I couldn’t think of anything worse that this phrase “individualized learning” The most damaging statement is that the curriculum is being served up to them? Where is the opportunity for discussion, interaction and the emotional side of learning? We are social beings and this strips students of every opportunity to be social. This is also an extremely divisive idea: putting students who are “failing” maths who are 15 years with 8 year olds. How humiliating for the poor student. This is ability tracking at its worse!!!! The students are not failing math- the system is failing the students, I really could go on and on about this…

Why is it always acceptable to boast about being at math? Belittle-ring and trivializing math learning is a huge problem worldwide and it is the norm to boast how bad you are at math. This is just unacceptable. The problem lies with current practices and how this breeds the false notion of that some people are math people and some are not.

I cannot say the old assessment model Pisa adopted is the end all be all of success of an education system. In Dec 2017 OECD released a new framework called Global Competencies which reflect more of what we want our students to learn. https://www.oecd.org/education/Global-competency-for-an-inclusive-world.pdf
It will be interesting to see how nations fare under this new model. I know I have not dealt with the prompt but these little side comments have me distracted!

I love the idea that a lot of data can be collected from students on a digital environment to be analyzed and inform teaching and learning for the future. It can provide comprehensive (big data) feedback (or as Ron Ritchhart calls it feedforward) to curriculum designers of what effective online learning environments look like.
The risks include the loss of personal interactions and the affective side of learning.

The most difficult data to collect is probably the most important, internalized feelings and motivation. You can provide all the surveys or interviews you want but teens will be teens. They are at an age where confidence to tell all is not a possibility. Most teens have so many things going on internally that even they don’t know how they feel and if they did it would change with the wind. Someone like the teacher that spends hours a day with them is probably the best resource for gathering that information. …but that is a manual and time intensive task.

As mentioned by the panelists, the states and federal decisions makers seem unable to reach a concensus about what education is. Performance vs mastery as one panelist stated. Our kids are graduating without some of the basics which become problematic as they enter college or the workforce. I think if schools are developed in a way which mirrors those that are performing well with financling, technology, and supportive teachers some of these barriers can be overcome.

There is a lot of interesting things that Finland does and doesn’t do with their education systems including their higher-ed. My son has a friend that even moved there to go to college for free (in certain degrees).

To piggy back off my earlier comment, its seems pretty simple to mirror the schools that are working well and institute those programs and best practices in schools where there are issues. The outcome may not be apples to apples but there certainly should be some improvements over time. Its pretty amazing with all the educational tools, the internet, and too many devices to name that our kids learning experiences arent consistently improving.