Why Skyrocket is Bad for Beloit School District
-Giving bonuses to teachers and staff for “strong school-wide culture and proficiency” creates a MASSIVE conflict of interest by incentivizing an environment which does not center on the well-being of the students but the score that teachers get from skyrocket.
-Skyrocket uses an “emotional constancy” rubric on teachers, which forces fake emotional states.
-The proposal will incentivize those fake emotional states in the presence of emotionally developing children.
-The proposal will incentivize strict adherence to time metrics and precise policies over addressing emotional distress of emotionally developing children.
-Teachers in the program feel exhausted, inauthentic, micromanaged, professionally disrespected, and surveilled.
-Many similar effective methods are available online for free without someone looking over our teachers shoulders.
-This board and this superintendent will not be here to do the hard work they admit they are signing up for.
-The extra tech and strangers in our schools create potential danger for our vulnerable immigrant families and others.
-Skyrocket could leak over into the district, corrupting the board
-Skyrockets or the Hendricks foundation could end up with sensitive School board information.
-If it goes badly, it could leave a lasting stain on BSD.
-It's unsustainable and could leave the district literacy scores in worse shape.
-There are no 3rd party research studies that measure Skyrockets success.
-Their coaching is only actively being used in about 60 schools
-Around 240 schools are using their frameworks only, not the full, in depth, on site coaching service that is being pushed here.
-"Teacher coaching" is an old grift used by for-profit companies to soak up tax dollars from broke and desperate school districts. It could very well be that the Hendricks Foundation is being grifted themselves by this.
-Our teachers don't need coaching. Some of them even have Masters Degrees. They know how to teach.
-New investigation by HGF reveals familiar M.O. with devastating literacy program implemented in St. Louis Public Schools in the early 2000's.
-Skyrocket has nothing to do with the literacy portion of this proposal, but it is the most expensive part.
-Open Literacy is being coupled with Skyrocket in this unique proposal from the Hendricks foundation, and it has been sold to the public AS a literacy program, which could be viewed as a deceptive move.
-Insisting upon implementation of this program by the fall and balking at waiting a year doesn't seem to be in the spirit of fully informing the community, either.
-Literacy scores are dropping because our families are in economic turmoil, not because of a lack of resources or programs.
-The Hendricks family is donating roughly 400k to our childrens literacy, not 2.5mil (with heavy strings.)
-By comparison, she donated 15 MILLION dollars to Donald Trumps campaign, (the sadistic pedophile sex-trafficking immigrant hater, all of which is fact, not opinion)
-Beloit has a large immigrant population and this would put our most vulnerable children and families at risk of having their sensitive information leaked to a powerful force against them.
-Everything is political. Politics matter. Where the money is going MATTERS.
-We recently had several high school students walk out in protest of ICE at our public schools and at the Lincoln Academy. Our public high school students got marked as “unexcused absence”. These students were seen as taking advantage of their 1st Amendment rights to protest, and civically respected. The students from the Lincoln Academy were suspended. That is the difference between public and Charter schools and it MUST REMAIN THAT WAY.
- Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, districts must demonstrate how their professional learning strategies strengthen educator effectiveness
LINKS TO OUR RESEARCH ON SKYROCKET
Skyrocket's "Teacher Coaching Manual"
References: “Emotions in Narratives”, Yale School of Medicine, Child Study Center: https://medicine.yale.edu/childstudy/services/community-and-schools-programs/center-for-emotional-intelligence/research/current-research/emotions-in-narratives/
“How Social-Emotional Learning Transforms Classrooms”, Greater Good Magazine: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_social_emotional_learning_transforms_classrooms
“The Role of Educators in School-Based Social and Emotional Learning”: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2773233925000580
“Modeling Emotional Regulation to Support Students' Growth”: https://www.edutopia.org/article/guiding-students-regulate-emotions-modeling/
“Evidence for Social and Emotional Learning in Schools”: https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/evidence-social-emotional-learning-schools-report
“Teachers' Emotions and Emotional Authenticity; Do they Matter to Students Emotional Responses in the Classroom?”: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13540602.2020.1834380
“Surface Acting, Emotional Exhaustion, and Employee Sabotage to Customers: Moderating Roles of Quality of Social Exchanges”: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6246630/
“The Impact of Surface acting and Mindfulness on Preschool Teachers' Burnout: The Roles of Emotional Empathy, and Perceived Organizational Support”: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1612015/full
“New Study Shows Emotional Suppression has Negative Outcomes on Children.” https://www.newyorkfamily.com/new-study-shows-emotional-suppression-has-negative-effect-on-kids/
“Editorial: The role of Teachers' Emotions in Students' Outcomes: From the Perspective of Interpersonal Emotions”: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9755833/
“The Social Consequences of Expressive Suppression”: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2003-02341-008
“Emotional Suppression: Physiology, Self Report, and Expressive Behavior”: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1993-36668-001
"Beloit School District YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@BeloitschoolsOrgNews/featured
Hendricks Family Foundation BSD Core materials: https://hendricksfamilyfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/BSD-Pilot-Core-Materials.pdf
BSD - Special Board Meeting Materials: https://hendricksfamilyfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/01-29-BSD-Special-Board-Meeting-Materials.pdf
Hendricks Family Foundation: https://hendricksfamilyfoundation.org/education/
Education Next: https://www.educationnext.org/straight-conversation-skyrocket-founder-michael-sonbert/
Sonbert, M. (2023). Rebel culture: 12 ways to tier one performance. Skyhorse Publishing.
Beloit Daily News: https://www.beloitdailynews.com/news/business-news/abc-supply-co-founder-will-be-part-of-trump-delegation-to-olympics-closing-ceremony/article_8f7891a9-7e1c-46af-8ca4-25fc462948db.html
CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/31/politics/new-documents-trump-epstein
Supporting Districts' Efforts to Evaluate Professional Development: https://ies.ed.gov/learn/blog/supporting-districts-efforts-evaluate-professional-development#:~:text=Blog-,Supporting%20Districts'%20Efforts%20to%20Evaluate%20Professional%20Development,6
https://www.frontlineeducation.com/professional-learning/effective-professional-learning-strategies-that-actually-work/#:~:text=ESSA%20states%20that%20professional%20learning,this%20classroom%2C%20school%20or%20district?