay on track given the constraints of zoom and Google Classroom? (And why isn’t the DNC celebrating the succcesses of public schools that get it right instead of promising anti-charter lobbyists they’ll stifle their growth?)

For this study, Fordham selected Achievement First, DSST Public Schools, IDEA Public Schools, KIPP DC, Noble Network of Charter Schools, Rocketship Public Schools, Success Academy, and Uncommon Schools. (Uncommon has 4 schools in Camden serving 800 students and 14 schools in Newark serving over 5,500 students. The other CMO’s don’t have Jersey locations so I’ll feature Uncommon because that’s the way we roll.) Here, Mike Petrilli explains how these schools made the cut:

Libby Sobic:

So what’s a charter school and what kind of options do parents have access to?

Charter schools are public schools with significantly less red tape than their traditional public school peers. Wisconsin has several types with the most common type of charter school is a school authorized by the school district.

• “Instrumentality” charter schools are part of the traditional school district, providing an alternative option for students or a unique perspective to the district. For example, according to DPI date, Tesla Engineering Charter School is a high performing instrumentality charter school authorized by the Appleton Area School District.

• In Milwaukee, there are also several charter schools that are authorized by the district but have some separation between them and the district. These are called “non-instrumentality” charters. For example, these charter schools have their own governing boards and hire their own teachers. Milwaukee Excellence, a “non-instrumentality charter” authorized by MPS, is the highest performing school in the City of Milwaukee.

• Milwaukee also has a high percentage of “independent” charter schools, schools that are authorized by a governmental entity that is not a school district. For example, these schools are authorized by the UW-Milwaukee or by the City of Milwaukee’s Common Council. Schools like Rocketship, with two campuses in the north and south neighborhoods of Milwaukee, are schools serving vulnerable populations of students and helping students achieve academic success. Independent charter schools are beginning to expand outside of Milwaukee. The University of Wisconsin-System Office of Educational Opportunity started authorizing charter schools in the Madison area. UW-Parkside also authorized a charter within its community.

But does the charter school model work?

According to the data from most recent state report card, charter schools are some of the highest performing schools in the state. WILL research found that in Milwaukee, both independent and non-instrumentality charter schools exceeded MPS in student proficiency in math and English.

But these charter schools should be celebrated for more than just their academic performance. These schools embrace their students and families, creating a community of support for overall student success. For example, Dr. Howard Fuller Collegiate Academycelebrated their 2019 high school senior’s college signing day with 100% college acceptance and over $2.5 million dollars earned in scholarship funds.

2005 [Madison]: When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before.

2012: A majority of the taxpayer supported Madison School Board aborted the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter School.

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

2018: “The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

2020: Madison’s “illiteracy-to-incarceration pipeline”: Booked, but can’t read

Christian D’Andrea:

Several reform-minded schools have carved similar paths for I Promise to follow. The Knowledge is Power Program, better known as KIPP, has created the nation’s largest network of charter schools by catering to marginalized students with longer class hours, increasing access to teachers, and a tough but accommodating schedule for students. Rocketship Public Schools, another non-profit charter program with schools in California, Wisconsin, Tennessee, and Washington D.C., operates with a similarly non-traditional classroom. Rocketship emphasizes a STEM-based curriculum while bringing a student’s home life into the classroom and continuing learning outside regular class hours. Both take aim at reducing the achievement gap between low-income students and their peers.

It’s still early, but reports from I Promise suggest the school will address Akron’s achievement gap by running similar reforms as other successful national programs. It does not go as far as KIPP or Rocketship in those charges, but it’s clear I Promise is designed to operate at a level beyond the typical public school by creating a more comprehensive experience for students, not just one that begins at 7 a.m. and ends at 2 p.m.

I Promise is a regular public school, not a charter or a voucher-receiving private school
This kind of wide reform is rare to see at a traditional neighborhood school. KIPP and Rocketship schools have been successful in larger cities across the nation, but typically operate outside the purview of their local school boards as charter schools. Several private schools, like Milwaukee’s St. Marcus Lutheran Schools or Philadelphia’s Gesu School, have instituted reforms like these while enrolling students using publicly-funded vouchers or tax-credit scholarships.

A majority of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter school.

We have long tolerated disastrous reading results.

The Economist:

SPARK is determined to provide private education for less than the 18,000 rand ($1,200) a year that it costs to educate a state-school student. The schools specialise in “blended learning”: pupils spend some time in conventional classes and some time in a computer room where they complete lessons on the screen. The schools save money by renting their premises, centralising their administration, getting parents to help with maintenance and paying their teachers less than in state schools.

Ms Brewer and her business partner, Ryan Harrison, a fellow GIBS graduate, have scoured the world for ideas. They modelled SPARK on California’s Rocketship Schools, a chain of charter schools. They will measure SPARK students’ progress against the best in the world—British students in English and Singaporeans in mathematics. They believe that modern technology will allow them to scale up much faster than used to be possible in education: teachers can share materials over the internet and supporters can build the school’s brand via social networks.

