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Inside Facebook's plan to build a better school
http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/3/9252845/facebook-education-software-plp-summitAs somebody who did Montessori through fourth grade some of this sounds familiar.
Looking back, Mike Sego says, he was always meant to work in education. His dad taught fifth grade for 37 years, three of his older siblings were K-12 teachers, and he spent free time as a kid grading papers for fun. But like so many people who arrive in Silicon Valley after college, Sego first started working in tech. He worked on The Sims, and later got to know Mark Zuckerberg when his virtual pets game, (fluff)Friends, was one of the first hits on Facebook’s new games platform. Around that time, Zuckerberg had become interested in education as part of his philanthropy, donating $100 million to Newark schools in 2010. After a stint as CEO of Gaia Interactive, Sego decided to turn his attention to education. He called Zuckerberg and asked if they could work together.
Not long after, Sego was touring Summit Denali, a public charter school in Sunnyvale, California. With him was Priscilla Chan, wife of the Facebook founder and his partner in philanthropy. They had been drawn to Summit Public Schools because of their striking success in preparing students for college: 99 percent of its graduating students have been accepted into at least one four-year college. And 55 percent of graduates go on to complete college, compared to a national average of 28 percent. The results are particularly compelling given the diverse makeup of the student population: only 20 percent of students are white, 48 percent qualify for free or reduced lunch, and 13 percent are English language learners.
...
The campus is fully indoors — though kids run around outside the building during P.E. — and most of the classrooms don’t have walls. Joe Bielecki is the school’s founding executive director — what another school might call a principal. A former middle school teacher, Bielecki says he was driven to start Denali because of the large number of underperforming schools in Silicon Valley. "It’s this black hole of an achievement gap that’s right here," he says. Denali draws from 40 elementary schools in the area, and students are picked through a lottery system.
The Summit curriculum has four basic parts. There’s "project time," where students work in teams on projects: building a model of a lunar lander, say, or modeling population growth for a country. There’s "personalized learning time," where students learn traditional subjects like science, math, and reading. The twist is that they’re generally learning not with textbooks but with Chromebooks — surfing through "playlists" of mostly free online educational content. And they’re doing it at their own pace, with their teacher serving more as a guide than a professor. Class sizes are smaller than the California average at 25 kids; students are required to pass the same standardized tests as their peers in other schools.
Not long after, Sego was touring Summit Denali, a public charter school in Sunnyvale, California. With him was Priscilla Chan, wife of the Facebook founder and his partner in philanthropy. They had been drawn to Summit Public Schools because of their striking success in preparing students for college: 99 percent of its graduating students have been accepted into at least one four-year college. And 55 percent of graduates go on to complete college, compared to a national average of 28 percent. The results are particularly compelling given the diverse makeup of the student population: only 20 percent of students are white, 48 percent qualify for free or reduced lunch, and 13 percent are English language learners.
...
The campus is fully indoors — though kids run around outside the building during P.E. — and most of the classrooms don’t have walls. Joe Bielecki is the school’s founding executive director — what another school might call a principal. A former middle school teacher, Bielecki says he was driven to start Denali because of the large number of underperforming schools in Silicon Valley. "It’s this black hole of an achievement gap that’s right here," he says. Denali draws from 40 elementary schools in the area, and students are picked through a lottery system.
The Summit curriculum has four basic parts. There’s "project time," where students work in teams on projects: building a model of a lunar lander, say, or modeling population growth for a country. There’s "personalized learning time," where students learn traditional subjects like science, math, and reading. The twist is that they’re generally learning not with textbooks but with Chromebooks — surfing through "playlists" of mostly free online educational content. And they’re doing it at their own pace, with their teacher serving more as a guide than a professor. Class sizes are smaller than the California average at 25 kids; students are required to pass the same standardized tests as their peers in other schools.