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NPR Education
The Future Of
Learning? Well, It's Personal
Anya Kamanetz, Robbie Feinberg, Kyla Calvert Mason
November 16, 2018
If you do a Google image search for "classroom," you'll mostly see one
familiar scene: rows or groups of desks, with a spot at the front of
the room for the teacher.
One teacher, many students: It's basically the definition of school as
we know it, going back to the earliest days of the Republic. "We
couldn't afford to have an individual teacher for every student, so we
developed a way of teaching large groups," as John Pane, an education
researcher at the RAND Corporation, puts it.
Pane is among a wave of education watchers getting excited by the idea
that technology may finally offer a solution to the historic
constraints of one-to-many teaching.
It's called personalized learning: What if each student had something
like a private tutor, and more power over what and how they learned?
Pane is the lead author of one of the few empirical studies to date of
this idea, published late last year. It found that schools using some
form of personalized learning were, on average, performing better (
there were some wrinkles we'll talk about later on).
"In a personalized system," he says, "students are receiving
instruction exactly at the point where they need it."
It's a concept grounded in the psychology of motivation, learning
science and growing technologies like artificial intelligence (AI). And
the hype around it is blowing up. Personalized learning is the No. 1
educational technology priority around the country, according to a
recent survey by the Center for Digital Education, a news service that
promotes ed-tech. More than nine out of 10 districts polled said they
were directing devices, software and professional development resources
toward personalized learning.
Personalized learning is also a major priority of the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation (which is a supporter of NPR's education
coverage) and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The commitment by the
Facebook founder's philanthropy is expected to run into the hundreds of
millions of dollars per year.
But there's already a backlash to the idea: it's drawn teacher, parent
and student protests--even walkouts--in several states.
So what is personalized learning, exactly? The term has buzz, for sure.
But it's also a bit — or more than a bit — baggy.
In fact, in speaking about it with more than a dozen educators,
technologists, innovation experts and researchers, I've developed a
theory: "Personalized learning" has become a Janus-faced word, with at
least two meanings in tension:
The use of software to allow each student to proceed through a
pre-determined body of knowledge, most often math, at his or her own
pace.
A whole new way of doing school, not necessarily focused on technology,
where students set their own goals. They work both independently and
together on projects that match their interests, while adults
facilitate and invest in getting to know each student one-on-one, both
their strengths and their challenges.
Which vision of personalization will prevail? Pace alone, or
"Personalize it all"? And what proportion of the hype will be realized?
At your own pace
The first version of personalization is less radical and, by that
token, already more common. It's the selling point of software
programs, primarily in math, that are already found in millions of
classrooms around the country. Two examples are McGraw Hill's ALEKS and
Khan Academy.
In a traditional 3rd grade classroom, the teacher may give a test one
Friday on adding and subtracting numbers up to a thousand.
Let's say you don't quite get it, and you bomb that test. On the
following Monday, the teacher will introduce multiplication. What are
the chances that you're going to grasp the new concept? And what about
the student sitting next to you? She already learned her multiplication
tables over the summer. She's doodling in her notebook and passing
notes during the lesson.
Sal Khan, the founder of Khan Academy, defines personalization by pace.
He tells me: "It's about every student getting to remediate if
necessary, or accelerate if they can."
Khan Academy is a giant online library, viewed by tens of millions of
people worldwide, of multiple-choice practice exercises and short
instructional videos, with the strongest offerings in STEM disciplines.
In theory, it's possible to follow Khan's roadmap step-by-step, node by
node, from simple counting all the way through AP calculus. Students,
parents or teachers can keep track of progress using a dashboard.
When it comes to the transformation of education, "I strongly believe
the biggest lever is moving from fixed-pace to mastery-based
education," Khan says.
What he means by "mastery-based," is that students move on to the next
topic only when they are ready. It's simple in concept, yet it's not
the way school usually works.
