The latest news in Silicon Valley education reform involves Facebook, a charter school network and 120 participating schools.

Facebook is now the next tech giant to try its hand at influencing K-12 education through a partnership with Summit Public Schools, a nonprofit charter school network that is based in Silicon Valley as well.

"On Tuesday, Facebook and Summit Public Schools, a nonprofit charter school network with headquarters in Silicon Valley, announced that nearly 120 schools planned this fall to introduce a free student-directed learning system developed jointly by the social network and the charter schools,” said The New York Times.

Leaders and school officials in participating schools participated in training sessions this summer to guide them on how to best implement the new learning management system, which lets students be in charge of “selecting projects and setting their pace.”

According to The New York Times, the effort is an attempt to create "a national demand for student-driven learning in schools.”

For teachers who are interested in learning more about the management system but do not work in participating schools, Summit Public Schools offers a variety of resources to learn more about the program from their desktop.

Individuals can browse Summit’s curriculum, which is aligned to Common Core standards and learn more about how the platform works as well as stay in the loop with product updates.

For teachers interested in using the personalized learning model in their school, they can browse application guidelines here.

While Facebook is generally open about its financial commitments to education (it just committed $15 million to Code.org this summer), the New York Times says it's remaining mum about how much it is investing into this project.

Read more about the partnership here.

Nicole Gorman, Senior Education World Contributor

8/10/2016