John Danner

John Danner

John Danner is leaving Rocketship Education, the innovative, Palo Alto-based K-5 lease schoolhouse network he cofounded seven years ago, to become an entrepreneur again. He is starting an as yet unnamed company, he says, "out of my frustration that the online learning infinite never embraced pupil-centered learning, so we are going to try to do information technology correct."

Rocketship appear Thursday that Rocketship President Preston Smith, a former teacher who started Rocketship with Danner and was the principal of the first Rocketship school, will become both president and CEO.

Danner and Smith said that the transition was planned from the beginning of Rocketship and that now, with Rocketship facing its adjacent stage of growth, is the right time. Rocketship, with almost 200 employees, operates seven schools with 3,800 students in San Jose with approval to open 30 in Santa Clara County inside five years. In August, it will open up an elementary school in Milwaukee, its commencement out-of-California expansion. Rocketship'southward board will vote next month on whether to open the kickoff of several schools in Nashville.

Preston Smith

Preston Smith

"We will keep to work relentlessly at Rocketship to ensure that the accomplishment gap is eliminated in our lifetime in San Jose and beyond," Smith, who has overseen Rocketship's operations over the past year, said in a news release. Bringing information technology to scale, including developing a cadre of new leaders, is the next claiming, he said.

Danner founded, ran and then sold NetGravity, an Internet advert software company, before teaching for 3 years in Nashville. He returned to San Jose, convinced that online software, programmed to track to individual students' learning, could fill up in gaps in students' knowledge and teach rudimentary skills, freeing up teachers' time for more than in-depth instruction.

The learning lab that students attend for 100 minutes daily, run by paraprofessionals, also saves money in personnel, which Rocketship plows back to hire two actress administrators at each school: an assistant principal and bookish dean to train teachers. Well-nigh of Rocketship'due south teachers are starting time teachers, recruited from Teach for America.

And so far, the model has worked. The overall API score for Rocketship schools, where 80 percent are English learners and xc pct are from low-income families, was 855 concluding year, far to a higher place the average for schools with minority students.

But Smith and Danner remain dissatisfied with the limitations of commercial online software and the difficulty in smoothly feeding helpful information on individual students' performance in the learning lab to the classroom teachers so that they can tailor instruction. That'southward the illusive goal of personalized learning and is one surface area that Danner'southward new visitor plainly will focus on.

Smith said that Rocketship is developing the side by side iteration of hybrid or blended learning, which will involve integrating computers in a classroom setting.

Danner's startup visitor plans to work closely with Rocketship. In order to avert a potential conflict of interest, Danner is stepping down from Rocketship'due south board of directors. "Rocketship is the first partner, and hopefully it will get in easier for all schools to become student-centered," he said in an e-mail.

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