Peter Greene explains the hoax at the heart of “personalized learning.”
The appeal is that it is customized just for you. The reality is that it is a standardized algorithm that adjusts to your responses but doesn’t you from Adam or Eve.
The Brand X that we’re supposed to be escaping, the view of education that Personalized Learning is supposed to alter, the toxin for which Personalized Learning is the alleged antidote is an education model in which all students get on the same car of the same train and ride the same tracks to the same destination at the same time. That’s not what’s actually going on in public schools these days, but let’s set that aside for the moment.
Real personalized learning would tear up the tracks, park the train, offer every student a good pair of hiking shoes or maybe a four-wheeler, maybe even a hoverboard, plus a map of the territory (probably in the form of an actual teacher), then let the student pick a destination and a path and manner of traveling.
But techno-personalized learning keeps the track and the train. In the most basic version, we keep one train and one track and the “personalization” is that students get on at different station. Maybe they occasionally get to catch a helicopter that zips them ahead a couple of stops.
But personalized? No.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
We all need to start using the correct term – DEPERSONALIZED LEARNING.
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Very good, Carol B. So true.
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Again, how is the one size fits all model used in public schools any better at helping to individualize the instruction and learning experiences for those struggling learners in your classrooms? (At least with those adaptive learning programs, one can get an idea quicker and independently if they are mastering the material content being provided in a timely manner. My son is now in college, and he demonstrates much better mastery of the topics when he uses adaptive learning programs and scores better on his in class exams when he uses these programs, versus when it’s a more traditional, classroom only instructional model.)
Even in your co-teaching classrooms and special resource rooms in primary and secondary schools, it’s the same one size fits all instruction. It’s rarely personalized.
And even in most IEP and 504s, the goals are so vaguely written and low hanging in regards to the expected skills and proficiency level to be achieved, it rarely if ever is helpful in remediating the student or in closing the gaps they have presented with year after year.
One needs to look at all sides of this debate honestly.
In a perfect world, everyone would get an awesome opportunity to learn to their potential, and not need to struggle year after year, but unfortunately that isn’t reality for lots students in today’s traditional educational model. Too many are left behind and struggle throughout their life into adulthood and then repeat the cycle because nobody bothered to help them break that cycle with he proper instruction they needed to do so.
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Some commenters must be bots. Bot responses are limited and repetitive.
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Just as Peter pointed out I agree that there is a place for these adaptive learning programs, but not as the one and only route to “mastery.” I taught such a program that allowed for and encouraged professional judgement (at least in their conference presentations to teachers). Unfortunately the admins who had never taught the program thought they knew better how it should be taught. The structure was helpful to my struggling students, but not without my mediation. I could see when they needed more class time with particular concepts from a fresh perspective (mine). The computer program made decisions solely on quiz scores where 1-2 questions were used to judge “mastery” of a concept or skill. It also suggested groupings for additional practice based on the students scores without considering any other factors. What a student needed when and with whom is not a decision to be left up to a computer program.
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Speduktr-
The point being that too frequently though the struggling students are being left behind.
Yet adding this sort of additional progamming to the tool box, allows students to work more independently and obtain skills they would not be able to achieve in the traditional classroom setting.
It is sort of like the flipped classroom approach.
Yes, in the perfect world, teachers would be overseeing a students progress and intercede to help them master the material.
But too many times, they are being ignored and left behind and never achieving to a higher potential, let alone to their potential.
Students need more tools and more oversight, but too many times they are being left behind.
Adaptive learning programs can help fill that gap if used appropriately!
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“Adaptive learning programs can help fill that gap if used appropriately!”
And to be used appropriately they need the oversight of a trained professional.
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Speduktr,
I try not to let computer assessments guide my class. They are too inaccurate to be the centerpiece. I rely on my own assessments. The computers can be supplemental to my technique, but never drive instruction. When struggling students need structure, I provide structured lessons (involving structured interpersonal collaboration through which we gain mutual respect and therefore improving behavior). Computers can be misused as pacifiers, a bandaid solution to poor behavior. There is no “program” I find acceptable. The computers just back me up by providing occasional visual and/or auditory aids, not quizzes and tests, certainly not entire lessons.
