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More than a School: A Be G.R.E.A.T. LaunchPad
(Beyond Learning to Launching)
US students will enter a global economy that requires creative solutions for myriad problems. Meeting Common
Core State Standards is but a starting point because US students will merely be catching up with high-achieving
students around the world who already surpass CCSS standards. To compete better in the global creative
economy, US students should also nurture their creative capacities and gain global experiences.
To better prepare US students for the global creative economy, our grades 6-12 charter school (planned Fall
2014 opening) will empower our students to:
 Surpass CCSS standards
 Cultivate Creative Capacities
 Gain Global Experiences
We are designing an innovative and inclusive Launchpad organizational structure where students not only
consume and master knowledge specified by CCSS standard (which is the norm), they also launch passion-
driven creative projects to create knowledge and economic value - see diagram on how our innovative
Launchpad structure includes a Next-Gen school’s purpose of providing college and career readiness.
Deeper learning’s “learn to transfer” is but a stepping stone to creating
value. Creating and launching value takes passion, which can lead to a
meaningful profession.
We empower students to launch passion-driven creative projects with
creative outputs that will wow others around the world. Launching
these projects help students develop their creative, communication and
collaboration skills. We will have a maker space, i.e. a design studio, to
support these passion-driven creative projects.
Cultivate Creative Capacities
Employers seek knowledgeable employees who can also creatively solve problems. A 2012 Harvard Business
Review posting notes that creativity can be learned and cultivated; thus we cultivate our students’ creative
capacities as early as possible.
Gain Global Experiences
Employers seek employees who can work effectively across diverse cultures and languages within the global
economy. In addition to providing multiple language options, we will also seek to provide international study
opportunities for students.
We will use blended learning to free up time and funding so that students can pursue passion-driven creative
projects, even if their passions do not fall within CCSS standards.
More than a School: A Be G.R.E.A.T. Launchpad
To reinforce our vision that our students will be globally competitive, our school’s name includes the phrase “Be
G.R.E.A.T.” where “G.R.E.A.T.” stands for “Globally Ready to Excel and Achieve Today”. Every day, the
students will go to “Be G.R.E.A.T.”.
The term “launchpad” highlights that our students will have the opportunity to launch their passion-driven
creative outputs into the global creative economy. And the term “launchpad” resonates with our (initial) target
Central Florida community who lives close to Kennedy Space Center.

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Thus our “Be G.R.E.A.T. Launchpad“ name reflects that it will be more than a school; it will be a launchpad of
passion-driven creative outputs for the global creative economy.
Design an Academic Model to Achieve Target Academic Outcomes
Our charter school will target Grades 6-12 students drawn from Orange County (FL) that has a 60%+ free and
reduced lunch-eligible student population.
We will implement on-site flex blended learning via Florida Virtual School (FLVS) to provide a CCSS-aligned
curriculum and instructional content for our target Grades 6-12 students. While FLVS provides the online
instruction, our instructional staff will provide the F2F personalized insights, and also inspire our students to
meet high expectations. Thus by assiduously applying flex blended learning to personalize and accelerate
student learning, we will achieve at least 1.5 year academic growth annually for CCSS ELA and mathematics.
Our counselling staff will counsel our students to personalize and own their academic paths to reflect their
particular needs and abilities. The State of Florida has pending legislation (SB 1076) that allow students to
choose either a “scholar” or “merit” designation for their high school diplomas, which provides more options to
our students to reach a target 100% graduation rate.
Carnegie Mellon’s Open Learning researchers found that blended learning can halve learning time. The flex
blended learning model empowers our students to personalize and self-pace their learning. While using real-
time data-driven formative assessments to improve their learning, students also will take summative
assessments such as end-of-course assessments, or PARCC assessment to demonstrate their mastery of the
material to receive course credit.
We will participate in the OECD Test for Schools (based on PISA), which allows us to directly compare with our
peer schools in the world’s leading educational systems. As befits a charter school that prepares its students to
compete globally, it’s only appropriate to benchmark ourselves globally to set high expectations for our globally
competitive students.
We will begin college counselling by the 8th
grade to all students. We will also provide free SAT tutoring to 7th
graders to help them qualify for the Duke TIP program to bolster their academic confidence, and also to high
school students to help them improve their SAT scores for college admissions to achieve a 90% post-secondary
matriculation rate.
The State of Florida has pending legislation (SB 904) that will allow MOOCs to provide K12 academic credit.
Our students will have the opportunity to partake of world-class instruction while earning academic credit that
can also enrich their college application portfolios.
