NEW CHARTER SCHOOLS IN TENNESSEE
As cliched as it may sound, as parents, we want the best for our children, especially when it comes to their education. This mindset is shared by Rocketship, a public charter school system, which recently started operating in Tennessee, specifically Metro Nashville-Davidson County. Founded in 2006, Rocketship Education has placed a great deal of emphasis on parent and community involvement when it comes educating today’s youth. This core belief played a critical role in the launching of their first charter school in San Jose, California and continues to be a guiding force for all new charter schools.
HOW ROCKETSHIP EDUCATION GIVES PARENTS CHOICE
In addition to charter schools in Tennessee, and their flagship school in California, Rocket Education also has schools in Washington, D.C. Needless to say, these non-profit charter schools are taking root in many communities, with good reason. Rocketship Education is giving parents some say in where they choose to send their children to school. If you’re familiar with the public school system, then you know that schools that most children attend are based on zoning, which means that there is a strong chance that your child may be attending an underperforming school or one that doesn’t cater to your child’s unique way of learning.
CHILD-SPECIFIC LESSON PLANS
Aimed almost exclusively at low-income families, Rocketship Education believes in placing children at the forefront of everything they do. This unique charter school system provides children with personalized learning and encourages parental engagement. Also, they offer lesson plans that are child-specific and believe in the proverb “it takes a village to raise a child,” which is why they also encourage community engagement.
ROCKETSHIP EDUCATION AND NWEA/MAP
Rocketship Education routinely looks for ways to improve how they educate today’s children. In fact, long before it was a requirement, they began using NWEA/MAP to measure academic progress. This is an assessment used to gauge how well individual children are performing in school. Prior standardized test only measured how well a school was performing collectively. NWEA/MAP, instead, looks at how well each child is progressing, which by all accounts, is a more accurate way to measure student proficiency. It’s important to note that Rocketship Education adopted this style of measuring student proficiency well before it before it became a regulatory standard.
THE IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION
In an article featured in tennessean.com, Rocketship Education is described as an education system that understands the importance of educating children, especially those in low-income neighborhoods. A good education ensures that these children have a way to escape a life of poverty and crime, which is all too common in the cities and towns that they live in. Also, the article sheds light on the educational disparity between children in low-income families and children in middle-class families. In fact, several studies have shown that children who are born into poverty tend to fall behind in school; Rocketship Education has made it their mission to close the disparate gap and improve student proficiency, regardless of the child’s respective background.
