Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.

Malcolm Forbes

Rocketship Education was founded in 2006 as a national network to eliminate the elementary-age achievement gap in high poverty neighborhoods. Initially focusing on San Jose, California,  Rocketship chose its first neighborhood, Washington Guadalupe, based on relationships that John Danner, Co-Founder and CEO, had with Sacred Heart Parish.  In 1999, Father Mateo Sheedy, Pastor of Sacred Heart Parish, was asked to recommend children from his parish for the Juan Diego Scholarship program at Santa Clara University.  Father Mateo was appalled that, of the hundreds of children in his parish, none had received the education necessary to attend Santa Clara. As a result, three schools were formed serving this neighborhood – Downtown College Prep, Sacred Heart Nativity School, and Rocketship Mateo Sheedy Elementary school.

Rocketship's Co-Founder and Chief Achievement Officer, Preston Smith became the first principal at Rocketship when it opened in 2007, vaulted the first school to seventh in the state in its first year of operation with an 886 API and then reached the stratosphere in 2008 with a 926 API, making it third in the state and topping Palo Alto Unified despite a 90 percent low-income, 70 percent ELL population.  Preston Smith had previously been a Principal in the Alum Rock School District and Rocketship's second school, Rocketship Sí Se Puede was started in 2009 in this district to combat similar problems to those found in the Washington Guadalupe neighborhood.

Today, Rocketship Education continues to focus on locating schools in areas that have federally identified Program Improvement elementary schools.  In San Jose, there are currently about 15 Program Improvement schools and an additional 15 neighborhoods with large populations of low-proficiency students.  This provides Rocketship with a clear growth path in San Jose.  Rocketship received a $5 million grant to start its next five schools in 2009 and a charter grant for five schools from the Santa Clara County Office of Education.  The organization intends to open several schools each year, with primary focus in San Jose for the next several years. 

Rocketship seeks to create a future in which thousands of low-income elementary school children have graduated from four-year colleges and have come back to their neighborhoods to eradicate the last traces of the achievement gap.

To help low-income elementary school students reach academic proficiency by the time they graduate from Rocketship so that they are prepared for a rigorous middle and high school education leading to a four-year college.