How many hours during the school day should students reflect upon how they think and act? Valor Collegiate Charter Schools focus heavily on social-emotional learning (SEL). They aggressively market their program Powered by Compass to schools. Students gather in circles to contemplate their lives and analyze their behavior.
Valor’s philanthropic partners include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, New Schools Venture Fund, The City Fund, Walton Family Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and more.
It’s essential to review Valor because SEL is trendy in charter and public schools, with behavior and character education seeming to take greater precedence than academics.
According to Powered by Compass, Seventy-seven schools use Powered by Compass, and they claim 30,000 students have been affected.
SEL isn’t about students who legitimately face emotional and behavioral difficulties, including trauma, who need well-prepared professionals, counselors, psychologists, social workers, and psychiatrists to help them climb over their hurdles.
SEL has become a big part of the curriculum for all students and even teachers. There’s a fine line between helping students with stress, and an obsession with shaping student behavior, also linked with words describing social justice and equity, so it’s critical to weed out the meaning of SEL practices.
There’s little indication that all of these individuals have the necessary credentials to be carrying out such sensitive emotional and behavioral programs.
In 2016, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) and Charter School Growth Fund provided funding to Valor to codify and share their Compass work.
They say science backs up this approach, but it isn’t clear what that science is.
Valor models its academic programs after Chan/Zuckerberg Summit Public Schools, and also Uncommon Schools, and the Denver Schools of Science and Technology. All are charter schools.
In 2020, the National Education Policy Center raised questions about Summit in Big Claims, Little Evidence, Lots of Money: The Reality Behind the Summit Learning Program and the Push to Adopt Digital Personalized Learning Platforms.
Our review of Summit partner school contracts suggests that student data collected by the Summit Learning Platform under the terms of those contracts presents a potentially significant risk to student privacy and opens the door to the exploitation of those data by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and possibly by unknown third parties—for purposes that have nothing to do with improving the quality of those students’ educations.
Virtual education and personalized learning are at the top of the education reform agenda in large measure because of hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and advocacy by philanthropic organizations (e.g., the Gates Foundation), large digital platforms (e.g., Facebook and Google), and venture capitalists anxious to access the school market. The COVID-19 pandemic has turbo-charged these efforts, as schools across the country are struggling to find safe ways to educate their students.
The rapid spread of the Summit Learning Program—despite a lack of transparency and the absence of convincing evidence that it can deliver on its promises—provides a powerful example of how policymakers are challenged when faced with a well-financed and self-interested push for schools to adopt digital personalized learning programs. There is now an urgent need for policymakers to move quickly to protect the public interest by establishing oversight and accountability mechanisms related to digital platforms and personalized learning programs.
Uncommon schools also faced controversy in 2020 for student strictness described in ‘It was like a horror movie’ – Staff and students criticize charter network’s rigid education model.
At Valor, students work academically online, mostly self-directing their progress using Playlist Data Trackers and need teachers for minor assistance, typical of online and blended learning.
They rely on The Learning Accelerator, a nonprofit intent on transforming public education to online instruction. Data collection is supreme.
The Chief Culture Officer at Valor, Daren Dickenson, has degrees in mechanical engineering from Stanford and the University of Denver. He lists certifications and experiences involving an MA in Integral Counseling Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies, which promises transformational and spiritual awakenings. There are mixed and concerning reviews.
In Valor’s Circle Handbook, Dickenson thanks the Family Life Center Petaluma, California, for inspiration; however, this center closed. It had stark reviews, including one which says, This place is like those movies with horrible orphanages. Dickenson also praises the Seneca Family of Agencies which has mixed reviews, including some extremely negative.
Even if these mental health centers were stellar and communities need mental health facilities for children and youth, Valor Collegiate Academy is a school. It is strange that Circle time, often gender-specific, is such a large part of the curriculum.
Valor is heavily connected to Teach for America. Sarah Giblin, the founding principal, was the Miami TFA Program Director from 2007-2009.
Kevin Huffman from TFA and ex-husband of controversial Michelle Rhee, who became the Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Education, much to the disappointment of Tennessee teachers, sits on the Board of Directors of Valor along with other TFA members and individuals connected to other charter schools and school reform groups.
Valor references Transcend Education, which claims, we must reimagine “schooling” as we know it. Their advisors include Wendy Kopp, Founder, Teach For America; CEO, Teach For All, John B. King Jr. CEO, Education Trust; Former U.S. Sec. of Education, and more.
Valor has a Compass Camp for students and adults. Teachers participate in their own Circle time. They must complete a Faculty Compass Phase System to tell their life story, commitment to the community, levels of privilege, or (un) privilege.
Valor is hyper-focused on community commitment, raising the question, how much time should students focus on the community?
Students and staff earn digital badges through exercises involving personal questions about feelings and online recognition of achievement. Badges are part of a larger credentialing ecosystem.
Introspection is intrusive and seems strict. At one point, a young student seeks forgiveness from his instructor for being funny in class. See 1:00 video.
They focus on their five-point SEL Compass guide True North for a curriculum that encourages intentional teaching of non-academic skills.
Students do well on state tests, but wouldn’t they do well without strictness and behavioral monitoring so strictly?
Unlike most charter schools, Valor prides itself on diversity, or as the Education Post stated in a glowing write-up, intentional diversity. Edutopia also published a report, SEL as a Foundation for Academics. Diversity is a strength of the school, but can’t the students socialize without analyzing their behavior?
Who is independently evaluating Valor? Why would school districts purchase Powered by Compass without legitimate peer-reviews by educational experts?
Why should schools focus so heavily on character education? Will this be what schools will be about in the future? How much time should students spend reflecting on how they behave?
