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Parents and students in Kansas have concerns about the Summit Learning program

nytimes.com

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Re: Parents and students in Kansas have concerns about the Summit Learning program

#21

Post by paulryanrogers »

readams wrote: post #16

One of the things that worries me about the current approaches to improving schools is that we focus so much on ensuring a minimum standard for all students to meet. I think for the future of the country, we should care much more about ensuring that exceptional students are allowed to excel. An exceptional student from a wealthy background will get the extra support they need, but we need a system where exceptional s…

Agreed that exceptional students should be given tools to excel. College admissions is supposed to work that way by accepting the best academically and supporting them with academic scholarships.

Still, the world is full of people who will not excel at anything. They deserve help to be their best too.

Re: Parents and students in Kansas have concerns about the Summit Learning program

#23

Post by schoolboard »

barryparr wrote: post #19

Our daughter is enrolled in a Summit school in the Bay Area. It’s been a very positive experience and not one I’d recognize from the way it’s described in the story. Her teachers are extremely available and supportive, and there’s a lot of emphasis on group and individual projects and presentations. But I would agree that a lot of the linked resources in the curriculum are not of very high quality. I don’t know wheth…

I'm a board member of a school district, and I have to say I was shocked at the resistance to trying new methods of learning from both the administration and educators in our districts. Flat out statements that "kids can't learn from computers," while not universal, were common. Resistance to change is enormous. Combine this with the education industrial complex that has built up around traditional schools, and getting anything done is very very hard.

So I would have a view that there was likely some bumpy implementation, that there were some grumpy parents, and the teachers were more than happy to have the rebellion established. Don't underestimate a passive-aggressive implementation approach as an attempt to scuttle the whole thing. (I had a teacher for my son when common core was established, who literally told all the parents "my job now is just to hand out worksheets every day." And that's what she did. Even though that was obviously not the intent of common core.)

So yes -- poor implementation in an environment that easily rolls small snowballs into avalanches that hit the NYT.

Re: Parents and students in Kansas have concerns about the Summit Learning program

#24

Post by killjoywashere »

schoolboard wrote: post #23
barryparr wrote: post #19

Our daughter is enrolled in a Summit school in the Bay Area. It’s been a very positive experience and not one I’d recognize from the way it’s described in the story. Her teachers are extremely available and supportive, and there’s a lot of emphasis on group and individual projects and presentations. But I would agree that a lot of the linked resources in the curriculum are not of very high quality. I don’t know wheth…

I'm a board member of a school district, and I have to say I was shocked at the resistance to trying new methods of learning from both the administration and educators in our districts. Flat out statements that "kids can't learn from computers," while not universal, were common. Resistance to change is enormous. Combine this with the education industrial complex that has built up around traditional schools, and getti…

> I had a teacher for my son when common core was established, who literally told all the parents "my job now is just to hand out worksheets every day." And that's what she did.

Wow, that sounds like exactly what we heard from the teachers in our daughter's school. My mom is a math professor who helps write high school curriculum and was initially a big proponent of Common Core. She has tutored my daughter through common core and now 5000 miles away in a third-world country. She has come face-to-face with the fact that something was terribly wrong. I honestly can't tell if how much was truly common core vs the passive-aggressive implementation by unwilling teachers, but, you know something's wrong when you can literally move to a place where the availability of electric power and fresh vegetables are uncertain, and do better in math.

Re: Parents and students in Kansas have concerns about the Summit Learning program

#25

Post by nkrisc »

908087 wrote: post #11

How convenient for Zuckerberg that his "learning" program directs children to click links that send them to ad and tracking filled websites. This is exactly the type of "philanthropy" I expected from his "charity" when it was announced.

Surely they could have used money from the foundation to pay for original content on subjects instead ofb linking to random websites. Besides, links die, content can change. There's no guarantee any of those links will be good.

Re: Parents and students in Kansas have concerns about the Summit Learning program

#26

Post by username223 »

> Summit demands an extraordinary amount of personal information about each student and plans to track them through college and beyond,

Exactly what I would expect from Facebook: schooling means optimizing kids for maximum engagement.

> In one class covering Paleolithic history, Summit included a link to an article in The Daily Mail,

Wait, what? So we're replacing textbooks with random tabloid articles? I'm sure it saves lots of money to use the ad-supported web as "learning material."

I'll believe this works when Chan and Zuckerberg enroll their kids in one of these schools.

Re: Parents and students in Kansas have concerns about the Summit Learning program

#27

Post by yellowapple »

fred_is_fred wrote: post #7
MichaelSalib wrote: post #6

The idea that children should spend their days staring at screens and never interacting with other human beings seems really sick. But oh so on brand for the Valley.

It fits into the narrative that the Zuckerburg's want for their target market -- a peron that you can track everything they read and learn and consistently target with ads all day long.

I can't tell if you meant "person" or "peon". Both do fit, though.

Re: Parents and students in Kansas have concerns about the Summit Learning program

#28

Post by EliRivers »

schoolboard wrote: post #23
barryparr wrote: post #19

Our daughter is enrolled in a Summit school in the Bay Area. It’s been a very positive experience and not one I’d recognize from the way it’s described in the story. Her teachers are extremely available and supportive, and there’s a lot of emphasis on group and individual projects and presentations. But I would agree that a lot of the linked resources in the curriculum are not of very high quality. I don’t know wheth…

I'm a board member of a school district, and I have to say I was shocked at the resistance to trying new methods of learning from both the administration and educators in our districts. Flat out statements that "kids can't learn from computers," while not universal, were common. Resistance to change is enormous. Combine this with the education industrial complex that has built up around traditional schools, and getti…

It's certainly true that some children (and indeed, many adults) do not seem to have the ability to learn from computers, and the computer won't do anything about that (where a human teacher would identify the children who cannot learn from them and can do something about it).

Learning from computers is a skill like any other; is that skill taught first? I wonder if there's an unrealised assumption that everyone can simply sit down in front of a computer and be efficiently educated by it.

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