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LeftCoastTeacher, I totally agree. I found the computer assessments to be simplistic and perfunctory. I never used them to make decisions in isolation from my own observations. My professional judgement was essential. However, I was tasked with teaching a packaged program. When I initially began to teach it, I was piloting it in the special ed department under a knowledgeable special ed supervisor who recognized the value of independent professional judgement. Surprisingly, so did the educational researchers who developed the program. Even the publishing company encouraged teacher input, but the marketing was to educational administrators who looked on the program as teacher proof and frowned on deviation from the marketing line they had gotten. When my department chair/supervisor retired, his authority was distributed among various administrators who had no content expertise but loved those data points. No one told me of the change in attitude, but being a provisional teacher, they used my lack of “fidelity” to the protocol to get rid of me. The administrator who went after me tried to take out a gen ed teacher who had been using the program for 7-8 years. She essentially told him where he could stick it; she was the expert. He was a neophyte data geek. She had tenure, so he left her alone.
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A terrible story! But all too familiar. I have been in the very same situation. I am deeply sorry. I used the programs with “fidelity”. It was a disservice to the students with whom I did. I used them to take control of the situation by becoming the program “expert” so I could in ensuing years convince administrators to stop supporting their use, from within. Politics stinks. But now, I’m starting to gain control of my curriculum…. I do not know what else to say.
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I wish you great success. Teaching is hard but incredibly rewarding. I don’t think I will ever stop missing it.
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For you, speduktr, who still are a teacher, one of my favorite verses from the Dhammapada,
The tusker called Dhanapālaka
Hard to control, exuding pungent MUST,
Eats not a morsel in captivity.
The tusker remembers the elephant-forest.
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I wish you great success and happiness, speduktr. You should not have lost your teaching position over implementation of computerized teaching.
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Your first sentence betrays how little you understand about the concept of public education. It is the so-called reformers who are trying to create a “one size fits all model” for schools. If you do just a minimal amount of research you will find that robust public education is anything but monolithic.
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I sense personal bitterness in M. It is hard to see around bad personal experiences.
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My personal experience is more than sufficient.
My foster adopted child’s unheard of trajectory change is more than enough proof, as well as the success of other children that have graduated from the not for profit “Reading Center” who were being referred there from their own public school teachers!
So you can keep on saying I don’t have a clue, but honestly, you all don’t seem to have a clue about how many kids are struggling significantly and how badly they want help and want to succeed!
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When you walk the same path as a parent and advocate as we were forced to, you would be surprised at how little you also know about the other side of the battles that families with struggling learners are forced to endure and how the schools turn parents that care about education into pit bulls and grizzly bears when it comes to going head to head with schools that repeatedly violate educational regs but emply high priced lawyers to defend them so they can continue to get away with the status quo.
Eventually they get called out on minor things, but it’s typically just a slap on the wrist for procedural violations, because most of the educational lawyers and advocates are all in cahoots and have each others backs.
So yes, there is some truth to speduktr’s obsevation: “I sense personal bitterness in M. It is hard to see around bad personal experiences.”
But it is more PTSD thanks to the wonderful public school admins and teachers that failed this kid repeatedly day in, day out, year after year. And knowing they had no qualms about lying about what the neuropsychologist stated at 2 CSE meetings which were recorded, yet they outright lied in the minutes about what she said!
But they get away with those violations, which should have gotten them all fired!
And I’m not alone. I know dozens of parents personally and many more virtually that can tell you similar horror stories about their experiences with school’s and how they fail these struggling learners!
And unlike Lloyd who blames parents for not reading enough early enough to them, and thinks that all strugglign learners are on sugar highs and malnourished, etc, I can tell you that is not the case. And we are not talking about the kids from Title 1 backgrounds even, although those are the ones I really feel for, because they won’t have the same sort of support that the kids from middle and upper middle class families can provide.
