Seeds of discord were sown in classrooms and sprouted in kitchens, living rooms, and conversations between students and their parents. When 14-year-old Collin Winter, an eighth grader from McPherson, Kansas, joined the protests, they reached a climax. In nearby Wellington, high school students staged a sit-in while their parents gathered in living rooms, churches and car repair yards. They went to student council meetings en masse. "I just want to pick up my Chromebook and tell them I'm not going to do this anymore," says 16-year-old Kylie Forslund, a 10th grade student in Wellington. Home-made banners suddenly appeared in neighborhoods where there had never been political posters.
Silicon Valley came to provincial schools - and everything went awry.
Eight months ago, public schools near Wichita moved to the web-based platform and Summit Learning, a curriculum for "personalized learning" that uses online tools to personalize education. The platform for Summit was created by Facebook developers and funded by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan. As part of the Summit program, students spend most of the day sitting at laptops, studying subjects online and taking tests. Teachers help children, work as mentors and lead special projects. This system is free for schools, except for laptops, which are usually purchased separately.
Many families in Kansas cities, where due to public schools , initially rejoiced at this innovation. After some time, schoolchildren began to come home with headaches and cramps in their hands. Some said they became more nervous. One dacha girl asked for her father's hunting headphones so as not to hear classmates who distract her from her studies, which she now does alone.
Parents of McPherson High School were surveyed: 77 percent of them are against teaching their children using Summit Learning, and more than 80 percent said that their children are unhappy with learning on the platform. “We let computers teach kids and they became like zombies,” McPherson's Tyson Koenig said after attending his ten-year-old son's classes. In October, he picked him up from school.
“Change rarely goes smoothly,” said Gordon Mohn, McPherson County School Superintendent. “Students have begun to learn on their own and are now showing a greater interest in their studies.” John Backendorf, principal of the Wellington School, states that "the vast majority of parents are satisfied with this program."
The protests in Kansas are just part of the growing discontent at Summit Learning.
The platform entered public schools four years ago and now covers 380 schools and 74 students. In November high school students transferred after their school switched to Summit Learning. In Indiana, the school board first cut and then from using the platform , in which 70 percent of students asked to cancel it, or use only optional. And in Cheshire, the program after the protests in 2017. “When there was disappointment with the results, children and adults were able to overcome it and move on,” said Mary Burnham, a grandmother of two from Cheshire who launched a petition to drop the Summit. “Nobody put up with it.”
Despite the fact that in Silicon Valley itself, many gadgets at home and send their children to schools free from high technology, she has long been trying to American education in its own image and likeness. Summit has been at the forefront of this process, but the protests raise questions about the heavy reliance on technology in public schools.
For years, experts have debated the benefits of self-paced interactive learning over traditional teacher-led learning. Supporters of this idea argue that such programs give children, especially in small towns with weak infrastructure, access to high-quality educational programs and teachers. Skeptics worry about too much screen time and argue that students are missing out on important interpersonal lessons.
John Payne, a senior research fellow at RAND, has looked into programs for customizing learning, and believes that this area is still in its infancy.
“Too little research,” he said.
Diane Tavenner, a former teacher and CEO of Summit, founded Summit Public Schools in 2003 and began developing software that would allow students to “unlock their own strengths.” The resulting program, Summit Learning, was taken over by a new non-profit organization - . Diana argues that the protests in Kansas are mostly about nostalgia: “They don't want change. They like schools the way they are. Such people actively resist any changes.”
In 2016, Summit paid the Harvard Research Center to study the impact of the platform, but . Tom Kane, who was supposed to file the results, said he was afraid to oppose Summit because many educational projects receive funding from the Facebook founder and his wife's charity, The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
Mark Zuckerberg backed Summit in 2014 and assigned five Facebook engineers to develop the platform. In 2015, he wrote that Summit would help "meet the individual needs and interests of the student" and "free up time for teachers to mentor what they do best." Since 2016, The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has awarded $99,1 million in grants to Summit. “We take the issues raised very seriously, and Summit is working with local school leaders and parents,” said Abby Lunardini, CEO of The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. “Many of the schools that use Summit love and support it.”
This love and support is best seen in the Kansas cities of Wellington (8 people) and McPherson (000 people). They are surrounded by wheat fields and factories, and the inhabitants work in agriculture, at a nearby oil refinery or an aircraft factory. In 13, Kansas announced that it would support "going to the moon" in education and introduce "personalized learning". Two years later, he chose for this project "»: McPherson and Wellington. When parents received brochures promising "individualized learning", many were delighted. School district leaders have chosen Summit.
“We wanted equal opportunities for all children,” said Brian Kynaston, a school board member. With Summit, his 14-year-old daughter felt empowered.
“Everyone judged it too quickly,” he added.
As the school year began, children received laptops to use with Summit. With their help, they studied subjects from mathematics to English and history. The teachers told the students that their role now was to be mentors.
Parents of children with health problems immediately ran into trouble. 12-year-old Megan, who suffers from epilepsy, was recommended by a neurologist to limit screen time to 30 minutes a day to reduce the number of seizures. Since the beginning of the use of web-based tools, Megan had seizures several times a day.
In September, some students received questionable content when Summit recommended open web sources to them. In one of its lessons on Paleolithic history, Summit included a link to an article in the British newspaper The Daily Mail with spicy ads for adults. When searching for the Ten Commandments, the platform sent to a religious Christian site. To these claims, Tavenner replied that the training course was created from open sources and the article in The Daily Mail fit his requirements. “The Daily Mail writes at a very primitive level and it was a mistake to add that link,” she said, adding that the Summit curriculum does not direct students to religious sites.
Summit divided teachers across the country. For some, he freed them from scheduling and grading tests and gave more time to individual students. Others said they were in the role of bystanders. While Summit required schools to have at least 10-minute sessions with teachers, some children said there were no more than a couple of minutes or none at all.
The question arose about the protection of personal data of students. “Summit collects a huge amount of personal data about each student and plans to keep track of it throughout the college,” outraged Leonie Hameson, co-chair of the Parents Coalition for Student Privacy. Tavenner responded that the platform is fully compliant with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.
By winter, many students from McPherson and Wellington were fed up.
Miriland French, 16, had tired eyes and missed talking to teachers and students in the classroom. “Everyone is very stressed right now,” she said. Eighth grader Colleen Winter, participated in the January strike along with 50 other students. “I was a little scared,” he said, “but I still felt good about doing something.”
In the backyard of the auto repair shop of one of the parents, Tom Henning, an organizational meeting was held. Machinist Chris Smalley, father of two children aged 14 and 16, put up a sign against Summit in front of his house: “They described everything to us very nicely. But it was the worst that we have ever bought." Deanna Garver also made a sign in the yard: "Don't sink with Summit."
In McPherson, the Koenigs saved up money and transferred their children to a Catholic school: “We are not Catholics, but it’s easier for us to discuss religion lessons at dinner than Summit.” After the fall semester, about a dozen parents in Wellington have already transferred their children from public school, and 40 more plan to pick them up by the summer, according to Kevin Dodds, Wellington City Council member.
“We live on the periphery,” he laments, “and they made guinea pigs out of us.”
Source: habr.com