Guest Post: Applying Promising K-12 Models

In December 2010, the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME) hosted a Big Ideas Fest, an “inspirational extravaganza” where participants shared “ideas and real world results that prove when you put the learner in the center of all systems, anything is possible.” Big ideas, indeed! Thanks to support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, three DEI colleges were able to send representatives. Dr. Kathleen Cleary, from Sinclair Community College attended the event; she was particularly struck by a presentation from the New York City Public Schools’ School of One program. Today’s post is an introduction to the School of One approach from Mickey Muldoon, School of One’s manager of external affairs. Tomorrow, we’ll feature a post from Dr. Cleary, exploring how such an approach might be applied in developmental education at the community college level.

School of One was inspired by the simple insight that students in New York City classrooms – and across the country – have incredibly variable skills, knowledge, abilities, and challenges. Treating all the students in any classroom as identical cogs doesn’t do justice to their differences – and can be inefficient and taxing on teachers. So just like Amazon.com and Pandora.com respond to the unique preferences of their users, we are building a classroom that adapts to every student, with the help of sophisticated technology behind the scenes.

Below are some of the key principles of our philosophy and design:

• Multiple modalities enable personalization. Our classrooms are large (~2,000 square feet) and divided into learning stations in different modalities: large and small group instruction, small group collaboration, software-based instruction, live remote tutoring, and independent practice. Because students are distributed across the stations at any given time, the fast students can work on advanced material, and slower students are not left behind in the back of class. Moreover, students who struggle in traditional classrooms often thrive in small groups, one-on-one, or with software or online tutors.
• Data-driven scheduling. All School of One students take a short, custom online quiz at the end of each math period. Then at the end of each day, School of One’s learning algorithm processes all the quiz results and generates a unique plan for every student for the following day. Students who pass their quizzes are automatically moved on to new material; students who don’t will continue on the same material on the following day, often with extra help from the teaching staff.
• Classroom tools should empower teachers to do what they do best. Our technology and data systems streamline administrative tasks, assessments, grading, and data analysis. This means that School of One teachers can easily access the key information they need, and spend more time planning and delivering great instruction and working directly with students.
• Constant performance evaluation. In addition to daily online quizzes, School of One students participate in mandatory and voluntary evaluation and testing. So far, the results are promising: in the most recent in-school and after-school pilots, School of One students significantly outperformed their peers. For more information, go here.

To learn more about School of One, please visit www.schoolofone.org.

Thanks to DEI and Accelerating Achievement for the opportunity to share our work.


Mickey Muldoon is School of One’s manager of external affairs.