Is this meant to train students to sit quietly alone to work online without teachers?
Horrifying.
I find it concerning too. Thanks, Jo.
Thank you for finally researching on this. This kind of SEL is what parents are complaining about in public schools. It is NOT CRT!. It’s part of the school or school system adopting of a Diversity, Inclusion and Equity curriculum and implementing it into ALL of its classes.. It’s a “curriculum in a can’ much like Common Core, but there are a few teachers who seem to take it a bit too far or who implement it incorrectly….which then upsets the parents when their kids come home talking about it. It might work in a Charter school that has strict behavior codes/policies, but it seems to rile up the kids (and parents) in public school. It’s truly awful and very cult-ish.
Many working at Valor are from Teach for America. I think like strict, march in place charter schools, they are ultra-focused on behavior to compensate for knowing little about teaching and child development. Control is critical to make it look like they are effective. Thanks, Lisa.
from the NEPC report on Summit that Nancy links in this post:
“None of the claims made by Summit Public Schools have been confirmed by independent evaluators. Other than scant bits of self-selected information provided by Summit Public
Schools itself, we found no evidence in the public record that confirms its claims. Summit Public Schools has not provided the information related to its claims that we requested in a California public records request. page 3
“Despite the lack of evidence to support the claims made by Summit Public Schools, the Summit Learning Program has been adopted by nearly 400 schools across the country. While
Summit has offered positive anecdotes and some selected data, there is no solid evidence that “partner” schools are experiencing the promised success. There are, however, a number
of reports in the press that detail problems and dissatisfaction with the Summit Learning Program in partner schools and among students and parents. In addition, a Johns Hop-
kins University evaluation of partner school classrooms in Providence, RI, found students were left to teach themselves with minimal guidance from teachers and aides. Reviewers
described students engaged in extensive off-task behavior and progressing slowly and ineffectively through their assigned work.
“Our review of Summit partner school contracts suggests that student data collected by the
Summit Learning Platform under the terms of those contracts presents a potentially sig-
nificant risk to student privacy and opens the door to the exploitation of those data by the
Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and possibly by unknown third parties—for purposes that have
nothing to do with improving the quality of those students’ educations.” (page 4)
Here is the blog post I wrote after an admittedly brief experience visiting a Summit Learning middle school in Providence in 2017:
https://resseger.wordpress.com/2017/06/03/a-glimpse-inside-a-blended-learning-middle-school-in-providence-ri/
Thanks, Sheila!
Oh my. I watched the the video of an overview of their model on their web page and it took me straight back to those “human potential movement” programs of the 80’s that became very popular in corporate America. You could tell who had gone through one of these programs/seminars because they would always carry around a personalized faux-leather-bound three-ring binder where they kept track of every 15-minute segment of their day and a log of every emotional response to every situation they faced.
If you had not also gone through the program you were left in the dark because those who had would speak in a language of new terms they had memorized. It was very eerie for a while. And it lasted maybe a year or two, until the next merger, bad quarterly earnings report, or economic recession happened.
It’s a wonder that it took this long for some California’ Dreamin’ kind of Edupreneur to bring it to K-12 schools.
Thanks for sharing your interesting recollection, Patrick. I can see the connection.
Students having some time in the school day to chill sounds good to me, But so much time and the analyzing behavior part seems like too much.
“Several authors in this issue describe how SEL and TIP flatten the complex experiences of children’s social, emotional, and psychic lives in what proves to be an ineffective cycle that can be damaging for students and demoralizing for practitioners.”
https://educate.bankstreet.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1386&context=occasional-paper-series&_ga=2.154624696.1448723474.1631898344-913154894.1631898344
I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this, Jesse! I skimmed the first chapter. I can’t wait to read it!
This jumped out at me.
“This focus can lead to labeling and/or silencing legitimate expressions of resistance and difference in a quest to elicit specific types of behavioral and cultural conformity for students to be deemed “learning ready” (e.g., Crampton, Pyscher & Robinson, 2018; Pyscher, 2019).”
This has always concerned me about this trend.
Thank you! .
In our professional development work with early educators this has been a constant struggle: working to nurture authentic relationships where children (and teachers, too) are heard and seen, where their feelings are valid, and where they are not perceived as the sum of a host of problems in need of fixing, when the dominant trends in SEL center judgements about why children feel a certain way, and then center the teacher acting as the vessel for a strategy developer somewhere else by somebody else. It’s particularly unnerving to read your article. Our practice focused on open, safe reflection, where children can and often do talk openly about their conflicts. But that is always lead by children. Teachers do not bring in “teachable moments” to shame or make an example of children. Instead, if something really was important to a child or group of children and they know that the classroom is a safe place to share, they will share and grow from that.
Thank you. Authentic is a word that stands out. I am concerned that today’s SEL is about manipulating students to perform better on the tests.
I shared about this program and your blog with a friend today. She was at the edge of her seat, asking, “Wait? What did you just say? What did they call it again?” I could tell something was up. Finally, I asked her why she was so intrigued by the terminology. She said, “Do you know much about Scientology?” I told her I didn’t, and she responded, “That sounds almost EXACTLY like Scientology. Creepy!”
Creepy, indeed.
Goodness! That’s something to think about. Thanks, Beth.
“Kevin Huffman from TFA and ex-husband of controversial Michelle Rhee, who led Tennessee’s schools,”
Kevin Huffman from TFA and ex-husband of controversial Michelle Rhee, who ruined Tennessee’s schools,
Fixed it.
You sure did, Roy! Thank you. Little words mean a lot. I changed it. Not likely what you and many would like, including me, but better, I hope.
My thanks to the NEPC.
https://nepc.colorado.edu/blog/cult-social-emotional