Personalized Learning May Appear to Solve Pandemic Education Challenges but New Research Raises Big Concerns
Here we are at the beginning of July, and the COVID-19 numbers are soaring across many states. The recessionary collapse of state budgets makes public school funding look shaky, and nobody can quite say how to make school safe. With the 2020-21 school year expected to start in six weeks, school leaders face overwhelming uncertainty. It is easy to imagine that a well-known, free, online learning platform and curriculum, funded entirely by tech philanthropists, might be extremely tempting.
But there are reasons for caution. Last week, the Washington Post‘s Valerie Strauss published a guest column from researchers at the National Education Policy Center (NEPC), a guest column describing the Summit Learning Platform, and warning about some of the reasons for school district leaders to be cautious. These researchers, Alex Molnar and Faith Boninger, have documented serious concerns about protecting the privacy of student data collected by Summit Learning and its sponsors. To underscore the seriousness of their concerns, they describe the powerful people behind Summit Learning:
“Summit Public Schools, founded in 2003, currently operates 11 schools enrolling approximately 4,675 students in California and Washington State. In 2013-2014, there was no Summit Learning Program or ‘partner’ schools. Things changed quickly after a 2014-2015 agreement between Summit and Facebook established the goals of enhancing Summit’s self-created software platform and collaborating on a marketing strategy for its nationwide adoption. Since then, Summit Public Schools has received extensive technical support from Facebook and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and almost $200 million in funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Iniative, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and others.”
Molnar and Boninger review Summit’s marketing claims: “Summit Public Schools claims that its educational program does an exceptional job of preparing students for college and that its graduates succeed in college. Its specific claims are that its students are ‘100 percent Eligible CONTINUE READING: Personalized Learning May Appear to Solve Pandemic Education Challenges but New Research Raises Big Concerns | janresseger
