Adaptive Apps: New Technology Adjusts Lessons Based on Students’ Skill Levels – The

For the past twenty years, K–12 test scores in America have been falling, not rising. Only 36 percent of eighth graders read at grade level, and many students are years and years behind.

COVID only exacerbated this trend. During school shutdowns, kids learned — or, more accurately, didn’t learn — at very different rates. Studies show that post-COVID, the range of students’ knowledge spans nine grade levels in a single classroom. (READ MORE: Education Has Reached Peak Absurdity, But There Is Hope)

While COVID learning loss made this problem more apparent, it’s not new. Even before COVID, the knowledge range in the average classroom spanned seven grade levels. 

This gap is hugely problematic — how can you teach to seven grade levels at once? — but it’s impossible to close within our outdated system. The whole system is setting teachers up to fail; since teachers can’t teach to thirty individuals at numerous grade levels, they’re stuck teaching to the mean.

In a typical fourth-grade classroom, a teacher — let’s call her Mrs. Smith — would teach her class first division, then fractions. Learning fractions requires an understanding of division, which isn’t problematic if every kid has mastered division before the class moves on.

But here’s the issue: when Mrs. Smith began teaching division during those first few weeks of school, she had kids in her class who had known how to divide for years in addition to others who still couldn’t add or subtract because they had fallen behind in their previous grade level. Regardless of the amount of work she puts in, Mrs. Smith’s instruction won’t apply to most of the students in the room.

To add to this struggle, because in math knowledge builds on itself, the inability to personalize lessons causes the students who are ahead to be bored and the students who are behind to fall further and further behind. A student who can’t add and subtract can’t master division. If division hasn’t been mastered, fractions are impossible. Without fractions, algebra doesn’t stand a chance.

This issue isn’t just limited to math. It applies to all subjects. What’s more, teachers can’t help kids catch up because they have to teach to state standards for each grade. Since Mrs. Smith must follow the fourth-grade state standard requiring kids to analyze short stories, she can’t pause instruction to teach kids how to read. But, needless to say, a kid who can’t read can’t analyze a story. 

So, what’s the solution? Adaptive educational apps.

Educational apps allow each student to learn at his or her own pace. Students who quickly understand the material can advance to the next level; for those who are confused, the apps allow students to stay at that level until they grasp the concepts they are missing. Think Duolingo — but better — for every subject.

Because it’s adaptive, the software adjusts the lesson based on what an individual student knows (and doesn’t know). With built-in lessons, pop quizzes, and tests, these apps have the power to stand on their own, separate from the classroom, to teach the entire Common Core curriculum. Although “Common Core” is a divisive topic in our country, most parents agree that the knowledge itself is useful. What they take issue with is that students must take twelve years to learn its curriculum. Adaptive learning apps cut this time in half by making large-scale personalized learning possible.

From kindergarten to eighth grade, students can learn an entire year of material by spending two hours per day on online apps. In high school, learning takes three to four hours per day. This means that students are learning twice as fast as they would in a standard classroom.

How do we know that apps help students learn twice as fast? Kids learning through adaptive apps succeed by that metric on nationwide standardized tests, such as the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) assessment. For example, at Alpha, an alternative school in Texas where students learn academics exclusively through adaptive apps (and where I currently attend high school), students’ MAP test scores consistently demonstrate double the knowledge growth of students in a standard classroom.

These apps use learning-science techniques that have been proven to foster this “twice as fast” learning. For example, the apps use mastery learning techniques (students must fully understand a lesson — regardless of time — before continuing to the next), spaced repetition (students must review information at intervals until it’s sufficiently retained), and retrieval practice (students must recall knowledge they have previously learned).

Online learning and educational apps can even provide the solution to Bloom’s “two-sigma problem,” a classic educational dilemma.

In the 1950s, Benjamin Bloom, an educational psychologist, found that the average student tutored using mastery learning techniques — used by adaptive learning apps — performed two standard deviations (for those who don’t remember their high school statistics, that is a lot) better than students taught in a standard classroom setting. Read that again: two standard deviations.

Sixty years ago, when Bloom’s research was published, it was almost impossible to give every student a tutor, who could then create custom, individually tailored content. But now that we have learning apps, we can easily use mastery learning practices to give each student the equivalent of their own personalized tutor.

Aside from solving Bloom’s two-sigma problem and helping students through COVID learning loss, adaptive apps also make learning more enjoyable for students. Instead of falling asleep to boring lectures or staring at a math problem for hours, students can focus on a curriculum that meets them at their level.

And because students can learn academic content twice as fast as they would in a traditional classroom, they can spend half their day in project-based learning workshops, practicing nonacademic skills such as leadership and teamwork. Spending half the day working together allows students to form strong relationships and build better social skills than those at a standard school do.

Of course, some parents prefer to limit their child’s screen time and would view as problematic the amount required to learn in this way. In addition, if parents use online learning apps as a form of homeschooling, then they will need to ensure that they find adequate means of socialization for their child.

Adaptive learning apps have the potential to solve problems that have long vexed education. By giving each student a personalized learning pathway, we can help them unlock their potential — both in academics and beyond.

Kate Alexandra — known as Austin Scholar in her Substack newsletter — provides parents with a teen’s perspective on how they can help their child reach their full potential.

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