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!!
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