In 1980, a group of graduate students at the University of Chicago began separate studies that called into question the common wisdom of the education world. Working in different schools and different grades, they asked: what kind of progress might students make if they were each given highly favorable conditions in which to learn? Their proxy for such conditions was simple: skilled tutors who aided the students based on their individual needs.

“As the … results began to emerge, we were astonished,” both by the impact and the consistency of the results, wrote their professor, Benjamin Bloom. Nearly every student with the tutoring — 98 percent — out-learned a comparison class, and 90 percent reached levels of achievement that only the top 20 percent of the non-tutored students did.

If the push for genuinely personalized learning is successful, it will respond to the traditional drivers of education improvement — the need to prepare more students for success and fulfillment, and to fuel economic strength in a world where education is the ultimate capital. But more than that, it will respond to the hunger among students, families and teachers to explore and harness their individual creativity and gifts — letting teachers do the work of their lives, and letting students become the people they dream of becoming.

Read the full article by Jim Shelton about personalized learning from Medium