Design a Sustainable and Scalable Business Model
To sustain our business model, we focus upon increasing our FTE revenue per teacher, while simultaneously
reducing our instructional cost per teacher.
Increasing FTE Revenue Per Teacher. Florida Virtual School has a franchise model, which costs a charter
school $50 per student per half-credit course, while allowing the charter school to retain the FTE revenue.
Though the State of FL has constitutionally-mandated class size requirements, pending “digital learning”
legislation (HB 7029) will waive these requirements for blended courses. Thus on-site flex blended learning
empowers us to increase our student-teacher ratio, which proportionately increases our FTE revenues relative
to our instructional staff headcount.
Reducing Instructional Cost Per Teacher. Our instructional staff will have an experienced teacher to lead each
subject area. These experienced teachers will be supported by elite college graduates who work as teaching

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fellows called Be G.R.E.A.T. Corps, which is modelled after Match Corps, and will be paid stipends. Our
teaching fellows will provide highly personalized coaching to our students.
We will also open our Be G.R.E.A.T. Corps teaching fellowships to fresh elite college graduates who are non-US
citizens. In addition to coaching our students, these non-US citizens can expose them to global experiences.
Note: The US Citizenship and Immigration Services provides a post-graduation Optional Practical Training
period (12 month-minimum) for non-US citizens, with additional time granted for STEM graduates.
Financial Sustainability. By increasing average FTE revenue per teacher, and reducing average cost per
teacher, we will reach financial break-even within three years using recurring public revenues.
Scalability by Spreading Implementations and Sharing Ideas.
We can scale our education innovations inherent in our Be G.R.E.A.T. Launchpad academic and business
models by starting comparable charter schools across the State of Florida, which desires to significantly
increase the number of charter schools (from 518 to 829) and double the number of charter school students
(from 180,000 to 360,000) by academic year 2017-2018.
We can collaborate with partner school districts such as Orange County (FL) public schools (OCPS) who wish to
scale our education innovations. We have already reached out to the OC board and staff about collaborating on
digital learning; we shared a presentation on how our charter school can identify whether a digital learning
innovation will work, and collaborate with OCPS to scale the innovation throughout its 180,000+ students in 184
schools.
We will share our education innovations via our http://begreatacademy.wordpress.com/ blog, and also by
sharing via Professional Learning Networks. We will also participate in research studies, and conferences to
share our education innovations. The University of Central Florida has released a blended learning toolkit for
tertiary educational institutions. We can work with UCF to adapt its blended learning toolkit for K12 institutions,
and also to incorporate our education innovations for widespread dissemination.
Design a Creative Maker Space for Students to Launch Passion-driven Creative Projects
(Provide Room for Failure in Pursuit of Ambitious Goals Because Creativity Involves Risk)
Ray Kurzweil (futurist, inventor, Google director of engineering) noted in a 2006 Washington Post interview: “ …
it still takes passion to create knowledge of value. … The key is to find what you have a passion for and pursue
that.”
While pursuing their passion-driven projects, students engage in “deeper learning” that transfers their CCSS-
derived knowledge and capabilities towards the creation of new knowledge. Our instructional staff will advise
and guide our students as they challenge themselves to create new knowledge. By empowering students to
pursue their individual passions, we can reverse a 2012 Gallup poll finding that students become less engaged
over time.
We will design a creative maker space, i.e. a design studio, that will allow students to pursue
and launch their own passion-driven creative projects. Students will be held accountable for
their own projects, which do NOT need to fall within CCSS requirements. Though there will
be no grades, students will be encouraged to launch their creative projects to wow others all
over the world. Our role model is NuVu Studio, which is an MIT spin-off.
Our students will have the time and funding to explore and pursue their passions without needing to worry about
grades. In other words, there is room to fail. Success, especially in creative pursuits, includes learning how to
rapidly recover and learn from “failure”. They can demonstrate market acceptance by external funding via
Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, or comparable online funding platforms. They can also use online manufacturing
platforms such as Quirky.com to manufacture and distribute their creative outputs.

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We will not accept mediocrity from our students. We want our students to strive for ambitious goals, and are
willing to accept worthy failures, in which the only failure is the failure to learn. We believe that students who
pursue their passions will find their professions.
Design Global Experiences for Students to Build Global Expertise
Students will eventually work within the global creative economy; it is beneficial to learn as early as possible how
to understand and participate in the global creative economy. We will provide our students to learn multiple
languages with online language resources.
