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The Backlash Against Personalized Learning View this email in your browser

Tuesday, December 11, 2018  Newsletter

The Backlash Against Personalized Learning

SHARE THIS EMAIL: Students at the Secondary School for Journalism in Brooklyn, New York walked out of class to protest it. Another New York City public school dumped it. And in Cheshire, Connecticut, the superintendent eliminated a “personalized learning” program after families complained that users received limited attention from teachers, gamed the system, faced data privacy violations, and experienced increased levels of anxiety. These approaches rely on software to lead each student through lessons deemed appropriate for that student at that time, thus assisting or supplementing teachers who are feared to have a lesser capacity to individualize. “Individualized” instruction may be a better name for these approaches, but advocates have popularized the “personalized instruction” name, and we thus use it here. All three of the above cases involved the Summit Learning Platform, which is currently used in more than 380 schools. Summit was built with assistance from Facebook engineers and promoted financial backing from company founder Mark Zuckerberg. As such, they are arguably impacted by the recent backlash against Facebook, which was sparked by revelations that the social media giant improperly shared data and permitted election meddling. (The National Education Policy Center deleted its Facebook account in March over these and other concerns.) But is personalized learning more broadly facing a backlash? Maybe. In October, for example, The New York Times ran a series of articles about efforts by affluent parents (including those in Silicon Valley) to limit students’ use of screens not only at home—where they are often used for entertainment—but at school. For example, the private Waldorf School of the Peninsula has attracted families of executives of tech companies such as eBay, Google, Apple and Yahoo with its computer-free approach.  In a policy brief for NEPC, Vanderbilt professor Noel Enyedy writes that “recent studies show little evidence for the effectiveness” of personalized learning programs that aim to use computers to tailor digital instruction to individual students. Such programs often merely translate problematic features of traditional learning into the digital context. For instance, Enyedy writes: (T)he basic formula of both traditional and computerized instruction has been ‘I, we, you,’ where the teacher (or computer) tells the student something, followed by a worked-out example gone over together, and ending with independent student practice. Everything we know about teaching and learning tells us that this formula is flawed and not working. Another challenge is that there’s no one standardized definition of, or approach to, personalized learning. “The systems lumped together under the umbrella term of Personalized Instruction differ widely,” Enyedy writes:  In fact, there is so much variability in features and models for implementation that it is impossible to make reasonable claims about the efficacy of Personalized Instruction as a whole. Worse, when decision makers consider adopting a particular system, it is usually hard to tell whether available evidence applies to the specific system under consideration. One major complaint about Summit Learning is that there is too much digital learning and not enough instructor intervention: One student told New York Magazine that she met with her math teacher for just a few minutes a month. Survey results suggest that teachers in schools that use personalized learning are less familiar with their students and their lives inside and outside of schools. Other complaints about Summit include: Software glitches One student told The New York Post she was locked out of the software for two months.) Concerns about data privacy (Summit shares data with 19 companies, including Amazon and Microsoft. An NEPC research brief notes that most school districts lack the resources to manage all their student data.) Lessons that are easy to game and trick (By skipping lessons, for example, and making educated guesses on multiple choice questions.) Prof. Enyedy’s brief concludes with a series of seven recommendations, including the following four: Education policymakers should continue to invest in technology but should be wary of advocacy promoting computerized instruction to an extent that oversteps the current research. Policymakers should encourage more partnerships among developers, educational researchers and teachers. Such partnerships have great potential to produce systematic and rigorous evidence of what works and what doesn’t. Administrators must ensure that investments in technological infrastructure and software licensing are accompanied by substantive professional development for teachers in order to provide them with skills that have not historically been in the teacher’s toolbox. All stakeholders should refrain from assuming that Personalized Instruction is the only model for computers in the classroom and be open to investigating new models integrating technology into the learning process. NEPC Resources on Computing, Technology, & Information Systems ->

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NEPC’s November Education Interview of the Month Podcast Explores School Privatization and Segregation

KEY TAKEAWAY: NEPC Education Interview of the Month is a great teaching resource; engaging drive-time listening; and 30 minutes of high-quality policy information for educators, community members, policymakers, and anyone interested in education. NEPC Publication -> NEPC Resources on Privatization -> CONTACT: William J. Mathis: (802) 383-0058 wmathis@sover.net Noliwe Rooks: (718) 708-4368 nrooks@cornell.edu