So, forgive me for speaking up for those on the other side of the picture.
The schools are not doing much to help parents with struggling learners work together to close the gaps they present with nor help them to stop drowning.
And, Dr Ravitch sometimes doesn’t post all my responses, so who knows if this one will get through to see the light of day on this, but please, if you want to help your profession and want parents to support and respect your profession and your schools, you need to step up the PR game as well as the hands game and start helping them and workign with them to see results relating to closing their lieracy and numeracy struggles!
If they show up in your school asking for your help, try working together with them, versus lying to them and makign up excuses regarding how well things are when you can look at the work and see that the evidence of the output shows otherwise.
And please don’t stop sending it home because it keeps showing up at the next meeting as evidence as to your kids continued struggles and lack of progress.
And let them use the technology they need added to their toolbox to stay afloat and work at their level of comprehension and ability, versus the lower bar that somebody else has predetermined to be their potential which is not even set to a level of progression.
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“. . . the one size fits all model used in public schools. . . One needs to look at all sides of this debate honestly.”
Considering there is no “one size fits all model” that is used in the over 13,500 community public school districts, other than perhaps,the standards and testing regime that has come to dominate curriculum decisions, and even that is not “one size fits all”, it might behoove you M to follow your own advice.
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Cross posted at OEN:
https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Peter-Greene–Personalize-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Computers_Computers_Diane-Ravitch_Education-170706-827.html#comment665353
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Some students may be able to cover some rote material quickly, but this is not really an education. Most students will find depersonalized learning boring and tedious. Education is about big ideas, not just rote material. Humans are social beings, and making connections with others, especially a guiding adult, enhances the learning experience. The trouble is Gates is that he has too much money and time on his hands, and his hubris is as big as the moon. He became enamored with Khan Academy a few years ago. This was a series of math videos so Gates figured he could apply the same type of idea to all subjects where he could data mine all the time and sell the results. How does this serve the needs of young people? It doesn’t. It further enriches Bill Gates, a guy that already has more money than anyone should have.
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I have told students about some of this “personalized learning.” They ALREADY think it sounds boring, and they haven’t even really gotten into it yet. Students are smarter than a lot of these ed “reformers.”
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I’ve beta tested early version “personalized” reading intervention and writing programs in my classes. Always ready to try the latest ideas, I used them before I knew what they really were. I sold them to the students with full enthusiasm. In the intervention classes, the students were bored and working sloppily if at all by the second week. In the gifted classes, the students shared with one another tricks to write nonsense and fool the artificial intelligence of the writing program within the first few days. (Higher scores were given for nonsense.) Any enthusiasm dissipated with use. That’s what happens with “personalized” learning. In the long run, your kids are just staring at a screen with glaze face for long periods of time. Not exciting. Not fun. Not enriching. Not particularly educational.
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Kids without the adult eye to keep them on track: “…the students shared with one another tricks to write nonsense and fool the artificial intelligence of the writing program within the first few days.” THIS is exactly what I see coming.
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If I had followed the pacing guide and religiously implemented “the program,” the students would have zoned out early on. The repetitive nature would have had them climbing the walls without my tweaking. There were so many ways for a teacher to extend the content in interesting and non-programmed ways. I worked with struggling learners who benefited from a more structured approach. (I can’t say I have ever seen such a program that would meet the needs of more advanced students. ) I made additions and adjustments to keep their interest. The professionals who developed the program encouraged that professional input ( and used it to improve the program); the administrators in charge who had no experience with it were into teaching it “with fidelity.”
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I would suspect that bright young people would game the AI, and it shows how ridiculous this is for teaching writing. Some kids figured out how to beat the AI when the SAT had a writing section scored by an algorithm. It is just so absurdly wasteful.
