Relinquishing Our Horse and Buggy

Executive Perspective

I always have been a staunch advocate for personalized learning, or individualized education, as it used to be known. Attempts to reform education often are no more than a rearrangement of the chairs on the Titanic. They are attempts to do what we have always done, but better. I believe a student-centered personalized learning approach can be truly transformative and can achieve true equity in education and the closing of the achievement gap.

Whoa, you say. That is a sizable claim! Yes it is, but let me tell you why it is doable. The way we are organized for teaching is a throwback to the 19th century. The grade-level structure that Horace Mann popularized as public education developed in America was intended to bring students of different backgrounds but similar ages together to facilitate teaching. For a century and a half, it served us well as the number of students attending public schools grew and we transitioned from one-room schoolhouses to larger buildings with multiple classrooms organized by grade levels.

We now are well into the 21st century and are still using the grade-level structure. The advantages of the assembly-line process are less apparent today but the disadvantages are evident in the criticism often levied against public schools. Because children of the same age do not possess the same academic aptitude, nor do they learn at the same rate, the traditional classroom yields a group of students who consistently are left behind. The solution to this dilemma has been the creation of remedial programs by way of after-school instruction, summer school or in-school pull-out programs.

Prevailing Loads

Children of poverty also are affected by the grade-level structure. In spite of the overwhelming evidence about the existence of the achievement gap prior to a low-income student stepping into a classroom, the expectation is that the child will achieve at the prescribed level at the same pace as students without economic disadvantages. Equal educational opportunity translates to all students getting the same thing rather than each student getting what each student needs.

Grade levels never met the needs of a diverse student population. They were not intended to help the children but to help the adults. This structure must be replaced with an organizational setup that is student-centered and personalized. Attempts to do that date back to the 1970s and include such programs as individually guided education, developed by the Wisconsin Research and Development Center for Cognitive Learning. Those efforts, however, could not overcome the prevailing student-to-teacher ratios. The task of one teacher individualizing instruction for 25 students or more was and is a logistical nightmare.

That is no longer the case. Our technological advances finally make it possible to establish a personalized education system. Just as disruptive technology has changed how we listen to music, how we communicate and how we live, technology also has changed how we learn. Nevertheless, we continue to pigeon-hole round students into square holes and wonder why we cannot achieve the results we are seeking.

Letting Go

Several years ago, Clayton Christensen, Michael Horn and Curtis Johnson, in Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns, wrote about this quickly coming to pass. Outlier school systems around the country are using technology in smart ways to move toward personalized learning.

At AASA, we have been bringing these superintendents together as part of our Digital Consortium, and we have created a learning community where ideas and experiences can be shared with other superintendents ready to make the digital leap. In October, in partnership with The School Improvement Network, we held our first conference on personalized learning in Salt Lake City.

Consortium members are quick to point out it is not about the technology, it is about improving teaching and learning. As Susan Enfield, superintendent of the Highline Schools in Burien, Wash., points out in her article in this issue of School Administrator, “Technology amplifies, rather than supplants, effective teaching practices.”

The shift to a nongraded, student-centered, personalized learning system will not be easy. The prevailing grade-level structure is embedded in our culture and our laws and regulations. Letting go of the school calendar, the school day, compulsory attendance and the “edifice complex” (the notion that learning only can happen in the school building) will be hard to do, but the changes are as inevitable as the replacement of the horse and buggy, the record player and the cord phone. Equity and the closing of the achievement gap will happen, but it can be expedited by a concerted move toward personalized learning.