In our example of a third grader using Khan or another software system,
you'd get the chance to keep doing practice problems and watching
videos on addition and subtraction. You wouldn't move on until you'd
answered a certain number of problems correctly. Your teacher would be
put on notice that you haven't quite grasped the concept before you
bombed a test, so she could give you extra help. Meanwhile, your friend
could move from multiplication on to division and beyond.
With Khan Academy, you can show "mastery" by getting a certain number
of questions right in a row. Khan Academy has recently introduced more
assessments, so that more of the exercises in their free library can be
used in this way.
So there you have it. Personalized learning: a cost-effective,
efficient way to improve direct instruction through pacing, while
giving young people a little more autonomy. What's not to love?
Jade Davis has thoughts about that. She's an expert in emerging
technologies in education, and the director of digital project
management at Columbia University Libraries. When she thinks of
personalized learning, "I think of kids with machines that have
algorithms attached to them that move them through learning at the pace
where the student is."
Does that excite her?
"No, it doesn't," she answers. "Because learning is a collaborative
process. When you take away the ability for people to make things
together, I think you lose something."
And, she adds, there's another issue. Many recent critics have pointed
out how biases, such as racial biases, can be baked into all kinds of
algorithms, from search engines to credit ratings. Davis argues that
educational software is no exception. "It's going to sort students.
It's going to stereotype, put up roadblocks and make assumptions about
how students should be thinking." In other words, what's sold as
"personalization" can actually become dehumanizing.
Teachers, I point out, can and do show biases as well. Point taken, she
says. But, "teachers can attempt to remedy their bias ... teachers are
learners in the space, too, but software is not."
Equating personalized learning simply with pacing is "a fairly large
problem," according to Susan Patrick, the president and CEO of the
International Association for K-12 Online Learning. She says part of
the issue is that personalization has become a flimsy marketing term,
with
"software vendors putting a sticker on a product because there's
variation in pacing." That, she says, "does not equal a truly
personalized approach."
I also talked to Ted Dintersmith. He's a technology venture capitalist
who has visited schools in all 50 states. He presents himself as an
expert, not in education, but in innovation, and is the author of What
School Could Be, which features teachers talking about the promise of
education.
For Dintersmith, the at-your-own-pace model falls well short of what
personalization could be.
"If it's plopping down some obsolete or irrelevant curriculum on a
laptop and letting every kid go at their own pace, It's hard to get
excited about that," he says. "If it's giving students more voice,
helping them find their own talents in distinct ways, that's better."
When it comes to software like Khan Academy, "I think it's a fair
criticism to say most of what's on Khan has kids listening to lectures
and practicing and taking multiple-choice tests to get good at some
low-level procedure" — such as multiplication, say — "that the device
they're working on does perfectly, instantly."
That's not good enough for the demands of the 21st century, Dintersmith
adds. "Being pretty good — even very good — at the same thing that
everyone else is pretty good to very good at doesn't get you anywhere.
You really want bold, audacious, curious, creative problem-solving kids
that embrace ambiguity."
He believes letting students choose more about what, and how, they
learn is the way to awaken those qualities: letting them go
off-roading, not merely letting them move at their own pace through a
"closed course" of facts and skills that's already been set up for them.
Learn what you want
When you leave behind the narrow path of personalization simply as a
matter of pacing, you enter a world that is broader. To some people
that's more exciting, but it's also more difficult to sum up.
"At the beginning of a fad there's a naming problem,"Rich Halverson
says. He's an education professor at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison who has spent the last few years traveling around the
country to see personalized learning in action at public schools.
He's found that, "what schools call personalized varies considerably,"
and also that "a lot of schools are doing personalized learning, but
don't call it that."
Still, he's managed to identify some key common elements:
At the schools he's studied, students meet regularly, one on one, with
teachers. They set individual learning goals, follow up and discuss
progress. All of this may be recorded using some simple software, like
a shared Google Doc. It's kind of like a schoolwide version of special
education, with an IEP — an individualized education program — for
every student.
