Davis School District petition to eliminate Summit Learning and Personalized Learning

We, the undersigned parents and taxpayers of Davis School District seek the removal of Summit Learning, from Davis District schools. We further reject and seek removal of the ill-defined, unproven and unattainable ideal of Personalized Learning as a mission driving our Davis District Public Schools toward 1:1 learning.

Davis County taxpayers value their children, quality education and quality teachers. We expect transparency, honesty, accountability and local control from our public schools. Our tax dollars should fund high quality education for all children based on high standards and proven models that improve student achievement. Summit Learning is a great breach of trust between the values of taxpaying families and the responsibility of Davis School District to provided locally controlled, proven education for our children. These are our children, our tax funded schools, our community and our votes.

1.Summit Learning is owned, operated and controlled by The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), a for profit LLC fronted by Gradient Learning, a nonprofit organization which allows our district to bypass state privacy, and curriculum adoption laws without transparency or choice to families. Summit Learning is not transparent. District Leaders have not been transparent in their adoption and scaled growth of Summit Learning. Summit Learning does not reflect quality education based on proven models or the values, goals or desires of Davis District taxpayers.

2. Summit Learning eliminates local control as Participation requirements from Summit Learning clearly detail, https://www.summitlearning.org/join-us/program-requirement. Summit takes full control of our classrooms. Summit Learning dictates, owns and controls all learning and teaching in participating Davis County classrooms. We reject handing over taxpayer funded, classrooms, teachers and students to Summit Learning i.e. the CZI and Big Tech donors.

3. Summit Learning brings no empirical evidence for its multitude of promises and claims about student success and college readiness. We reject the promotion of Summit Learning as effective in Davis School District with no evidence. We reject the waste of tax dollars and our children’s schooling on unproven personalized learning digital models.

4. Summit Learning is a tracking and data collecting tool for the CZI and Big Tech partners. This robs children of privacy while providing untold benefits to big tech with no proven benefit for students or teachers. Research shows no evidence that excessive data collection from digital learning platforms and invasive digital assessments lead to a benefit for students or teachers. We reject use of Summit Learning and its required learning platform as a tracking and data collection tool owned by CZI.

5. Summit Learning requires excessive amounts of screen time. Educational outcomes from recent pandemic experience have proven, on-line learning is not effective. Screen time is costly to the mental and emotional health of children and teens. Screen time in a classroom is at the cost of expert instruction from a teacher, quality feedback from a teacher, face-to-face interactions, recognizing individuals and freely sharing intellectual ideas. We reject Summit Learning’s excessive screen time and its harm to mental and emotional health of children. Screen time in public schools should be minimal, tracking free, proven and thoughtfully selected to improve student achievement.

6. Every child deserves quality education, which only comes from proven strategies. Proven teaching and learning strategies lead to the most effective, equitable educational experience. Summit Learning packages together the least effective teaching and learning strategies for students, according to educational research. These failed strategies make learning more difficult, and outcomes inequitable, underserved students are impacted the most. Summit Learning ideologies are at the cost of implementing effective and equitable teaching and learning from proven strategies and high performing models in Davis District classrooms.

7. Davis County Tax-payers value professional educators as experts who direct classroom learning and stand as models of content knowledge, proven pedagogy and efficacy. Summit Learning dictates the role of teachers, training them to be facilitators of Summit’s Learning platform, teaching when needed by students and continually directing students to features on the Summit platform. Research informs us, the teacher is the most important person for a child’s success in the classroom. Professional teachers are leaders and examples in the classroom not facilitators to Summit Learning.

8. Research proves students cannot effectively teach themselves content and skills they do not yet know or understand. A computer platform is not a teacher or a classroom. We reject Davis School District’s ideological statement, “learners are at the center of their own instructional experience.” This is unproven nonsense that forces our children onto computer platforms to learn instead of using proven teaching and learning strategies.

8. Personalized learning is an ill-defined, unproven educational ideal according to decades of academic discussion and trial. Personalized Learning cannot be clearly defined, has no actional able steps, cannot be expressly conducted in a large public classroom nor effectively assessed. We reject personalized learning as an expensive, time consuming and ultimately impossible mission for Davis School District. We fully expect district leadership to bring forth proven models from high performing public classrooms across the nation. These high preforming models must be clearly defined to all stakeholders, attained through actionable steps, reproducible from school to school and effectively assessed with proven assessments.

9. The Davis District model of personalized learning is concerning as it perfectly aligns with Big Tech rhetoric and Big Tech efforts to takeover and control public education with 1:1 learning. A personalized learning model provides Big Tech a solid foothold in Davis School District, you can’t have personalized learning without computers. Whether purposefully or unconsciously, Davis District Leaders, in district videos and statements have adopted the rhetorical language and promoted the 1:1 model aggressively marketed to them, by Big Tech. Davis District’s personal learning is Big Tech’s 1:1 learning. We reject the rhetoric of personalized learning. We reject all efforts by District Leaders and Big Tech toward unproven 1:1 learning in Davis District classrooms.

District leaders many refute any of these statements with empirical evidence and hard data.

Contact your elected Davis District School board members with your concerns: jrobison@dsdmail.net, mstevenson@dsdmail.net, emumford@dsdmail.net, jutanner@dsdmail.net, bgerrard@dsdmail.net, geckersley@dsdmail.net

These are our children, our tax funded schools, our community and our votes.