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Bellwether Report: Strengthening Demand for Innovation in Education

So often we see policy papers focused on the supply side of educational innovation. What systems need to get built? What new technology needs to be adapted for educational use? I'm thrilled to see a careful study of what needs to happen on the demand side of the innovation equation. How do the "users" or "customers" shape an innovative marketplace? We who teach in or run schools and networks have a tremendous influence on how suppliers size up and seize market opportunities in the next 10 years. In fact, every parent both as a customer and as a voter will influence what innovations take root both by creating smart demand and by helping shift the political landscape in ways that are favorable to high quality innovations. Kim Smith and Julie Petersen of Bellwether have published a report that is worth reading and more importantly acting on. Check it out!

http://bellwethereducation.org/pull-and-push/

Rocketship’s Results for the 10.11 School Year

In the 10.11 school year, Rocketship Education, the nation’s leading network of K-5 hybrid charter schools, achieved an overall score of 868 on the 2011 Academic Performance Index (API) growth score. We are pleased with this result; however, we are still far from satisfied and realize that there is still a need for substantial progress for ourselves, our schools, and our network.

At Rocketship, we recognize that state exams are imperfect assessments. Yet, we also deeply believe that they are important indicators of our students’ readiness for college and strong indicators of how our schools are preparing our Rocketeers to be successful in middle school and beyond. Consequently, we take them very seriously, and we eagerly await the release of our scores each year.

In 10.11, Rocketship Mateo Sheedy Elementary, Sí Se Puede and Los Sueños Academy, continued to perform at a high level and remain within the top 10 schools serving low-income students in Santa Clara County:

o Rocketship Mateo Sheedy Elementary - API of 892

o Si Se Puede – API of 859

o Los Sueños Academy – API of 839

Moreover, our newest school, Rocketship Los Sueños Academy, which opened last fall, is one of the highest-performing first-year schools in California serving low-income students.

We are very proud of the accomplishments of our schools, teachers, families, and Rocketeers. These results are a testament to the dedication and talent of the staff of Rocketship Education and we are fortunate to be surrounded by such incredible teachers on a daily basis.

Yet, within Rocketship Education, we are very public in our explicit commitment to eliminating the achievement gap within our lifetimes. This is not a simple task and it requires all of us, especially Rocketship, to be unflinchingly honest in the assessment of ourselves and our work each year.

In this evaluation and assessment, it is thus incredibly important for Rocketship to reflect on the reality that two of our campuses declined in API. Moreover, we no longer have a school above the 900 API mark, which is a disappointing reality. Consequently, we are investigating the causes and discovering important issues to focus on. As we grow, our reliance on interim assessments that are aligned and predictive of end of year results also grows and we are seeing some gaps to close in the power of our assessments to point to the right focus areas throughout the year. In addition, we are seeing higher rates of advanced students in Math as compared to ELA which requires us to look closely at our instruction in both classroom and learning lab so that we are best serving all of our students including our significant ELL population.

Finally, these results remind us that while 800 is an important milestone, breaking 900 as a school is all about pushing more of our students to “advanced”— “proficient” is not good enough in the long haul. Helping our students achieve advanced levels of mastery requires huge efforts from our teachers and school staff. Our staff remains as committed as ever to attaining consistently these high levels of achievement so that we are not merely closing or narrowing, but rather eliminating the achievement gap between our schools and schools in more affluent communities.

The 10.11 school year was overall a successful year for Rocketship schools, families and Rocketeers. However, there is still a tremendous amount of work to still be accomplished by ourselves in this work and still much for us to learn if we are to ensure college readiness for all Rocketeers. I am confident that we will continue on this path of constant improvement and work to figure out how to consistently eliminate the achievement gap within our schools and communities and expect to see great results in the 11.12 school year. I am even more confident in this as each day I look around and am surrounded by an unbelievable team of committed, talented individuals who are thoroughly dedicated to our mission of eliminating the achievement gap within our lifetimes.

Congrats on a successful 10.11 school year Rocketeers, but we are still not satisfied at Rocketship as we know that this is still not good enough for our Rocketeers if we are going to ensure true college readiness. In 11.12 we look forward to continuing to learn, innovate, improve, and demonstrate that all students can achieve at extremely high levels, regardless of any circumstances.

I am excited for the 11.12 school year Rocketeers!!

Why the Rocketship Model is better for teachers…

For the past twenty to thirty years, the act and the art of teaching has become increasingly more complex and difficult. The difficulty of the profession and the effects on teacher sustainability are becoming even clearer. Recent studies have indicated that on average, 46% of teachers leave the profession within five years. This is a rate of attrition that is much higher than any other profession and far ahead of the national average. Moreover, as Joel Rose, former Founder and Executive Director of School of One, often reminds us, over 40% of teachers often feel ‘disheartened’ at this point in their career as well. A disheartened teacher is far from where many of these individuals began their career with their idealistic beliefs in students, learning, and deep excitement and investment in kids and families.