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“Pearsonalized Learning”
“Personalized” means ” Pearsonalized”
With test-based schemes and other lies
“Personalized” means “standard sized”
With tests the same, but many tries
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You outdid yourself!
😎
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Agree with you KrazyTA.
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LCT-
Whatever, call me a bot if you wish! 🙂 [ie- Sticks and stones and all that stuff…]
But this ‘bot’ will not stop advocating for better opprtunities for students who struggle, not because of their ability, but instead they struggle needlessly because of a schools philosophy and culture that “not all special ed or general ed students can achieve to a higher potential” and therefore are left behind to needlessly struggle day after day, year after year, without anyone seriously and effectively taking an interest in helping them overcome their literacy and numeracy struggles!
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Okay. Stop posting the same false argument over and over. Your claim is that teachers don’t care or know about learning disabilities. It’s untrue. It’s insulting. I grow weary of reading it.
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It is not a false argument.
Let me know where to send the very long list of names of families struggling to get their children help (and this is only a small number of the students, because many more don’t have parents with the ability to advocate for them, either because of having to work multiple jobs, or because they are in the hospita or jail, or because they do not have the mental or emotional capacity to do so.)
Right now my dyslexic college kid is paying it forward with another foster adopt child with kid who has a similar history to his own,and he is trying to help shore up a rising 8th grader’s math skills so that he can make some better progress in 8th grade math when he’s still struggling with the basics. This kid’s been outplaced by this district mutliple times over the years and he has never gotten the appropriate academic help he needs. He’s had an independent evaluation and the school has totally ignored the recommendations.
Currently my college kid is working with him on math skills because he only has a foundation of maybe about 3rd grade. And he’s been with this family for over a decade since he was s a toddler and now he’s in going to be entering 8th grade. His mom has helped him with the reading and writing, and math took a back seat up until now as there are only so many hours in a day available and a kid that struggles all day in school, the last thing they need or want is to go home and deal with it all night there as well!
So please, give me a break about the “false arguments” and dismissiveness about those that speak up about the large numbers of children with learning struggles that are routinely being ignored in the classrooms across this reportedly great nation.
If schools in this area picked up their game and helped these kids with their skill sets, I’d have less first hand knowledge to report back on regarding how poorly they are doing.
We the parents and advocates for these kids grow weary of the battles, yet we have to keep picking ourselves up and heading into the center of the storm. Where we routinely get a similar sounding response as yours regarding how well they are doing with them and that all is well when it isn’t. Because those dreaded standardized tests actually coincide with their proficiency levels in those tested areas. Go figure. What a coincidence…
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I put M in moderation because he/she was insulting to all teachers, accused them en masse of negligence.
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I understand M’s frustration. I do not condone his attacks on teachers, knowing the hassles I went through when I was in the classroom. There are families who want their children mainstreamed for everything in spite of significant deficits that cause evident frustration and embarrassment for their children and disruption in the classroom. There are others who want their children to receive individualized instruction on a daily basis from a certified teacher who is also expected to teach several other children at the same time who have their own unique needs. Then there are those who work 2-3 jobs just trying to survive and do not have the energy, time or skills to help their children.
I have been tutoring beginning readers who were struggling in a city school in a poor neighborhood until January of this year. The (new) principal decided we could no longer pull the kids out of class and shut the program down. Testing became a priority at the insistence of the district which led to changes in scheduling. We are hoping to be able to offer something after school next year. Meanwhile those kids lost a half year of tutoring that had shown positive results for several years. Got to get them ready to take those computer tests!
There are no easy answers and the reality is it takes incredibly motivated kids and if they are lucky parents who can be equally engaged along with a dedicated teaching staff that has the time and resources necessary to give these kids a chance at success. Lloyd’s story shows what a struggle it can be. Unfortunately, too many don’t make it. M should keep advocating for these kids, but I am afraid he has managed to so antagonize the very people who could help that they probably hide when they see him coming.
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Greatly appreciated.
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That is, greatly appreciated, Diane. Advocacy requires a level of personable discourse I myself sometimes struggle to attain, but constant insult over weeks and months without concession is too much.
