Rocketship education has been recognized as the most innovative model of blended learning for years since its inception. The founder JohnDanne, envisioned the enrollment of about one million students by the year 2020. Rocketship Education relies on three pillars mainly software personalized learning, excellent teaching and parent involvement in raising the status of underserved students.
In today’s time, there are nearly 13 Rocketship Education schools with over 6000 students. The performing students include those from Bottom of the Pyramid, BoP, and those of Hispanic origin.
Despite the successes achieved, most critics argue that Rocketship Education use of tech-heavy instruction model, student to teacher ratio and student health and safety have been jeopardized. Most of the practitioners of Rocketship Education both the teachers and students have reported numerous instances involving inadequate supervision and also pressures afflicted on them. Most notably, Zone zero reported the effect of corrective measure which resulted in hours of forced silence.
Employees of the Rocketship Education reported of the manipulation the test taken aimed at increasing the student scores. The company’s policy ties about 50% growth and progress to the development of the students’ test scores. Thus, leading to the manipulation of standardized retake tests to augment the test scores.
The student to employees’ ratio has seen the imbalance due to the student rotation into learning labs. At Rocketship education Mosaic, only six teachers are serving over 630 students thus equating to 1:100 teacher to student ratio. This statement brings about the concern for learning effectiveness, student safety, and health.
Upon scrutiny, learning labs did hold close to 70 students and at times under the supervision of less qualified teacher/ aides. With no adequate qualified personnel, it becomes hard for close monitoring of the populous students. Considering these facts Rocketship Education is foregoing merit and proper structural and technical factors in attaining the registered high test scores.
Despite the critics facing Rocketship Education, the system has grown beyond the criticism as seen in this article https://premiergazette.com/2019/02/rocketship-education-learning-criticism/.