Education Week Does Balanced Story on Personalized Learning – Interviews Dr. Effrem

Kudos to Benjamin Herold and Education Week for bringing some balance to whole issue of computer-based education in the article The Case(s) Against Personalized Learning. After interviewing leading opponents from across the ideological spectrum, including Dr. Effrem, Herold lists the three main arguments against personalized learning (PL), also called competency-based education (CBE):

1. “The Hype Outweighs the Research,” quoting John F. Pane, senior scientist at the Rand Corporation, who said, “The evidence base is very weak at this point.”
2. “Personalized Learning is Bad for Teachers and Students” quoting progressive education author Alfie Kohn who said of personalized learning, “It’s behaviorism on a screen.”
3. “Big Tech + Big Data = Big Problems,” quoting Audrey Waters who said, “When Facebook promises personalization, it’s really about massive data collection.”

Here is the quote by Dr. Effrem included in the article:

“We’re sacrificing our children’s privacy, and we’re allowing corporations to make potentially life-changing decisions about our kids, all for technology that doesn’t actually help them,” said Effrem, the president of Education Liberty Watch, an advocacy organization that supports parents’ right to control their children’s education.

As an adjunct to the article Herold developed a survey containing responses of the people interviewed for the article with their views of PL in response to the statements: “Personalized learning should ________” and “Personalized learning should not ___________”. Here are a few examples:

Let us hope this example of balanced journalism is not an isolated incident on this very important topic of personalized learning.  The public and especially our children and teachers really need to understand the ill effects of PL on academic achievement, the student-teacher relationship, and data and psychological privacy.