Wisconsin School District Votes to Buy $278,000 Digital Platform to Track Students Feelings

The debate over using artificial intelligence in education took another turn when it was revealed that elementary school students in the Madison Metropolitan School District will soon fill out weekly digital questionnaires tracking their emotional states. The initiative follows the School Board’s decision to greenlight a three-year, $278,000 contract with an online platform called Sown to Grow.

The approval marks a sudden reversal for the board. When administrators initially introduced the software, board members spent over an hour debating the merits of utilizing a digital curriculum to evaluate children’s social and emotional health, ultimately delaying the vote due to internal pushback. Yet, just one month later—and with minimal public dialogue—the board shifted its stance and authorized the purchase.

The decision comes at a time when local families are increasingly vocal about the volume of school-related screen time. During initial deliberations, board member Blair Mosner Feltham highlighted these apprehensions, questioning the sheer number of digital tools kids interact with daily. Feltham noted the inherent contradiction of asking children to input deeply personal feelings into a computer simply to transform their raw emotions into aggregated data points for the district.

District officials defended the decision by claiming a standardized social-emotional learning curriculum was necessary across Madison’s 32 elementary schools. Out of 14 competing bids evaluated by an 18-member review panel, the district selected the California-based vendor. Its pricing package ranked as the eighth most expensive submission, with competing quotes climbing as high as $1.6 million.

Sown to Grow, which currently operates in schools across 40 states, requires students to log in, select an emotional emoji, and write a brief reflection about their week. The software utilizes machine learning algorithms and natural language processing to automatically scan responses and flag “concerning” language. These flagged entries are reportedly checked by trained specialists before alerts are pushed to classroom teachers. The company states that it strips personal identifiers from student data to provide broad trend tracking for district leadership.

Nevertheless, the program continues to draw skepticism from parents. Amy Martino, a mother of two students at Thoreau Elementary and co-founder of the local advocacy group Parent Check on Tech, expressed immediate worry upon learning about the platform’s adoption, illustrating a widening rift between administrative tech reliance and parental oversight.

The skepticism voiced by these board members and parents is well-founded. Beyond the unnecessary screen time, the program utilizes emojis to categorize complex feelings for children who are far too young to accurately express themselves in writing—especially compared to a conversation with a real human being.

This platform is yet another example of how progressive administrators have abdicated their fundamental responsibilities to the children in their charge. The likely outcome is the production of a generation of socially and emotionally dependent students who will struggle to function in the real world.

Whatever happened to allowing children to grow up without these intrusive, “touchy-feely” administrative programs, letting them get their emotional and social needs met where they belong: from their parents and families?

*This article was written with the assistance of Google Gemini.