Zuckerberg-backed school curriculum faces student backlash in Brooklyn

Mark Zuckerberg,
Facebook’s CEO and chairman.
Reuters

• High school students at Brooklyn’s Secondary School for
  Journalism staged a walkout last week to protest perceived
  “wrongdoings” at the school, which include the use of an online
  curriculum called “Summit Learning” that stresses independent
  learning.
• Schools across the nation have implemented this free
  web-based program, which was designed with the help of Facebook
  engineers and funded by CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife
  Priscilla Chan.
• However, students at the Brooklyn high school — and at other
  schools — have criticized the program for its lack of
  effectiveness, as well as expressed concerns over data privacy.

Students at a Brooklyn high school staged a walkout last week to
protest teaching methods in their classrooms, which include a
web-based curriculum program partially funded by Facebook CEO
Mark Zuckerberg.

Nearly 100 students participated in the protest at the Secondary
School for Journalism in Brooklyn,
the New York Post reported. They complained that the online
program, called Summit
Learning, resulted in coursework that required students to
spend much of their day in front of a computer screen, made it
easy to cheat by looking up answers online, and that some of
their teachers didn’t have the proper training for the
curriculum.

The program emphasizes students “work at their own pace” and
follow “self-direction,” according to the website. Summit
Learning was first designed with the help of engineers from
Facebook, and gets funding from the Chan Zuckerberg
Initiative, a nonprofit started by the Facebook CEO and his
wife Priscilla Chan.

“You have to teach yourself,” a freshman at the Secondary
School for Journalism told the New York Post. “Students can
easily cheat on quizzes since they can just copy and paste the
question into Google.”

Students in Brooklyn protested not only the implementation
of Summit Learning in their school, but also the “other
wrongdoings” going on within school leadership,
according to a blog post from a New York educational
activist.

Students at the Brooklyn high school haven’t been the only ones
to express dissatisfaction with Summit Learning, which has been
adopted at 380 schools nationwide. Schools in the town of
Cheshire, Connecticut — where Zuckerberg himself grew up —
implemented Summit Learning last school year, but
New York Magazine reported the switch was met with backlash
from both kids and parents. The program was eventually shuttered
at the school.

A website called “We the
Parents,” made up of parents from schools in eight
states who are pushing back against Summit Learning
has complained
that the curriculum is a “poor education product” that has been
improperly implemented, alienated students, and reduced teachers
to the role of “facilitators.”

Parents
have also raised privacy concerns over Summit Learning’s
collection of student data, especially as the platform has
connections to a social media giant that itself
has been plagued with concerns over its handling of personal
information. However, Summit Learning has stressed that its
relationship with Facebook is incredibly limited aside from its
funding relationship with the Zuckerbergs.

One teacher who spoke to the New York Post, who asked to remain
anonymous, complained that the Summit coursework had been prone
to glitches, and that staff had run into issues supporting the
online platform with its current WiFi setup.

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Following the student protests, Summit Learning has recommended
that leadership at the Secondary School of Journalism cease using
the curriculum program for its 11th and 12th
grades. According to an email between the two groups, Summit
claims the school was “hasty” in rolling out the curriculum to
the extent that it was “unlikely to be successful” going
forward.

Read the email in full below that Summit Learning sent to
leadership at the Second School for Journalism following the
protest:

 

Dear Principal Hilaire,

This afternoon, I debriefed with my team following their
visit to your school this week. I am contacting you directly
with specific and strong recommendations regarding how to move
forward given what we learned.  Our shared commitment to
students, teachers and parents requires that we work in close
partnership and make decisions in the best interest of
students.

As you know, the Summit Learning approach, grounded in
established learning science, was created in our own schools a
little over six years ago. In the years since making this
change ourselves – and through our work supporting other
schools via the Summit Learning Program – we’ve learned a lot
about what it takes to set schools and students up for success.
 

We created

Program Requirements

to ensure every
school starts this change journey with their baseline needs in
place.  When a school commits to these program
requirements we commit to supporting the school through:
ongoing coaching in the form of a dedicated Summit Learning
mentor; in person professional development three times a year;
and access to rigorous curriculum via the Summit Learning
Platform.

We recommend that all schools who first enter the Program
start small, expanding only when they’re ready and have a
well-thought-out plan in place. What I’ve heard from our team
is that while that was your original intention, the level of
enthusiasm and passion you felt following summer training, led
you to roll the Program out to all of your students without
full consideration of the program requirements nor onboarding
recommendations from the Summit team.

While I understand the motivation here, it’s crucial we
work together to ensure that the needs of all students are
being met. Based on what we’ve seen the past week, it’s clear
your rollout was hasty and is unlikely to be successful should
you continue down this path.  It takes all core components
(project-based learning, 1:1 mentoring and self-direction)
working together in order to drive the outcomes we want for
students (cognitive skills, habits of success and content
knowledge). It is also crucial that the experience for students
is consistent across all four core subjects. These conditions
are not currently in place for your 11th and 12th grades.
Additionally, there are infrastructure issues (not enough
Chromebooks nor bandwidth for all students).
Therefore, our strong recommendation is implementation in
eleventh and twelfth grades should cease immediately and not be
restarted unless all program requirements are fully in
place.  We are committed to working with you, but if you
do not agree with and implement our recommendation we will need
to have an immediate conversation about the status of our
partnership.
 

If you do implement our recommendation we will continue
to provide support.  As a first step, we will provide
additional training tailored specifically to your school for
your 9th and 10th grade teams on November 15th and 16th. 
This will be a customized training for your teachers who have
been properly trained and are committed and resourced to
implement Summit Learning with fidelity.  

While onsite, my team can work with you to discuss
additional supports that will benefit your school, teachers and
students.  

Thank you for your prompt attention.

Sincerely,

Andrew Goldin

Chief Program Officer