Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
One day past In the fall, Christine Barrios’s 9-year-old daughter stumbled into a lesson in IXL, the personalized learning program that served as her math tutor. 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 small private school the girl and her younger brother attended in Brownsville, Texas, she was working on math at a grade level ahead of her age, Barrios says. She can do three-digit multiplication correctly most of the time. But whenever she made a mistake in IXL, the program determined she needed more practice and assigned her more questions. She told her mother that she had asked her “mentor,” the adult supervising her class rather than the teacher, to make an exception and allow her to move on. She said the guide’s response was that she needed to get it done, and that it was expected of her.
Over the next weekend, Barrios says, she and her husband sat with their daughter for hours each day until she finished her multiplication lesson, even when she broke down and cried because she would rather die than continue studying. In the end, Barrios says she reviewed all the answers on the calculator before the 9-year-old entered it. But when the girl returned to school after class, her mother says, she came back with shocking news: In the time she had been stuck, she had fallen further behind her intended goals.
Within two weeks, Barrios says, the school informed her and her husband that their daughter was not eating lunches. According to Barrios, Alva said it was “because she would rather stay and work.” The girl later explained to her parents that she was spending her lunch time watching the IXL programme. (In a statement to WIRED, IXL representatives wrote that Alpha School’s account was deactivated last July and they claim it “is 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 — to be a substitute” for “trained and caring teachers.”)
When Barrios’ husband brought their daughter in for a pre-scheduled exam soon after, her doctor noted with concern that she had lost a significant amount of weight in a short time. Barrios says her father then brought her to school with a letter from the pediatrician, instructing her to eat snacks between regular meals, and saw her enter the school holding the letter in her hand. She told her parents that she handed it over to the staff. Although Alpha asked parents in its booklet to “refrain” from sending “midday snacks,” Barrios and her husband wanted to follow their pediatrician’s recommendation, she says.
Barrios says her daughter ate her snacks for the first few days. Then she returned one afternoon still in her backpack, without eating. Alarmed, Barrios asked if Alpha was serving different food instead. No, the 9-year-old answered. She told her mother that staff at the school said she did not get her snacks and would not get them until she met her learning metrics.