Rocketship Education: Poor kids don't deserve music or art [View all]

[HiPointDem]

Last edited Mon Dec 31, 2012, 07:09 AM - Edit history (1)

As a lifelong music educator, this is one of the most despicable education stories I've ever heard:

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: For about one hour every day, students practice math and literacy skills. They work independently at their own pace. The computer is able to track and guide the progress of each student. It's something educators call differentiated learning. Some students work on basic skills, while others advance to more challenging lessons. The learning lab allows a school to hire six fewer teachers, which Rocketship says results in savings of up to half a million dollars. That money is used to pay teachers higher salaries, fund academic deans who help teachers get better, and train principals for future Rocketship schools. But one thing the savings are not used for, art and music classes.

VERONICA BARBOSA: I wish we could have art and music in the school, but at the same time if you want your child to have that in their life, you can make the effort to try and get it, like, after school or on the weekends.

Understand that Rocketship explicitly states that its mission is "...to become a national network to eliminate the achievement gap in low-income neighborhoods." They are a school for poor kids - and, according to Rocketship, poor kids don't need art and music education.

Apparently, poor kids also don't need a computerized curriculum that actually works:

JOHN MERROW: A problem we saw is that some students in the lab do not appear to be engaged. They sit at their computers for long periods of time, seemingly just guessing.

JUDY LAVI: That's definitely not the ideal situation. The ideal situation would be that they'd get help from somebody in the learning lab who would explain the concept to them. Then they would go back and practice it...

ANDREW ELLIOTT-CHANDLER: Next year, we're -- we're thinking of bringing the computers back to the classrooms and the kids back to the classrooms... Innovation, I think, is one of the most exciting reasons to be at Rocketship. It's exhausting, but it's also exhilarating. Things change dramatically every year...

http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2012/12/rocketship-poor-kids-dont-deserve-music.html

Rocketship: a project of Reed Hastings (Netflix) & the Gates Foundation.

http://www.rsed.org/about/National-Strategy-Board.cfm

Here's the video. The starting premise: We need a model for mass-produced education, just as Ford mass-produced the model T.

When bill gates' kids are put in such a school, maybe i'll buy this idea.

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