How Do You Disagree With Personalized Attention?

Executive Perspective

Another school year is about to start and several hundred schools around the country will be personalizing education for the students they serve. Most are part of AASA’s personalized learning cohort, and these schools differ radically from the traditional programs offered by the majority of public schools today.

These are not the schools of the future. They exist now, and what they practice is spreading quickly throughout America.

Winston Churchill said you always can count on Americans to do the right thing — after they’ve tried everything else. Is it possible we have tried everything to “fix” our educational system without much success and that we have finally hit on the right solution — personalized learning?

Admirable Models

Can anyone disagree with the premise that a child learns best when taught as an individual? Do the wealthy not spend many dollars providing tutors for their children and sending them to private schools with low teacher-student ratios? Don’t we resort to mentors and one-on-one instruction when students need intensive remediation?

Individualizing instruction long has been a desired pursuit for educators, but reality always made it elusive. How could one teacher possibly individualize instruction for the 25 students in a class? Now in the 21st century, technology provides us with the means to personalize instruction. Hundreds of schools are doing just that.

One terrific example I’ve seen is Weber Innovation High School in Ogden, Utah, which personalizes instruction for all of its 97 full-time students. Students there take responsibility for their learning, and they are allowed to advance at their own pace.

Totally competency based, students can take an Algebra 1 course in a couple of months, pass the competency test and then move on to another subject. They also have the opportunity to spend extended time on a challenging subject. Other students can take advantage of freed-up time by completing college-level courses and graduating with up to two years of college credit. A similar program exists in Salt Lake City’s Innovations Early College High School.

Textbooks Cancelled

In Columbus, Miss., when Phil Hickman arrived as superintendent in 2014, he found a traditional school system of 5,000 students lagging significantly in achievement. The district had spent major dollars to purchase new textbooks, but Hickman canceled the order and used the resources to begin purchasing the technology that would allow him to transform Columbus schools into 21st-century learning environments.

He directed that personalized professional development be offered to the teaching staff, which led to the redesign of classrooms to accommodate personalized learning. Two years into his tenure, Columbus is well on its way to a full transformation.

Superintendent Jeff Dillon led a similar movement in Wilder, Idaho, as did superintendent Jeff Thake in Amboy, Ill. Both education leaders took aggressive postures to involve their communities, parents and staff in beginning the transformation toward personalized learning.

Although the process can begin in many ways, superintendent Jill Gildea in Fremont, Ill., started by re-imagining her learning areas (formerly known as classrooms). Borrowing a page from behavioral psychologists who believe that the environment can affect and control behavior, Gildea created active learning ecosystems highly conducive to personalized learning.

In Taylor County, Ky., Roger Cook has been personalizing education for seven years. He boasts of having a 100 percent graduation rate and not a single dropout. Students in Taylor are not allowed to fail and even though he still offers a “traditional” program for those students who may want it, few students choose that option.

Wide Favor

In talking to students, parents and teachers in the schools we have visited, it is apparent all were quick converts to personalized education. Students love the ability to progress at their own pace and to assume responsibility for their education. They appreciate being able to move quickly through the subjects they like and to spend as much time as they need on the areas that give them difficulties.

Parents beam when they talk about a son or daughter who did not like the traditional school but now is motivated to learn and enjoy school. Teachers talk about how they would never go back to a traditional classroom where they would need to be the sage on the stage to groups of students, knowing at all times one-third of the class would be bored with material they already understood and another third of the class would be totally lost.

The question is not does personalized learning work, but rather, when will all schools be doing it?