It is time for all of us to revisit this school model, especially for teachers. How can we begin to elevate the profession, elevate the possibilities of sustainability, elevate the ability of teachers to realize excellent levels of student achievement with all students, and lastly, eliminate any disheartened teachers within our schools?

At Rocketship, we believe that this is possible and act upon it daily. We are consumed with the question of how to elevate the profession of teaching and fully invest in and empower the incredible talent that is at the foundation of Rocketship. Moreover, as I have participated in the first week of our month long professional development with teachers prior to the start of the 11.12 school year, I am reminded on a daily basis of the incredible talent that is in the room. With this extraordinary talent base within our network, it is critical that we ensure that we are investing and focusing on revisiting the profession in a manner that ensures that these unbelievable people and teachers are invested in, fulfilled, and remain active participants in education.

At Rocketship, in order to make this happen, we believe a school must ‘deconstruct’ the act of teaching. What is it that teachers do each day that is the best and most important use of their talent? What is it that they, and only they, can do?

At Rocketship, we are focusing on this work and attempting to elevate the role of the teacher in a manner that also proclaims the immense value and worth of each and every teacher, and each and every minute of their day and work. This takes effect in Rocketship leveraging the hybrid model to help teach students with basic skills. At Rocketship, a teacher is not solely tasked with closing the basic skills gap, but is able to leverage online curricula in this work—(http://venturebeat.com/2011/08/01/dreambox-aces-test-study-shows-edutainment-program-boosts-exam-scores/). Moreover, teachers at Rocketship are supported by a robust Response to Intervention program, which means that Rocketship teachers are not tasked with teaching and then tutoring and interventions after-school as well. Rocketship is actively working to move different components of the day out of the classroom and not task a teacher with this work. As components of the classroom like assessments and independent practice are moved beyond the classroom, as online curricula supports teachers and teaches basic skills, then teachers are again able to focus more time on critical thinking and depth in the art of teaching—something only teachers can do.

At Rocketship, we are also focused on revisiting the act of supporting teachers, coaching teachers, developing teachers in their art of teaching, and investing in teachers as leaders (http://schoolleaderstoolbox.org/toolkit/explore/introduction). This occurs in weekly one to one coaching meetings with school leaders, an Academic Dean regularly working with teachers and investing in their work, and various other means. Likewise, teachers are paid a higher salary and are eligible for a merit based bonus. Yet, even now we do not believe this is enough and we are currently revisiting our professional development and coaching model, while also revisiting our compensation model and working to compensate teachers in a manner that truly honors the profession and work.

Teaching is still an incredibly personal act, an act and an art that requires talented individuals to lead, invest in, and personally connect with students—the future leaders of our world. Consequently, with over 13,000,000 students still suffering under the achievement gap, it is incredibly important that we figure out how to truly invest in teachers, transform the profession, and consequently, transform the outcomes for students. Eliminating the achievement gap will require thousands of unbelievable teachers, teachers that are transformed and empowered like doctors, teachers that are ‘heartened’ and passionate about their work, while also being deeply invested in and rewarded. At Rocketship, we are committed to this path and work and have already accomplished a great deal. Yet, we know that more can be realized and as an organization we are committed to continuing to work to honor our talented teachers by diligently focusing on the transformation of the profession and art of teaching.

Some time at the Aspen Institute...

I've had a good few days at the Aspen Ideas Festival and then the Aspen Global Leadership Network's biannual conference. A few striking things:

1 - Awareness among global leaders around education and the need for dramatic improvement now has never been higher. The capstone of this for me was a debate between Wendy Kopp and Diane Ravitch. Although Ravitch made many interesting points, the crowd reaction was fascinating. It just seems to be unAmerican to be nihilistic about our ability to improve our situation. Anytime Kopp made the point that we had proof points and the key now was to scale it up and fix our education problems, the audience responded with applause. Afterwards, people could barely recall the Ravitch points about lack of progress and talked about their hope that Kopp was right. It's just great to be an American, we have such a deep optimistic belief in our ability to fix even the toughest problems. So important.

2 - The global education landscape is clearly going to be even more impacted by technology than urban parts of the US. Many countries spend 1/10 what we do per student, so technology is the only viable way to deliver a quality education. I really hope that as developing countries grow their economies, they are able to devote more and more resources to education. While technology delivered instruction is a nice short term way to bootstrap the system and learn basic skills, to be globally competitive, students have to be able to think critically, collaborate, write, communicate, build projects, etc. That is much better performed in the classroom of a sharp and caring teacher.

