This story, was produced by a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education and based at 911爆料网.
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 鈥淭each to One.鈥� It was an experiment in so-called 鈥減ersonalized learning,鈥� 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鈥檚 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. 鈥淚 can鈥檛 rule out that Teach to One had no effects鈥� on student鈥檚 math achievement, said Doug Ready, a professor at 911爆料网 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 give to 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. 鈥淢ath is cumulative,鈥� he said. 鈥淵ou just can鈥檛 learn linear equations if you don鈥檛 know how to multiply.鈥�
But the annual state tests that were used in this study don鈥檛 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 taught as usual with the sixth-grade curriculum.
鈥淭he study is unable to form any generalizable conclusions one way or the other鈥� about Teach to One or personalized learning, said Rose. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a real tension between an accountability system that emphasizes grade-level material and instructional models that meet kids where they are.鈥�
The study, 鈥�,鈥� was financed by the U.S. Department of Education, which gives out grants to encourage schools to try educational innovations, such as Teach to One, and test their effectiveness. To win the grants, innovators agree to put their programs through a rigorous test with control groups of students who don鈥檛 get the intervention. The Teach to One study was conducted by an outside group, the , based at 911爆料网. (The Hechinger Report is also based at Teachers College but is not affiliated with CPRE.)
Teach to One, whose inside New York City鈥檚 Department of Education, has been one of the more prominent examples of personalized learning, an approach that is backed by a number of foundations, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. (The Gates Foundation is also among the funders of The Hechinger Report.) Almost 40 schools and 10,000 students around the country are learning middle school math through Teach to One this 2018-19 school year, according to New Classrooms, the non-profit that now oversees the Teach to One curriculum.
At the same time, there鈥檚 been a backlash against this technology-driven instruction. Parents in a high-income community in Silicon Valley, California, that Teach to One minimized the role of the teacher and gave students an incoherent hodgepodge of worksheets from various publishers. Mountain View schools in 2017. Only three of the five schools in the Elizabeth, New Jersey, study are sticking with it this year and paying for it with the school district鈥檚 own funds. Back in 2015, my colleague that nationally schools paid $225 per student plus between $50,000 and $125,000 a year for professional development and support services.
Teach to One鈥檚 aim is to use technology like a personal tutor, enabling struggling kids to catch up and advanced kids to surge ahead, improving everyone鈥檚 achievement. But the research evidence hasn鈥檛 been terribly strong. A by scholars at New York University of three middle schools that were earlier adopters of Teach to One in 2010-11 found . Those schools no longer use it. A by a Columbia Business School professor looked at the expansion of Teach to One into more schools through 2014 and again that study didn鈥檛 find clear, positive benefits.
In this current January 2019 study, Ready looked at how Elizabeth students scored on the spring math test administered by the state. Those who had been taught by Teach to One were more likely to be disadvantaged and had slightly lower scores to start. But the annual changes in test scores over three years were relatively flat and quite similar for both students who had learned through Teach to One and those who hadn鈥檛. (See Figure 1 on p. 11 of the .) Even after adjusting for family income and other student characteristics, the students in the Teach to One classrooms didn鈥檛 improve more than students taught in the traditional way. In scientific speak, it was a 鈥渘ull鈥� effect. Teach to One did neither harm nor good.
The authors cautioned against drawing too many conclusions about personalized learning or Teach to One from this one study. That鈥檚 because each of the five schools implemented the Teach to One program differently. Some schools requested more advanced grade-level content that would be on the state test. Other schools allowed middle-school students to methodically work through easier arithmetic. Regardless of these idiosyncrasies, none of the five schools demonstrated better performance than the control group of schools that didn鈥檛 use Teach to One. (See Figure 2 on p. 12 of the . Only school 鈥淐 鈥渟howed a dramatic test score improvement in the third year but the researchers said it should be ignored because it had been a port of entry school for new immigrants. In 2017 it stopped educating that low-achieving population. The new mix of students, wealthier and fluent in English, had higher test scores.)
Other studies without control groups have shown more positive test score gains for Teach to One. Ready, the lead author of the January 2019 study, also produced a calculating that kids learning through Teach to One in more than a dozen schools around the country had achievement gains that were substantially larger than the national average. The students鈥� actual math scores weren鈥檛 higher than the national average; nearly all the Teach to One students were low income and many were low achieving. But students were tested throughout the year and the weakest students, in particular, had larger-than-average improvements during the year. By contrast, high achieving students didn鈥檛 soar.
When I contacted Teach to One to seek a reaction to this disappointing January 2019 study, CEO Rose sent me a rival study, financed by the Gates Foundation. Very similar to the 2014 study I describe in the previous paragraph, this also found that students who learned through Teach to One in 14 schools around the country had higher-than-average growth rates. The problem is that it doesn鈥檛 compare the gains of Teach to One students against the gains of similar students who didn鈥檛 learn that way. Indeed, the MarGrady report cautioned that you can鈥檛 conclude from this kind of analysis that Teach to One caused the students to improve in math. It also warned that national averages it used for comparison are imperfect because students in Teach to One schools are more likely to be poor, black and/or Latino than the average American student. Typically, weaker students show greater gains in percentage terms because even small gains are a larger share of a smaller base level.
Ideally, you鈥檇 want to know how much students in Elizabeth, New Jersey, learned during the year, both those that had Teach to One and those that didn鈥檛. But that would require more testing throughout the year in addition to the mandatory spring state test and it鈥檇 be a tough sell to ask schools to add even more tests to the calendar.
鈥� Jill Barshay