The 74 Million – Naomi Nix
“In an iPrep Academy classroom in Elizabeth, New Jersey, an eighth-grader can dabble in high school math on a computer that already knows quite a bit about how he learns. Nearby, a group of seventh-grade students are working together on a class project revolving around a math concept that the eighth-grader may have mastered yesterday or is still struggling with.
That the students are in the same class tackling the same subject at the same time but not at the same level of difficulty or with the same approach is the point of what’s called personalized learning. The academy, part of the public school system in this industrialized city of 125,000, is one of dozens across the country experimenting with a new personalized learning model called “Teach to One: Math,” which allows students to follow a math curriculum at their own pace, using group work, traditional classroom teaching and virtual tutoring. “The students really like it,” said iPrep Principal Lawrence Roodenburg, who first started using the program in 2013. “They are not always doing the same thing.” Under the program, lesson plans might involve being taught by a teacher in a classroom setting one day, then the next working with a group to practice a concept or tackling computerized math problems with a virtual tutor one-on-one.”(more)