This sounds simple, but face-to-face interaction is "expensive," says
Halverson. Think 28 meetings of 15 minutes each — that's a full day of
a teacher's time, somewhere between once a week and once a month. In
fact, the entire school day, week, year may need to be reconfigured to
allow for it.
Some schools Halverson has studied, especially charter schools with
more freedom, have remade the curriculum to emphasize group projects
and presentations, where students can prove the necessary knowledge and
skills while pursuing topics that interest them. Students are grouped
by ability and interest, not age, and may change groups from subject to
subject or day to day. Scheduling and staffing is necessarily fluid;
even the building may need to be reconfigured for maximum flexibility.
"I love school!"
James Murray is the principal of Waukesha STEM Academy, a K-8 charter
school in Wisconsin that is one of Halverson's exemplars. It has
elements of at-your-own-pace, software-enabled learning: In middle
school, students have the ability to take whatever math they need, from
4th grade through calculus.
There's also flexible scheduling, with Tuesday and Thursday "flex time"
blocks for whatever students want to do, Murray said. On any give day,
a student can say, " 'If I need to work on a science lab, I go do that.
When I'm done, I go to another class.'"
Murray says a lot of parents will ask, " 'Well what if my kid just
takes gym class every day?' " The answer is, with guidance and
feedback, "They really start to advocate for themselves and they start
to understand what they need to do and why."
By middle school, his students propose their own long-term "capstone"
projects, which range from raising money for a women's shelter to
sharing their love of go-kart racing.
Sounds like fun. And indeed, a common element to personalized learning
schools, Halverson has found, is that "when it's done well, there's a
lot of parent and teacher enthusiasm."
Amy Bigelow is one of those enthusiastic parents. Her daughter started
this fall at Murray's school, Waukesha STEM Academy. She's says she's
seeing her daughter "thrive" and grow in self-confidence.
"She can think outside the box, and be creative and work with her
hands," Bigelow says. "She has classes with seventh-graders,
eighth-graders. It allows her to be with people on the same level, not
based off age or grade, and that's been a refreshing outlook, too."
Last year, when her daughter was in fifth grade, Bigelow said, "she
would come home from school just in a funk at the end of the day." But
now? "She came home the first week and she said, 'Mom — I'm learning,
but it doesn't feel like I'm learning.' "
John Pane, the researcher at Rand, says this enthusiasm comes from two
places. The first is that students care more about their learning when
they have an element of choice and agency.
Amy Bigelow agrees: "There are so many opportunities ... for her to be
able to be empowered and take her schooling into her own hands."
The second point, Pane says, is that students care more about learning
when they feel that teachers know them personally. And that happens
through those regular one-on-one meetings, and through kids having the
chance to share their passions.
It's what Halverson calls, "an effort to build the instruction on a
personal relationship: 'What do you need to know and how can I guide
you to get there?' "
"It's hard to implement."
So there you have it. Personalized learning: a transformative,
labor-intensive approach giving students ownership over their learning.
What's not to love?
Well, Sal Khan, for one, is a bit dismissive of what he calls this
'flavor' of interest-driven personalization. "We're all learning about
factoring polynomials," he says, "but you're doing it in a context of
something that interests you, say soccer, and I'm doing it in the
context of something that interests me, say architecture. Or maybe
there's instruction in different modalities. That's not the type that
we focus on. There's not evidence it's effective, and it's hard to
implement."
The research by Pane and his colleagues bears this view out, to a
point. Their study of charter networks that were early adopters of
personalized learning found large average effects on student
achievement.
But a second study by Pane, with a more diverse set of schools, found a
smaller average positive effect, which included negative impacts on
learning at "a substantial number" of schools.
"So that, to me, is a warning sign that personalized learning appears
not to be working every place that people are trying it," says Pane.
"While conceptually they are good ideas, when you come down to
analyzing it there are potential pitfalls."
One emerging issue is that, as the "fad" spreads, teachers may not
always be getting the supports they need.
