Remote learning leaves parents wary
Online program has racist, sexist content, they say
HONOLULU — Zan Timtim doesn’t think it’s safe for her eighth-grade daughter to return to school in person during the coronavirus pandemic but also doesn’t want her exposed to a remote learning program that misspelled and mispronounced the name of Queen Lili’uokalani, the last monarch to rule the Hawaiian Kingdom.
Timtim’s daughter is Native Hawaiian and speaks Hawaiian fluently, “so to see that inaccuracy with the Hawaiian history side was really upsetting,” she said.
Even before the school year started, Timtim said she heard from other parents about racist, sexist and other concerning content on Acellus, an online program some students use to learn from home.
Parents have called out “towelban” as a multiplechoice answer for a question about a terrorist group and Grumpy from “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” described as a “woman hater.” Some also say the program isn’t as rigorous as it should be.
As parents help their children navigate remote classes, they’re more aware of what’s being taught, and it’s often not simply coming from an educator on Zoom.
Some schools have turned to programs like Acellus to supplement online classes by teachers, while others use it for students who choose to learn from home as campuses reopen.
And because of the scramble to keep classes running during a health crisis, vetting the curriculum may not have been as thorough as it should have been, experts say.
Thousands of schools nationwide use Acellus, according to the company, and parents’ complaints are leading some districts to
reconsider or stop using the program.
“We wouldn’t have had this visibility if it weren’t for all of us at home, often sitting side by side and making sure: ‘Is this working for you?’ ” said Adrienne Robillard, who withdrew her seventh-grade daughter from Kailua Intermediate School after concluding Acellus lacked substance and featured racist content.
When school officials said her daughter could do distance learning without Acellus, Robillard reenrolled her.
Acellus officials didn’t respond to multiple calls from The Associated Press seeking comment.
In an online message to parents, founder Roger Billings called the controversy “an organized attack” and said “they have not found anything in our content that
is really racist or sexist.”
Kansas City, Missouribased Acellus was created in 2001, according to its website, which says it “delivers online instruction, compliant with the latest standards, through highdefinition video lessons made more engaging with multimedia and animation.”
In a video on his website, Billings responds to criticism about his credentials by saying he earned a bachelor’s degree in “composite fields” of chemistry, physics, engineering and other subjects from a university he doesn’t name.
Hawaii selected Acellus based on an “implementation timeline” as well as “cost effectiveness” and other factors, Superintendent Christina Kishimoto said in a memo.
“I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think that price was the main factor,” said
Charles Lang, visiting assistant professor of learning analytics at Columbia University’s Teachers College in New York City. “And to some extent, you do get what you pay for in terms of content.”
And evaluating curriculum is like the “Wild West” — it varies across school systems, Lang said.
“We were in some serious situations with the pandemic, and we had to figure something out,” Hawaii school board member Kili Namau’u said at a recent meeting.
“And I think schools made some pretty quick decisions. Maybe they weren’t the most accurate decisions.”
She later said that it would be more problematic to pull Acellus in the middle of the quarter.
The Hawaii Department of Education, the nation’s
only statewide school district, is considering what to do about Acellus, but some schools stopped using it on their own. Other U.S. districts, like Alameda Unified in California, quickly dropped the program after complaints surfaced.
In a recent memo, the California Department of Education said it “has learned through examples shared that Acellus lessons may contain highly inappropriate content and may not meet state legal requirements surrounding instructional materials.” The memo to superintendents and school administrators cited “racist depictions of Black Americans” and “at least one question that perpetuates Islamophobic stereotypes.”
A Sept. 17 memo Hawaii’s superintendent sent to the school board said education officials were working with
Acellus to address inappropriate content.
Cassie Favreau-Chung said her son, a freshman at Mililani High School, was looking forward to the independence of remote learning but found he wasn’t getting a quality education because the program had no writing assignments.
“He hasn’t found anything on his own that he thought was racist or sexist,” she said. “However, I will also say that a lot of kids, it’ll go over their heads.”
She switched her son to the hybrid program next quarter to avoid Acellus, hoping the school will let him keep learning from home.
The experience has made Favreau-Chung lose faith: “It’s the first time that I have not been proud to have my kid in public school.”