Dave Zweifel:

Lafer’s report details how Rocketship teaches only basics like reading and math with “live” teachers, while the rest of the curriculum is taught online. There are no art, music or gym classes.

The teachers are recent education school grads who have volunteered for a couple of years with Teach for America, a private national program that was modeled after the Peace Corps, but aimed at American schools in poor and troubled neighborhoods.

Like many recently formed charter school companies, Rocketship uses the savings from its educational model to expand its schools throughout the country. Meanwhile, one of its directors runs a for-profit company that provides thousands of educational materials to the schools.

Indeed, it’s these kind of behind-the-scenes financial relationships that have raised eyebrows throughout the educational community.

To be sure, charter schools can be public schools if the school districts set them up to be accountable to the board and administrators. Madison has established three such charters — Wright Middle School, Badger Rock and Nuestro Mundo — that appear to have had good results experimenting with different educational methods and providing a different academic focus.

Related: The rejected Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter School.

Jay Matthews:

Elliott Witney, a brilliant reading teacher, was one of the six people who launched KIPP, now the nation’s largest charter school network, in a Chicago hotel conference room 14 years ago. He eventually became principal of KIPP’s flagship school in Houston. So, why has this hero of the charter movement taken an administrator job in a traditional Houston area district full of bureaucratic annoyances charters were created to eliminate?

That is one of the many surprising questions asked and answered in Richard Whitmire’s intriguing new book, “On the Rocketship: How Top Charter Schools Are Pushing the Envelope.” It is the best account yet of what is happening with charters. Both those who hate the independent public schools and those who love them should read it.

Whitmire does not hide charter struggles and mistakes. The Rocketship charter network at the center of his story soars, then sputters, then twists and turns. Whitmire is as sympathetic to the parents and educators opposed to Rocketship as he is to the entrepreneurs and educators who created the network.

Gordon Lafer

During the past year, Wisconsin state legislators debated a series of bills aimed at closing low-performing public schools and replacing them with privately run charter schools. These proposals were particularly targeted at Milwaukee, the state’s largest and poorest school district.

Ultimately, the only legislation enacted was a bill that modestly increases school reporting requirements, without stipulating consequences for low performance. Nevertheless, the more ambitious proposals will likely remain at the core of Wisconsin’s debates over education policy, and legislative leaders have made clear their desire to revisit them in next year’s session. To help inform these deliberations, this report addresses the most comprehensive set of reforms put forward in the 2013–2014 legislative session.

Backers of these reforms are particularly enamored of a new type of charter school represented by the Rocketship chain of schools—a low-budget operation that relies on young and inexperienced teachers rather than more veteran and expensive faculty, that reduces the curriculum to a near-exclusive focus on reading and math, and that replaces teachers with online learning and digital applications for a significant portion of the day. Rocketship proposes that its model—dubbed “blended learning” for its combination of in-person and computerized instruction—can cut costs while raising low-income students’ test scores (Rocketship Education 2011).

The call for public schools to be replaced by such tech-heavy, teacher-light operations comes from some of the most powerful actors in local and national politics: the major corporate lobbies, including Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, Americans for Prosperity, and the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce (MMAC). It is these groups, rather than parents or community organizations, that provided the impetus for legislators to consider proposals for mass school closure and privatization in Milwaukee.

The report was discussed recently on Wisconsin Public Radio.

Related: Though not perfect, I think $13,063 (MPS) and $7,126 (MPCP – voucher) are reasonably comparative per-pupil public support numbers for MPS and the MPCP..

Chad Sommer and Jennifer Berkshire:

By Chad Sommer and Jennifer Berkshire
Last weekend, former Newark Star columnist Bob Braunpublished a bombshell column, arguing thatthe state-appointed superintendent of Newark, NJ schools, Teach For America (TFA) alum Cami Anderson, wants to waive seniority rules to fire upwards of 700 tenured Newark teachers and replace a percentage of them with TFA recruits. Executive Director of Teach For America New Jersey, Fatimah Burnam Watkins, quickly dismissedBraun’s assertions as *conspiracy theories*, while claiming TFA has a small footprint in Newark. But the heated back-and-forth misses the larger issue: TFA plays an increasingly essential role in staffing the charters that are rapidly expanding, replacing public schools from Newark to Philadelphia to Chicago to Los Angeles. In fact, newly released documents indicate that many charter operators won’t even consider opening new schools without TFA to provide a supply of *teacher talent.*
TFA a requirement
Emails sent by the Broad Foundation, a leading advocate of market-based education reform and charter expansion, and acquired through a freedom of information request, reveal that many charter management organizations consider TFA presence in a region a necessary prerequisite for opening new schools.
According to the documents, charter management organizations including Rocketship, KIPP, Noble, LEARN and Uncommon Schools all indicated that a supply of TFA teachers was a general pre-condition for expanding into a new region. The emails, which detail the Broad Foundation’s failed efforts to lure high-performing charter operators to Detroit, were released as part of a trove of thousands of documents requested as part of an investigation into Michigan’s embattled Education Achievement Authority.

