Lawsuit: Rocketship under fire from four school boards in its home base, Santa Clara County, California
The “miracle” English language-only charter management model (Rocketship), originating from San Jose California, was recruited to Milwaukee by the MMAC, Schools That Can, the Mayor, the Common Council President, Howard Fuller and Deborah McGriff. Their goal is to establish 8 Rocketships in Milwaukee communities to directly compete with Milwaukee Public Schools. In the Spring last year, Rocketship staff and teachers went to the doors of MPS schools, on the southside, as parents were picking up their children at the end of the school day. They attempted to convince families to pull their children from MPS while berating MPS programs. Rocketship schools in California consistently have lower numbers of special education students than their surrounding public schools. They do not offer art and music. They are opposed to bi-lingual programming. And they have been exposed for having a fundamental flaw in their “original” design. Rocketship schools are founded on use of “learning labs.” Learning labs are staffed by hourly employees who lack teaching credentials. Rocketship says that the “learning labs” save enough money for each school to hire 6 fewer teachers yearly, saving up to half a million dollars a year. The problem admitted in a PBS report is that the “learning labs” don’t work, even though students spend 25% of their day in the lab, sitting in front of computers.
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