New study casts doubts on effectiveness of personalized learning program in New Jersey
Results highlight debate over how to measure what's working in the classroom when kids are learning different things
In the fall of 2015, five schools in the industrial port city of Elizabeth, New Jersey, dumped their usual math curriculum and started teaching their middle school students through a computerized system called “Teach to One.” It was an experiment in so-called “personalized learning,” where algorithms churned out customized lessons for each student. Many of the kids were behind their grade level and spent hours reviewing third-grade arithmetic while others could jump ahead to eighth-grade algebra.
But after three years of learning this way, the Teach to One students in grades six through eight scored no better on New Jersey’s annual math tests than other Elizabeth students who had learned math the usual way with the whole class on the same topic at the same time. “I can’t rule out that Teach to One had no effects” on student’s math achievement, said Doug Ready, a professor at Teachers College, Columbia University and lead author of a January 2019 study of the program.
The study highlights an ongoing conflict between personalized learning and the required annual tests that schools to give students. Joel Rose, the chief executive of the nonprofit organization that sells Teach to One to schools, is convinced that students who take the time to go back and master foundational concepts in math will be better off in the long run. “Math is cumulative,” he said. “You just can’t learn linear equations if you don’t know how to multiply.”
But the annual state tests that were used in this study don’t measure how much a student has caught up on things he or she should have learned years ago. For example, an 11-year-old student who jumped from third to fifth grade math in one year might still bomb the sixth-grade test and do no better than an equally weak student who was CONTINUE READING: New study casts doubts on effectiveness of personalized learning program in New Jersey - The Hechinger Report