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M had a bad experience in one school with one teacher, maybe two. Therefore, M concludes, all schools and all teachers are bad. Not only is his/her logic faulty, but h/S offers no alternatives. I suggested that the student in question should enroll in a charter school, if there is one that would take her. Answer came there none.
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M never answered questions or wanted any advice. M just wanted teachers fired en masse. Period. He and/or she was convinced that a VAM calculation is an acceptable reason to fire a teacher, could never have that argument agreed upon here, and so just wound up leaving thumbtacks on teachers’ chairs, throwing paper airplanes, and worse.
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Remember JOHN DEWEY! I love his work and how he frames what learning is all about. So SAD we have forgotten the work of DEWEY.
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The above dialogue misses the point for the most part, that the personalized learning code writers have not written code that does what they say it will. There are parts of every program that I have used in class that I thought were properly organized. But programs as a whole are far short of the promise of individualization. To mitigate this, teachers are required in much greater numbers, a tax burden no one wants to bear. This is the unfortunate truth, that any real reform is far more human intensive and expensive that what we did before the Sizer report launched us into the era of cursing teachers.
Some of the stuff my daughter does on her Chromebook helps her. Much of it requires my working with her for hours, realizing that the reason I am doing this is that the programmer did not remember when he learned which concept. Without my intervention, and this is probably happening to many of her classmates, she would be lost. Think how many students are not working at night with a person who has practiced in the curriculum for 30 years and understands its needs. Tech raises, not lowers, the numbers of qualified personnel needed to teach.
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A couple of summers ago, I had my special needs kids on Dreambox Math. Sure, they like computers: the sounds, the bleeps, the animation….but did they learn anything? Not really. They continued to have difficulty with basic counting and computation skills. When I was in 2nd grade in San Diego, back @ 62, believe it or not, my reading book was Dick and Jane. Now, books like this are pushed onto kindergarten kids as Primers and if they can’t read them by the end of the year, they are considered learning disabled. In Third grade, my math was part of the New Math SMSG series in California. Sets and Numbers is what the book was called. Sounds like a heavy dose of good Number Sense skills. Our third graders today? They are expected to numbers up to a million, multiply, divide, understand fractions, etc. So, when a kid has difficulty doing all this he gets Ds and Fs on the report card, sent to child study, and is labeled with an IEP. What happened to DEVELOPMENTALLY APPROPRIATE??????? Gone with everything else that made sense. Summer school is another chance to push the kids, not to have fun. And don’t get me started on the high sugar breakfasts the school provides. I am 62. I love being a teacher, but I need a change. I am alone. I need to work. What do I do?
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I’ve got five years on you , Mary. I got thrown into the new math when we moved from NJ to IL. Boy was I lost! Intersections and unions, Base 2,… We had been doing pre-algebra/algebra in NJ with “old style” instruction. It took becoming a special ed teacher and teaching math to middle schoolers for me to discover the sense in math. There is no better way to really learn a topic than having to teach it to someone who has tried and failed to grasp it before. I have to say I loved having the resources to dissect the math into manageable chunks that not only clarified it for me but made sense to them.
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A key line from Peter Greene’s piece that stuck out to me: “You cannot have personalized learning without persons.” Yup. That gets to the crux of it.
Peter also references “…the old SRA reading program”. Egads, I hadn’t thought of that thing for 40+ years.
As a student who had real trouble learning to read way back in 1st grade, my main memory of that SRA box is the colors. I remember those more than any particular story that was part of that program Apparently, I’m not the only person who keyed in on the whole color spectrum thing. I found this article about the SRA stuff. http://hackeducation.com/2015/03/19/sra
Funny what you remember from long ago.
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“Funny what you remember from long ago.”
Even funnier is what one mis-remembers from before.
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Then there is that we would rather forget but can’t.
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When these systems are the mode of instruction at their kid and grandkid’s schools I’ll take a look.
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