Yet another expensive high-tech school opening in NYC - now with the promise of AI learning

Wow. A branch of the Alpha school is opening up as K-8 private school in downtown NYC at 180 Maiden Lane in the fall in which students will be taught academic subjects for only two  hours per day via an AI platform at a cost of $65K; what a bargain! 

More on this teacher-less chain of schools, founded by a MacKenzie Price, a Texas businesswoman with no previous experience in education, who claims that her model will  "ensure mastery of the material 2-5x faster than traditional method".  Peter Greene reported on this woman and her chain of schools when she applied to open up a cyber online charter school, called Unbound Academic Institute Charter School, in Pennsylvania. 

The Pennsylvania Department of Education wisely rejected the school, explaining that "the school received no letters of support, was not insured in any capacity, and pointed to issues relating to how the school’s address in Lancaster, a coworking space, lacked certain facility requirements."

The rejection letter also pointed out that "The artificial intelligence instructional model being proposed by this school is untested and fails to demonstrate how the tools, methods and providers would ensure alignment to Pennsylvania academic standards,” an understatement if I've ever heard one.

As Fred Aebli, a professor at Penn State pointed out, "at the end of it all, teaching is by far one of the most human things that we do, especially in K through 12. They’re (kids are) not just learning reading, writing and arithmetic, they’re learning people skills, and life skills.”  

Perhaps that's why the proposed daily schedule for the private school in NYC includes an afternoon session devoted to teach "Limitless life skills", such as riding a bike.

But haven't we heard this story before?  Remember the Altschools, just a few years ago?  The much hyped, high-tech, for-profit private school chain opened with four schools in the Bay Area and in NYC, starting in 2013, and yet closed their doors just a few years later,  after losing as much as $174 million in venture capital funds from Mark Zuckerberg & other tech mavens.  

Or Summit Learning , another multi- million dollar effort by Zuckerberg, that put kids on computers for much of the school day, with inadequate materials and little human teaching.   

After a number of exposes, in the NY Times, the NY Post and elsewhere,  showing a huge amount of student and parent discontent with the program, its founder, Diane Taverner, left Summit for other ventures, and the organization renamed itself "Gradient Learning,"   

In its recent materials, its operators claim that their program is based on "Whole Student teaching," whatever that means,  and that "we've been diligently listening to your feedback and working closely with educators to identify areas to enrich."  How many schools have adopted and stuck with the program, versus the countless number that have abandoned it,  is unclear.

With the rise of AI, however, we should expect the number of schools and programs claiming great results using this technology will only grow.  How much of that will be based on grift and hype, and how much on actual learning will be critical for all of us who care about the future of education to study and carefully dissect.  One thing for sure, the Alpha School won't be a shining exemplar of AI's potential.

McPherson Kansas students join the rebellion vs depersonalized learning and win the right to opt out of Summit

Cross posted from Parent Coalition for Student Privacy.

Yesterday, in a NY Times front page story, the reporter Nellie Bowles explored the many problems experienced by Kansas students and parents when the online Summit Learning program was imposed on their schools, including health problems, poor curriculum and lax privacy. "It sounded great, what they sold us,” said one parent. “It was the worst lemon car that we’ve ever bought.” Please read the article and if you're a Summit parent anywhere in the country, share your experiences in the online portal at the end of the article.  

I've written about growing resistance to the Summit platform since 2016, here, here, here  and here, including my visit to a Summit charter school here.  Though the NY Times article gives short shrift to the issue of privacy it does contain a quote from me about the tremendously intrusive wealth of personal data that Summit and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative are collecting. Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly broken every promise he’s made about keeping personal data private and neither CZI nor the new nonprofit that will take over Summit headed by Zuckerberg's wife have provided any reason that parents should trust them any more.

What's particularly moving about the article is that while Summit and its funders, including Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and  the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative claim Summit students are able to demonstrate " "greater ownership of their learning activities,” the McPherson Kansas students are actually taking ownership of their education by walking out of school and engaging in sit-ins are actually taking ownership of their education by walking out of school and engaging in sit-ins. Though of a very different demographic, they resemble the remarkable Brooklyn students who earlier this year walked out of the Secondary School of Journalism in protest against Summit, and followed up by writing an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, saying “We refuse to allow ourselves to be experimented on in this way.“


This is a growing phenomenon. Note the thousands of Ontario students who organized a mass walk-out earlier this month of schools throughout the province, against proposed staffing cuts, rising class sizes, and a requirement that all high school students take online courses. All of these students are showing courage and agency by resisting the narrow technocratic and ultimately dehumanizing policies that threaten to fatally damage their education.



It was just announced that at as a "compromise" at the McPherson middle school that the NY Times reported on, up to 225 students will be allowed to opt out of Summit next year.



Five years ago yesterday, inBloom closed its doors after parents rebelled against this Gates Foundation $100 project, designed to collect and share the personal student information of nine states and districts with for-profit ed tech companies. At that time I asked, does that mean government officials, corporations and foundations have learned their lesson? The continued invasion of ed tech into our classrooms, including the expansion of Summit, sadly shows not. But as parents are increasingly joined with students in rebellion against depersonalized learning, perhaps we have a chance to beat it, once and for all.

Our updated fact sheet on Summit, including questions that parents and students should ask before the program is implemented in their schools is here: Summit fact sheet 4.22.19 and below.