To build global experiences, we will provide international study opportunities. Research
published by the American Psychological Association showed a strong relationship between
living abroad and creativity. Time spent traveling abroad, which includes the traditional short-
term international study trips, did not reveal a similar relationship. Thus we will provide
students with semester-long study opportunities in partner schools in other countries, e.g.
Malaysia (Asia).
Furthermore, members of our Be G.R.E.A.T. corps who are non-US citizens can help our students plan their
international study opportunities, perhaps in collaboration with the high schools that those non-US citizens
studied in prior to their US collegiate education. We will blend creative projects with global experiences by
empowering students to engage in global collaborations with others around the world who share their passions.
Design Principles for our Be G.R.E.A.T. Launchpad Design with its Core Assumptions
Design Principles Passion-Driven Creative Projects
Student-centred Student pursues own passion
High expectations Student sets own high expectations
Self-pacing Students sets own pace
Mastery Demonstrated via market acceptance
Blended instruction Learn just-in-time content online & face-to-face
Student ownership Student owns passion
Core Assumptions
Motivation Intrinsic
Timeframe As long as needed without having to conform to academic schedule
Grades No grades to allow for playful exploration and creativity
Use Blended Learning To Free Up Time and Funding
Blended learning allows students to accelerate by 2X their learning of self-selected academic courses, which
frees up to 50% of school time and 50% of school funding for passion-driven creative projects.
For example, based upon 20 students per teacher, 6 instructional periods per day and a fully-loaded $60,000
teacher cost, the teaching cost per student per course is about US$500. Potential per student per course cost
saving can amount to $250. For six blended learning courses, the time saving can total to 3 periods per day.
Motivate Students to Accelerate Learning: Passion can Lead to Profession
To motivate our students to accelerate their learning while meeting high expectations, we will allot half of the
$250 cost-savings per course per student, which is $125, into the student’s accounts that they can use to fund
passion-driven creative projects and global experiences.

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For example, if a student accelerates her learning by taking 2 blended courses per year for 6 years, the student
will earn $1,500 ($125 X 2 X 6) that she can use for her passion-driven creative projects and/or global
experiences. If the student is on a free and reduced lunch program, we can provide 1-to-1 matching fund to
double the student’s funding to $3,000.
Boldness and Impact: Beyond Learning to Launching
While in school, students learn content and develop capabilities; however they wait until they start working
before applying the content and capabilities to create economic value. We believe that students are capable of
creating value prior to graduation if they pursue and launch passion-driven creative projects.
Thus in addition to meeting CCSS requirements, our charter school will empower students to launch passion-
driven creative projects to create economic value. We wish to expand school’s purpose from helping students
prepare to create value to actually launching creative outputs to create value.
Beyond next-generation learning lies launching.
We will be more than a school; we will be a G.R.E.A.T. Launchpad for passion-driven creative outputs that will
wow others across the world. We want all of our students to be: “more a wow-maker, less a test-taker”.
Witness how a teenager, Nick D’Alosio, successfully launched an innovative digital application that was sold to
Yahoo for an estimated $30 million. He has definitely wowed others around the world.
Capacities
During my technology/strategy consulting career with KPMG Consulting, IBM and Boston Consulting Group, I
developed strategic plans, and also executed large-scale consulting and deployment projects in the US, and
also internationally, i.e. Asia, and Latin America. In addition, there is a parent working group who will form a
board to co-write and file a charter school application by August 1st
with Orange County (FL) Public Schools, and
also to govern the charter school once it opens in Fall 2014.
Advantages
Thanks to my startup’s R&D base in Singapore, I have significant relationships with Singaporean educational
institutions. Our charter school will incorporate relevant Singaporean educational approaches, and thus blend
the best of both Western and Asian educational approaches to benefit our students.
The University of Central Florida has deep blended learning expertise for tertiary institutions. We plan to partner
with UCF to adapt its blended learning expertise to K12 schools, and also create a K12-specific toolkit that also
incorporate the Be G.R.E.A.T. academic and business models.
We have established international relationships in Malaysia and Singapore that will allow us to rapidly provide
global experiences to our students. We have participated in Startup Weekend – EDU and EdCamp events that
can attract entrepreneurs and other potential mentors to work with our students as they pursue and launch
passion-driven creative projects.
Ongoing Actions:
 Partner with a parent working group who will become the charter school’s founding board
 Draft a preliminary charter school application for a June 1st
submission deadline
 Maintain our charter school blog and presentation with over 3,100 views.
Next Steps
 June 1st
: Submit a preliminary charter school application for an initial review
 August 1st
: Submit a completed charter school application