Last day This fall, Kristine Barrios’ 9-year-old daughter was stuck in class on IXL, the personalized learning software that served as her math teacher. She had to multiply three three-digit numbers without using a calculator. Then she had to do it again, her mother says, more than 20 times, without making any mistakes.
At Alpha School, the private microschool the girl and her younger brother attended in Brownsville, Texas, she was a grade above her age in math, Barrios says. In most cases, she was able to perform three-digit multiplication correctly. But whenever she made a mistake in IXL, the software said she needed more practice and asked her more questions. She told her mother that she had asked her “guide,” the adult who supervised her class instead of the teacher, to make an exception and let her move on. She said the guide replied that she had to do it and that it was expected of her.
Barrios says that over the next weekend, she and her husband spent hours every day with their daughter until she finished her multiplication lesson, even though she broke down and sobbed that she would rather die than go on. Ultimately, Barrios says she double-checked all the answers on the calculator before the 9-year-old entered them. But when the girl returned to school after her lessons, according to her mother, she came back with devastating news: in the time she was stuck in, she had drifted even further from her goals.
Barrios claims that within a few weeks the school informed her and her husband that their daughter was not eating lunch. According to Barrios, Alpha stated that “because she preferred to stay and work.” The girl later explained to her parents that she was catching up on IXL during lunch. (In a statement to WIRED, IXL representatives wrote that Alpha School’s account was deactivated last July and claimed he was “no longer an IXL customer due to a violation of our terms of service,” adding that IXL “is not intended – and we do not recommend its use – as a replacement” for “trained, caring educators.”)
When Barrios’ husband brought his daughter in for a previously scheduled check-up shortly thereafter, the doctor was concerned to note that she had lost a significant amount of weight in a tiny period of time. Then her dad brought her to school with a note from the pediatrician, Barrios says, instructing her to eat snacks between regular meals, and he saw her return to school with a snack in her hand. She told her parents that she had delivered them to the staff. Even though Alpha’s handbook asked parents to “refrain” from sending “midday snacks,” Barrios and her husband wanted to follow the pediatrician’s advice, she says.
For the first few days, Barrios says her daughter ate her snacks. One afternoon she returned with them still in her backpack, uneaten. Concerned, Barrios asked if Alpha was providing other food instead. No, the 9-year-old replied. She told her mom that school staff said she didn’t earn snacks and wouldn’t get them until she met her learning rates.