US Education Secretary Visits Milpitas

MILPITAS, CA — U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos visited Thomas Russell Middle School in Milpitas Thursday to check out the school's focus on "personalized learning."

The Milpitas Unified School District website explains "personalized learning" as "a formal education program in which a student learns at least in part through online delivery of content and instruction with some element of student control over time, place, path, and/or pace and at least in part at a supervised brick-and-mortar location away from home."

"I love visiting all kinds of schools, and schools that are really focused on meeting student's needs, recognizing that each student is an individual and special and unique," DeVos said. "This personalized learning approach I think really is a model that can be emulated far and wide in that it allows students to really take a lot of control of their own learning and allows them the opportunity to be successful and progress at the speed that's right for them. There's lot of encouragement along the way but certainly a lot of freedom in that framework," DeVos said.

During the visit, DeVos was also led on a tour of the campus. She then drew a self-portrait with the help of two students in a 7th and 8th grade arts class and also visited a science class.

DeVos also held a roundtable discussion with school staff, administrators and Superintendent Cheryl Jordan.
Protesters appeared at the school not long after DeVos arrived. No protesters were allowed on campus.

A 19-year-old protester from San Jose who only identified himself as Riley said he's not a fan of DeVos' policies.

"The ideas of privatization further separate our schools by class," he said.

As DeVos left the school, some college students from DeAnza College momentarily blocked the driveway while shouting "Shame on you! Shame on you! Shame on you!" as two black SUVs and a white van carrying her staff
drove away.

Jordan explained the learning as a "continuum."

"Personalized learning does not depend, in my personal experience, on a personalized learning platform," Jordan said. "When we say personalized learning here in Milpitas Unified, we're looking at how we can meet the needs of every single kid, how to ignite their love for learning, how can we make sure they're engaged and in control of their learning and that they're partners with their teachers.

"That means you're not going to see a reliance on a personalized learning platform. You're going to see other things in the classroom such as project-based learning, you're going to see teachers use data in assessment
in order to determine what their students need to know, you're going to see teacher learning one-on-one with kids, also in small groups. You're going to see kids do projects on problems in the community and around the world."

The district said on its website that evidence of the success of the program exists in the fact that schools that do the personalized learning have "seen their discipline issues all but disappear. Student engagement is
up and student attitude towards learning has improved. Quantitative data will follow as we complete our studies."

— Bay City News; AP File Photo/Nati Harnik

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