Showing posts with label school funding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label school funding. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 8

Rocketships's Blended Learning Model

Thanks to Betts Gorsky, who sent along this fascinating video, linked to below. Rocketship has several things in common with Maine Enterprise Schools...sort of where we'd like to be several years from now. They are not only a replication model (meant to be sustainable by having multiple autonomous public school or public charter sites) but one that rethinks some of the orthodoxies of how teachers and other staff are deployed. There are differences too: Rocketship focuses on the elementary years and assumes classroom-based instruction; we focus on middle and high school years with a largely individualized model. Both models, though, enable adults to work more effectively with students not by spending more money, but by spending what money there is differently.

From edreformer.com: "Here is a video of John Danner, founder of Rocketship Education, describing the hybrid learning model. This is also known as the blended learning model, or a teaching and school management methodology that can save 20% of staffing costs, or up to $550,000 a year, in Danner’s case.

Danner says: “You roll this…into a few things that make your school better. I like to say it’s like someone writing you a check for $500,000 every year and saying ‘Do things that improve your school.’”

Sunday, July 11

Asking the right questions...

During the Education and Cultural Affairs Committee debate around the innovation bill that was passed in May to facilitate Maine's Race to the Top application, much of the testimony - including that around enabling charter schools as an innovation strategy - repeated some fairly old arguments based on some assumptions that may longer be true. What is a public school? What kinds of public schools can serve Maine's young people, parents, and communities? How can innovation thrive without dismantling the parts of our current system that are working? If we ask the right questions, we might get closer to agreement on what kinds of policies and practices will work for Maine.