For a report published in 2018 by the Center on Reinventing Public
Education, researchers interviewed and surveyed hundreds of teachers at
schools that had received funding from the Gates Foundation to design
and implement personalized learning. They found that, while many
teachers were wildly enthusiastic, they were often left on their own.
They had little guidance to set meaningful learning outcomes for
students outside the state frameworks of standardized tests. And, they
had little support at the school- or district-level to change key
elements of school, like age-based grouping or all-at-once scheduling.
So personalization efforts often didn't spread beyond pilot classrooms.
The case of Summit Learning is another example of personalized
learning's growing pains. It's a personalized learning platform that
originated at a California-based charter school network called Summit
Public Schools. After investments from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
and some work from Facebook engineers, the platform and curriculum,
plus training, was offered up for free, and has been adopted by almost
400 schools around the country.
Summit Learning is different from single-subject systems like ALEKS.
It's been advertised more like a whole-school personalized learning
transformation in a box: from mentoring sessions with teachers to
"playlists" of lessons in every subject. The company says that
participating schools are reporting academic gains for students who
start out behind, as well as "greater student engagement, increased
attendance, better behavior."
But not everyone loves the program. It's drawn teacher, parent and
student protests in Cheshire, CT; Boone County, KY; Fairview Park City
in Ohio; Indiana Area School District in Indiana, PA; Clearwater
County, ID, and recently in New York City.
Some have privacy concerns about students' personal data reportedly
being shared with Microsoft, Amazon and other companies. Some object to
the quality of the curriculum and supplementary materials. Some say
students are getting distracted by working on the laptop or merely
Googling for answers to quizzes. Some just don't want to learn on their
own at their own pace.
"It's annoying to just sit there staring at one screen for so long,"
Mitchel Storman, a ninth grader at the Secondary School for Journalism
in Brooklyn, told the New York Post at a student walkout earlier this
month. "You have to teach yourself."
Summit shared with NPR a letter from Andrew Goldin, the Chief Program
Officer of Summit Learning, to the principal of the Secondary School
for Journalism, Livingston Hilaire. Goldin stated that the school
lacked enough laptops, Internet bandwidth, and teacher training to
successfully implement the program, and recommended that they suspend
it immediately for 11th and 12th graders.
Backlash to the backlash
Is personalized learning, aided by computers, destined to be just
another ed reform flash-in-the-pan? Will it have a narrow impact in
just a few subjects? Or will it be transformative, and is that a good
thing?
As the Gates Foundation experience suggests, the future of personalized
learning may hinge on what kinds of supports are offered teachers. The
experience of the state of Maine is instructive here too.
In 2012, Maine became the first state to adopt what's called a
"proficiency-based diploma." The idea behind it was that instead of
needing to pass a certain set of classes to graduate, students in Maine
now had to show they were "proficient" in certain skills and subjects.
To comply with the new law, many districts adopted "proficiency-based
learning." The new system shared elements of personalized learning,
like students being allowed to re-do assignments and work at their own
pace. Yet schools received little funding or guidance on how to
implement these changes, leaving some teachers lost and overwhelmed.
Heather Finn, a veteran math teacher at a high school in central Maine,
told NPRit was "impossible ... so, so frustrating."
"It works really well, like, the first month," Finn says. Then,
students started to progress at different speeds.
"So I have the kids who are on pace, and I have the kids who are
perpetually, always behind. And it got to the point where I had 20 kids
in 20 spots."
This past April, Maine lawmakers heard complaints from parents and
teachers, as well as the statewide teachers union. Three months later,
Gov. Paul LePage signed a bill to make "proficiency-based diplomas"
optional. Some districts have already declared that they're leaving the
new system behind and will return to a more traditional education style.
Some districts, though, like Kennebec Intra-District Schools in Maine,
aren't going back. Kaylee Bodge, a fourth-grader at Marcia Buker
Elementary School, says the appeal is simple. "We get to make choices
instead of the teacher choosing. If you like something and you want to
do that first, you get to do that first."
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