BOULDER, CO (November 15, 2018) – In this month’s NEPC Education Interview of the Month, Lewis and Clark College Emeritus Professor of Education Gregory A. Smith and Cornell University professor Noliwe Rooks discuss school privatization, segregation, and the end of public education. Greg and Noliwe, who also chairs the American Studies Program at Cornell, explore issues that have arisen from the range of privatizing reforms prevalent over the last decade, and their impact on our ability to create equitable schools. Dr. Rooks has researched the roots of school privatization going back to the 19th century, when, she points out, there was the same kind of “deep-pocketed interest” from philanthropists that exists today.  Dr. Rooks coined the term “segrenomics,” referring to the profit for businesses that offer to educate children in economically and racially segregated communities. She attempts to understand the meaning of a society in which those with access to wealth and power are invested in education reform for “poor black children”…but only with models of education that don’t look like the education their own children get.  “We try everything except for the education the wealthy provide for their own kids,” Dr. Rooks says. “This is the education for you, they say, instead of having a sense of what makes a quality education for everyone.” In her work she consistently finds this discrepancy in education quality dependent on the economic status and race of the child. Policymakers must take a long view towards equity, Dr. Rooks believes – no one election or candidate will resolve the issue. She argues that what is needed is a much broader form of organizing beginning at the local level, looking at what each individual school needs, and figuring out how to fill that need.  NEPC Education Interview of the Month, hosted by Gregory A. Smith, is released each month from September through May. Don’t worry if you miss a month. All NEPC Education Interview of the Month podcasts are archived on the NEPC website and can be found here.  Coming Next Month In December, Greg’s guests will be Dr. Rick Mintrop and Miguel Ordenes of the University of California Berkeley. Greg, Rick, and Miguel will explore the universal implementation of school vouchers and privatization in Chile, and what might happen in the U.S. if similar policies were to become more widespread here. Stay tuned in to NEPC for smart, engaging conversations about education policy.

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The Connection Between Poverty, Race and College Preparation in Five Charts View this email in your browser

Thursday, November 8, 2018  Newsletter

The Connection Between Poverty, Race and College Preparation in Five Charts

SHARE THIS EMAIL: More than 14 percent of the nation’s high school students attend schools where at least three quarters live in poverty. Most of these 1.8 million pupils are students of color. These low-income students and students of color are much less likely than their white and more affluent peers to attend and complete college. A new analysis illustrates one of the reasons why: These high schools with concentrated poverty are less likely to offer the coursework students need if they are to attend and succeed in four-year colleges. The analysis is presented in a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released last month at the request of U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, ranking member on the House Education Committee. Below are five charts from the report that shed light on the connection between poverty, race, and college attendance. “High-poverty” schools have free or reduced-price meal rates of at least 75 percent. “Low-poverty” schools have rates under 25 percent.  Students of color are more likely to attend high-poverty high schools.

2. High-poverty schools are less likely to offer calculus and physics.

3. High-poverty schools are less likely to offer Advanced Placement courses and access to dual enrollment in high school and college classes. High- and low-poverty schools are equally likely to offer International Baccalaureate classes, but relatively few of either provide access to this option.

4. Most four-year colleges’ admissions requirements call for students to take three math credits and three science credits in high school.

5. Most four-year colleges require students to take a math sequence that includes, at the very least, algebra I, geometry, and algebra II. Most require a science sequence that includes, at the very least, biology, chemistry, and physics. A smaller percentage of high-poverty schools offer the math and science sequences required by most four-year colleges.

What Can Be Done to Bridge the College-Prep Gap? The between-school differences in access to college-preparatory classes present a very real barrier facing low-income communities and communities of color. It will be necessary to address these inequalities if our society is to close opportunity gaps. But we think it important to highlight three points: Access to college-prep classes must be connected to corresponding access to the supports and resources necessary for students and their teachers to be successful. In schools throughout the U.S., tracking (or “ability grouping”) systems deny low-income students and students of color access to college-prep courses even when those classes are indeed offered in their schools. The GAO report analyzes what it calls “high-poverty schools”—those where at least three quarters of the students live in poverty. This is itself the core problem. Any serious effort to close opportunity gaps must begin by addressing this concentrated poverty, as well as the associated racial segregation. In the meantime, educational leaders might look to some of the schools recognized by NEPC’s Schools of Opportunity program, where high-poverty high schools do offer their students a rigorous and equitable college-prep curriculum. For example: At Rainier Beach High School in Seattle (where the poverty rate is 75%), all 11thand 12thgrade students take at least one International Baccalaureate course. At Seaside High School in California (where the poverty rate is 74%), all students take core courses that prepare them for admittance to the University of California NEPC Resources on Tracking and Detracking ->

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