Why Personalize?
Studies of schools implementing personalized learning to scale over multiple years show student learning gains consistently exceeding 125% year over year, indicating that learners are achieving significantly more than one year’s worth of academics in a school year.
These kinds of consistent outcomes stack up favorably with other school reforms implemented to scale across schools.
This sort of progress requires education leaders to be catalysts for change, as well as chief change managers who support their teachers to succeed with new pedagogical models – models where students assume a much more active role in their own learning.
Policymakers too should consider how personalized learning can improve the productivity of our educational system by putting students at the center of their own learning.
In the top personalized learning schools, teachers assimilate benefits from higher levels of student engagement, and are supported with special training to reposition their role within the classroom — to one where their personal connections with their students became more frequent and more productive.
Truly realizing the potential of personalized learning models requires new, competency-based systems where students’ advancement is connected with the mastery of content, not the passing of allotted time intervals.
All too frequently, the personal technology students use every day turns quickly from excitement to detachment when they are required to power down during the school day. This disengagement frequently transfers to the way they regard teachers within the passive learning environment of a traditional classroom.
Accelerating the meaningful feedback students receive in response to their work is another integral strategy to the success of personalized teaching and learning models.
It takes more than technology to personalize learning – it takes empowering teachers to thrive within their profession, leveraging technology and actionable information on the progress of each child to support their success.