last one day In the fall, Christine Barrios’ 9-year-old daughter was stuck in a lesson on IXL, the personalized learning software that served as her math teacher. He had to multiply three three-digit numbers without using a calculator. Then he had to do it again, his mother says, more than 20 times, without making a mistake.
At Alpha School, the private microschool in Brownsville, Texas, where the girl and her younger brother attended, she was performing a grade level ahead of her age in math, Barrios says. She was able to perform three-digit multiplication correctly most of the time. But whenever she made an error on IXL, the software determined that she needed more practice and gave her more questions. He told his mother that he had asked his “mentor”, who supervised his class in lieu of a teacher, to make an exception and let him proceed. He said the guide’s response was that he would have to complete the task, it was expected of him.
Barrios says that over the next weekend, she and her husband sat with their daughter for hours every day until she completed her multiplication lesson, even as she began to cry and cry that she would rather die than move on. Finally, Barrios says he double-checked all the answers on the calculator before the 9-year-old entered. But when the girl returned to school after completing lessons, her mother says, she came back with crushing news: All the time she had spent stuck had left her even further behind her intended goals.
Barrios says that within a few weeks, the school informed her and her husband that their daughter was not eating lunch. According to Barrios, Alfa said, “Because she would like to stay and work here.” The girl later explained to her parents that she was spending her lunch hour at IXL. (In a statement to WIRED, IXL representatives wrote that Alpha School’s account was deactivated last July and claim it is “no longer an IXL customer due to violating our Terms of Service,” adding that IXL is not intended “as a replacement for trained, caring teachers — and we do not recommend its use.)
When Barrios’s husband brought their daughter in for a previously scheduled checkup, her doctor noted with concern that she had lost a lot of weight in a short period of time. Barrios says her father brought her to school with a note from the pediatrician instructing her to eat snacks between regular meals and that he saw her enter school with that in hand. He told his parents that he had turned it in to the staff. Although Alfa tells parents in its handbook to “refrain” from sending “afternoon snacks,” Barrios and her husband wanted to follow the pediatrician’s recommendation, she says.
For the first few days, Barrios says, her daughter ate her breakfast. Then one afternoon she returned with them in her backpack without eating anything. Barrios, concerned, asked if Alpha was providing separate meals instead. No, the 9-year-old replied. She told her mother that school staff told her she did not get breakfast and that she would not get breakfast until she met her learning potential.
