Lawmakers Still Pushing “Personalized Learning” Despite Huge Problems

The corporate technology push of machine-based skills training continues to march across the nation. This effort goes by the names such as “competency-based education” (CBE), “personalized learning,” and “mastery education.” It has been well described by Jane Robbins, Peter Greene, here and in this space.

The latest is a bill in Florida that seeks to expand what was supposed to be a five-year pilot project for four school districts and the University of Florida experimental school to all 67 Florida school districts after only two and a half years. This expansion is problematic, not only because of an absence of data showing its effectiveness in any of the pilot counties, but also because of the clear evidence that it failed in Lake County, one of the original pilot districts. Lake County experienced a significant drop in graduation rates, and the grade for the high school implementing the pilot dropped from a B to a D.

Bill Gates, who was funding Lake County’s CBE effort before it failed, has admitted that education technology has not improved academic performance in general. It should be noted that just about every Gates education venture has been a failure. In addition to Common Core and CBE, the teacher evaluation grants in Hillsborough County, Fla., cost that county’s taxpayers an extra $24 million and were a total failure. Even the smaller school-to-work learning communities which preceded Common Core also failed.

Parents, initially quite enthusiastic about the advertised glories of CBE, have quickly learned in most instances that these promises have all the substance of cotton candy in the rain. For example, 73 percent of middle school parents in the MacPherson, Kan., school district stated in a survey that they would prefer their students not be in a class using Summit Basecamp personalized learning (CBE) digital learning platform due to academic, privacy, physiological and psychological concerns. Parents in Cheshire, Conn., and Indiana, Pa., have been able to stop the use of the Summit in their school districts due to concerns about academic achievement and data privacy.

The Summit Basecamp platform is a joint venture between the Summit charter schools and the Chan-Zuckerburg Initiative founded by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg and his wife Priscilla Chan. There are many other instances of parental anger and removal of their children from schools using this platform, well explained by Leonie Haimson of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy. Interestingly, Summit boasts of a research collaboration with Harvard, but refused to be studied by Harvard researchers.

Data collection, including psychological data, in CBE is extensive, with the FBI issuing public service announcements warning of the privacy dangers related to education technology. One education technology company called Knewton brags about being able to collect 5-10 million actionable data points per student per day as they interact with Common Core curriculum and embedded assessments, and another called Dream Box boasts of collecting 100,000 data points per student per hour. These are the kinds of platforms commonly used in CBE.

The full article can be viewed at The National Pulse’s website.