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Hi, I am interested in helping with a major revision, but I have a COI with the article. (I am involved at one of the school) I would be very interested in improving it though. 68.233.214.74 (talk) 23:30, 16 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Summit Technologies is controversial in the education community. Many students, parents, and teachers have demanded it be withdrawn. The repeated complaint is that they stare at a computer screen all day, without interaction with teachers or other students. The most disturbing criticism, I think, is that the program has never been evaluated for effectiveness. I'm giving a short annotated bibliography to establish WP:WEIGHT and show that these criticisms have been the subject of extensive coverage in WP:RSs. I'm leaving it in comments to see whether other editors agree. I'll give somebody else a chance to summarize this and add it to the entry.
The resistance in Kansas is part of mounting nationwide opposition to Summit, which began trials of its system in public schools four years ago and is now in around 380 schools and used by 74,000 students. In Brooklyn, high school students walked out in November after their school started using Summit’s platform. In Indiana, Pa., after a survey by Indiana University of Pennsylvania found 70 percent of students wanted Summit dropped or made optional, the school board scaled it back and then voted this month to terminate it. And in Cheshire, Conn., the program was cut after protests in 2017.
Summit chose not to be part of a study after paying the Harvard Center for Education Policy Research to design one in 2016. Tom Kane, the Harvard professor preparing that assessment, said he was wary of speaking out against Summit because many education projects receive funding from Mr. Zuckerberg and Dr. Chan’s philanthropic organization, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
In fact, though, there is no academic research on whether Summit’s specific model is effective. And while Summit helped fund a study proposal crafted by Harvard researchers, it ultimately turned them down.
Unfortunately we didn’t have a good experience using the program, which requires hours of classroom time sitting in front of computers. Not all students would receive computers, the assignments are boring, and it’s too easy to pass and even cheat on the assessments. Students feel as if they are not learning anything and that the program isn’t preparing them for the Regents exams they need to pass to graduate. Most importantly, the entire program eliminates much of the human interaction, teacher support, and discussion and debate with our peers that we need in order to improve our critical thinking.
