The thought of corporate chain schools keeps my rage stoked. This whole movement has been to turn children into commodities. It was probably inevitable considering that the US financial sector has hollowed out every other sector they could drain, but it still shocks me that they actually went there.
This is a product of Silicon Valley, so it is bring branded as groovy and progressive--but the rest of the article tells the tale. Most of the teachers are TFA and non-union. The "schools" are being run on the "start-up" model: people who live here in SV will admit that most start ups fail, or fold being bought up by a larger company into their business plan. There is an excellent chance that little chain schools like Rocketship could end up all being owned by one big corporation like Google or Microsoft.
That means $500 billion in public education money eventually being turned over to the 1% of this country, just like everything else. Capitalism fucking sucks. Teachers are going to have to get as militant as dockworkers to shut this crap down.
Otherwise in a few short years teachers are going to be minimum wage workers supervising large rooms full of kids on computers all wearing shirts with the company logo.
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