Personalized Learning Shouldn’t Be One More Thing for Teachers to Figure Out

Having moved from teaching into EdTech, I always find it valuable to connect with others who began their careers in the classroom. On a recent Tech in EdTech episode, I sat down with Kelly Philbin, Director of Core Adoptions at IXL Learning. Kelly spent more than 15 years teaching before moving into educational publishing and curriculum work. That classroom experience gave us plenty of common ground.

I remember teaching the same class before and after lunch and finding that, depending on how the day was going, it could feel like two entirely different groups. Teachers make adjustments like this throughout the day. The learning goal may stay the same, but the students sitting in front of them need a different response.

Our conversation kept coming back to how core curriculum and personalized learning can support those decisions without adding more work for teachers.

For product and curriculum leaders at K–12 publishers and edtech companies, this means looking beyond the resources and information we provide. We also need to ask how much teachers are left to figure out before they can use them.

Here are five lessons from our conversation.

1. Identifying the Need Is Only the First Step

Personalization becomes another planning task when teachers have to make all the connections themselves. A product might identify students who need support, but the teacher still has to find the right resources, connect them to the lesson, and decide how to use them. Providing another data point does not resolve that work. As Kelly explained, instruction, assessment, differentiation, and practice need to work together so that what we learn about a student helps inform what happens next.

Kelly described how personalization days in Takeoff connect assessment information with what students can work on next. Rather than simply handing teachers a set of scores, the information identifies students who may need additional support, those who have mastered the content, and those ready for enrichment. It then connects those needs to work further.

Kelly’s design goes further than surfacing the need, but actually stays with what happens after. During our conversation, we agreed that sometimes less is more in product design. Teachers have small windows to plan or respond. An extensive set of insights can leave them with too much to figure out in the little time they have.

For product teams, the question is whether a teacher understands that the recommendation is relevant, sees how it connects to current learning, and has the support needed to act on it.

2. Understand the Need Before Changing the Difficulty

Two students could get the same question wrong for two different reasons. One could have a misconception while the other could lack readiness skills. Simply knowing that the two students got the question wrong doesn’t provide any information about what they need help with.

This became clearer during our conversation about multilingual learners. Kelly described a situation where a student understands a mathematical concept but does not yet have the English language skills to explain their thinking fully. A teacher could interpret that as a learning gap and assign easier content. The student, however, needs language support to engage with grade-level work.

As Kelly put it:

“If we diagnose the wrong need, then we’re going to prescribe the wrong support.”

Are we assessing mathematical understanding, or the student’s ability to explain that understanding in English? I put that distinction directly to Kelly.

Kelly discussed visual supports, modeling, manipulatives, opportunities for classroom discussion, and translations as ways to help students access demanding content. These supports should be built into the learning experience rather than left for teachers to assemble independently.

Before making the work easier, we need to understand whether easier work is what the student needs. Removing a language barrier should not mean removing the challenge.

3. Instructional Coherence Must Leave Room for Teacher Judgment

A core curriculum gives teachers and students a common direction. It should not require every student to follow the same route at the same pace.

Kelly explained this through a trip to Disney. Everyone shares the destination, but some people fly, others drive, and others take a train. Academic standards establish where students need to go. A strong curriculum helps them get there while leaving teachers room to respond to different needs.

Her Group Jam example shows how a shared activity can still allow different responses. Students work on the same question at the same time, while the teacher can see how they are thinking. A common struggle gives the teacher an opportunity to pause and address it. A student ready for more can be taken deeper into the material.

The distinction Kelly made is important:

“The technology is not making the instructional decision for the teacher. It’s really giving teachers better information so they can make that decision.”

Reducing the work of finding and connecting resources is valuable. Removing every teaching decision is not the goal.

Professional learning has an important role, too. Kelly stated that teachers need to understand why scaffolds and resources are included, not only how to use them. Curriculum and professional learning should work together to support adaptation without compromising the coherence of the program.

Teachers deserve our trust, alongside practical support. A well-supported decision is a better goal than removing the decision altogether.

4. Look for the Problem Behind the Feature Request

Listening to teachers is essential. But delivering the change they request is not always the same as addressing the problem they are experiencing.

A pattern across schools might point to something structural – pacing, or how a resource fits the instructional day. A one-off request might just be specific to that school. Kelly’s move: find the pattern, then ask follow-up questions to tell the two apart.

Her account of Takeoff makes this more concrete. Educators who valued IXL’s supplemental personalized learning repeatedly asked for that support within a core program. She described those requests, and the listening behind them, as the impetus for its development.

The request was not simply for more personalized support. Educators wanted that support within their core curriculum.

For product leaders, that raises a useful question: does the teacher need another capability, or does an existing capability need to fit more closely into the work they are already doing?

This distinction can help inform the initial response as well as the subsequent review. We need to know whether the classroom difficulty has been addressed, in addition to the requested feature delivered.

5. Track Progress Before Test Season

Standardized test scores are one part of understanding student progress. They should not be the only point at which we ask whether personalization is helping.

Kelly suggested looking at student learning, engagement, and teacher practice. Her examples give us three useful areas to examine:

• Student Understanding: Are misconceptions recurring less often? Can students explain their thinking and apply learning in a new context?
• Student Engagement: Are students participating more confidently, persisting through challenges, and staying involved in the work?
• Teacher Practice: Can teachers identify needs and respond more quickly? Are they spending less time searching for resources and more time teaching?

These are signals we need to watch out for during implementation, not outcomes to assume because a product offers personalization.

I also raised the importance of when and where formative assessment is embedded. Without such regular opportunities to assess understanding, teachers and school leaders have less to work with between standardized testing cycles.

For product and curriculum teams, evaluation needs to stay connected to the everyday experience we are trying to improve.

The Practical Test: Make the Next Teaching Decision Clearer

Every example Kelly gave – the personalization days, the language supports, Group Jam, Takeoff – comes back to the same test: does the feature make the next teaching decision clearer, or does it just add another thing to figure out?

Try it out! Whether browsing existing products or designing new features as you build, take one assessment result and follow it through to what the teacher can do next. Consider:

• What does the information explain about the student’s need?
• Which support does it connect to?
• What is the teacher still left to interpret, find, or put together?
• Does the proposed next step address the difficulty without unnecessarily lowering the level of the work?

Personalization should help teachers move from understanding a student’s need to responding to it.