3 - In a couple of the panels I sat on, we discussed the point of how the type of radical disruption Rocketship represents will most affect public education. Our own view is that it is far easier to just start new great schools using our rocketship model than to change the work rules and retrofit traditional schools. The basic trade is whether external politics for charters are tougher or internal politics for changing a district culture are more difficult. I think external politics will ultimately be easier.

4 - I had several conversations that strengthened my viewpoint that the significantly higher pay and better work environment we offer teachers is something that teachers unions' will embrace and enable in districts. It is true that our model will lead to fewer members, but ultimately higher paid, longer lasting, more satisfied professional members. I'm really hoping we see this change and districts begin to be capable of consistently producing low-income high-performing schools.

Happy summer!

Scaling up Successful Charter Networks

I was glad to take part in a panel organized by Bryan Hassel at the National Charter School Conference in Atlanta last month. We analyzed the key barriers to scaling up charter networks that have been identified by the smart research at Public Impact and the Center on Reinventing Public Education. I was heartened by the similarities between the barriers those groups have identified and the list of worries we keep top of mind at Rocketship as we plan our expansion. We should be careful about over-adopting lessons from other sectors about expansion but so many of the fundamentals are the same for school networks looking to scale. Growing anything to scale at high quality requires a strong model that makes financial sense and can be replicated, a constant pipeline of outstanding leaders (disproportionately groomed from within), and an organizational, mission-driven culture. In addition, external factors need to be managed and influenced carefully in order to create the conditions for high quality growth. All of this is tremendously hard work to be sure but I’m heartened that we are charging down roads that have been paved by other sectors. We must retain these lessons and build on them so that we are enforcing known discipline to a sector that is just getting its sea legs on how to define its own pathways to high quality growth. If every successful charter network grew by 20% per year (which is not as aggressive as growth rates seen in other sectors) we would have 4,000 outstanding schools in the US serving 2 million low income students…a single charter network growing at 40% per year could reach 1 million kids by 2025...that’s impact worth planning for!

Two interesting papers on the topic...

Going Exponential

CRPE/Mathematica study

Charters and Districts - The Beginning of Real Partnerships

This week CRPE released a great piece on charter and district partnerships to focus on restarting the most struggling schools in a district.

http://www.crpe.org/cs/crpe/download/csr_files/WP_PSDP_AchieveGap_Jun11.pdf

We contributed some information about Rocketship in this piece. As we expand to new cities across the country, we are seeing a tremendous difference among cities in where they are in the 12 step program listed at the end of the piece.

In some of the strong cities like Milwaukee, Chicago, Newark and New Orleans, there is a clear understanding of the achievement gap, strong urgency, an acknowledgement that the flexibility of charters gives the strong operators advantages in doing this work, and an outbound effort to recruit folks like us to help in the work. On the other hand, we are working to help districts around the Bay Area which barely acknowledge the achievement gap as a key priority of their district despite thousands of kids not getting an education. If they do acknowledge the gap, they are confident they can eliminate it faster than we can despite the fact that the last 10 years of data shows little progress on their side.

After being involved in the political side of charter and district relationships for a decade, this bell curve doesn't really surprise me any more. But you really have to wonder, are we as a country going to demand that our elected boards and superintendents do everything it takes to solve the achievement gap, no matter how disruptive to the current system? If so, the new generation of scalable high-quality charter networks can help to completely eliminate the gap in the next two decades. If we can't start to build effective partnerships, we're locked into incremental change, measured in 50+ year increments in a recent report on district gains.

In Santa Clara County, thousands of parents affiliated with PACT held an event to ask electeds if they were committed to moving to the right side of the bell curve. The response was muted even among those who accepted the invitation! (Great school district exception was Darcie Green, really heroic!)

It really is amazing that in a valley for which innovation and disruption is our bread and butter, that applying our techniques to make step function improvements in the education of our children is even controversial.

My prediction is that we look back in ten years and are amazed by the lack of collaboration, because we will have achieved it. My second prediction is that our union leaders will be the ones that get us over the hump. As the repeat players in this, union leaders know that ultimately their membership thrives or suffers based on the quality of their outcomes. Yes, the accountability for this can come slowly, but it always comes. And I have met a lot of union leaders that think that the new school model we are pioneering at Rocketship gives teachers higher salaries, more support, and moves a lot of basic skills online so they can focus on social-emotional learning and criticial thinking through projects. That's just simply a better job for teachers.

I think we all have a chance to reassess now and think about what a new system will look like. I for one want to step forward and hope we can start to have those conversations. Thanks to the folks at CRPE for crystallizing the steps along the path to real partnerships. Thanks to the other heroes sticking their neck out politically to try and make real partnerships happen. We can make the achievement gap a historic footnote this decade.