Alan Borsuk:

Six. The new kids on the block. There are quite a few, but three new schools particularly interest me. They are:
Carmen North. Will the people involved in the successful Carmen High charter school on the south side successfully launch a middle school-high school program in a long-troubled MPS building on the northwest side?
Rocketship Southside Community Prep. This high-profile charter elementary, the first expansion for Rocketship Education beyond its base in San Jose, Calif., will be watched by education activists nationwide who heatedly debate the virtues of the program, which includes a strong component of technology-based learning.
Universal Academy for the College Bound This Philadelphia-based charter school operation is opening elementary and middle schools in two MPS buildings on the north side. The questions I had about how this will go were only compounded when the key Milwaukee leader, Ronn Johnson, was charged recently with sexually assaulting children. But Universal appears intent on weathering the damage that caused.
Seven. MPS leadership. There was a period in the spring when the future of Superintendent Gregory Thornton seemed in doubt.
I still don’t get why School Board members considered putting $80,000 in the budget for a superintendent search.
But last week the board voted to extend Thornton’s contract until 2016. I’d suggest the focus now should be on the rungs below Thornton.
There’s been a lot of change in administrative ranks and a continuing wave of changes in principals. It may be difficult for outsiders (including me) to figure out how this is going, but I know it’s really important.

I read with interest Madison School Board President Ed Hughes’ blog post on local spending, redistributed state tax dollars & property tax increases. Mr. Hughes mentioned Oconomowoc:

Superintendent Cheatham and new Assistant Superintendent for Business Services Mike Barry (recently arrived from the Oconomowoc school district to replace Erik Kass) promise a zero-based approach to budgeting for the 2014-15 school year, so the budgeting process promises to be more lively next year.

Mr. Hughes, writing on May 3, 2012: Budget Cuts: We Won’t Be as Bold and Innovative as Oconomowoc, and That’s Okay..
Alan Borsuk recently followed up on the changes (fewer, but better paid teachers) in Oconomowoc.
Rocketship and Avenues are also worth looking into.

Emma Brown:

It’s the latest sign that the District is on track to become a city where a majority of children are educated not in traditional public schools but in public charters: A California nonprofit group has proposed opening eight D.C. charter schools that would enroll more than 5,000 students by 2019.
The proposal has stirred excitement among those who believe that Rocketship Education, which combines online learning and face-to-face instruction, can radically raise student achievement in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods.
Rocketship’s charter application — which is the largest ever to come before District officials, and which might win approval this month — arrives on the heels of Chancellor Kaya Henderson’s decision to close 15 half-empty city schools, highlighting an intense debate about the future of public education in the nation’s capital.
A growing number of activists have raised concerns that the traditional school system, facing stiffer-than-ever competition from charters, is in danger of being relegated to a permanently shrunken role. And they worry that Washington has yet to confront what that could mean for taxpayers, families and neighborhoods.

Katherine Mangu-Ward:

The notion of online education for the Crayola set can strike adults as absurd. But for kids, even little ones, it’s the idea ignoring computers all day that sounds crazy. After all, if you ask a third grader to list his favorite things, “doing stuff on the computer” will rank high, probably somewhere between race cars and string cheese.
What most people envision when they think of online education–a college or high school student sitting at a computer all day at home, perhaps with minimal parental guidance–isn’t viable for the vast majority of families with young kids. Warehousing is a dirty word in education circles, but the truth is that it must be part of the package. Kids need somewhere to go during the day, preferably to hang out with other kids. They also need a bunch of adults there to keep them from killing one another and help them learn something.

Sean Kennedy:

Charter schools, only 20 years old, are on the rise across America as parents and students try to escape failing public schools. The growth in charter schools has hit Catholic schools especially hard, as education historian Diane Ravitch noted, “Where charter schools are expanding, Catholic schools are dying.” Instead of fearing the rise of Charter schools, Catholic schools should learn from their innovative practices.
Parents who once preferred Catholic schools to the failing public system are abandoning Catholic schools en masse. This coming school year (2012-2013), more American elementary and secondary school students will enroll in charter schools than Catholic schools for the first time.
Charters have grown precisely because they took some of the best practices of Catholic schools – uniforms, discipline and high expectations – and applied them zealously. Now, Catholic schools should adopt some of the best practices used by charters to stage a comeback.
Milwaukee’s Catholic schools have a special opportunity to lead reform. Starting in the fall of 2013, one of the most innovative charter school networks, Rocketship Academy of San Jose, Calif., will open its first franchise in Milwaukee.
Rocketship plans to open eight in total and enroll 4,000 students in the coming years. Rocketship’s model has improved student outcomes dramatically, especially for English language learners. More important, Rocketship spends half as much per pupil than traditional schools.