A year of spaced repetition software in the classroom

Some quotes:

A lifeline for low performers

[...]

It turns out that easy cards are really important because they can give wins to students who desperately need them. Knowing a 6th grade level card in a 10th grade class is no great achievement, of course, but the action takes what had been negative morale and nudges it upward. And it can trend. I can build on it. A few of these students started making Anki the thing they did in class, even if they ignored everything else. I can confidently name one student I'm sure passed my class only because of Anki. Don't get me wrong—he just barely passed. Most cards remained over his head. Anki was no miracle cure here, but it gave him and I something to work with that we didn't have when he failed my class the year before.

[...]

A springboard for high achievers

It's not even fair. The lowest students got something important out of Anki, but the highest achievers drank it up and used it for rocket fuel. When people ask who's widening the achievement gap, I guess I get to raise my hand now.

I refuse to feel bad for this. Smart kids are badly underserved in American public schools thanks to policies that encourage staff to focus on that slice of students near (but not at) the bottom—the ones who might just barely be able to pass the state test, given enough attention.

Where my bright students might have been used to high Bs and low As on tests, they were now breaking my scales. You could see it in the multiple choice, but it was most obvious in their writing: they were skillfully working in terminology at an unprecedented rate, and making way more attempts to use new vocabulary—attempts that were, for the most part, successful.

In another forum, someone posted a very cynical article about how fast kids forget everything and how frustrating this is from the teacher's point of view. I thought this was interesting account of one attempt to fix that. (From 2015.)

I wonder what else people have tried?