"Often when you come across something new it can be a good idea to overuse it in order to find out it's boundaries. This is a quite reasonable learning strategy. It's also why people always tend to overuse new technologies or techniques in the early days. People often criticize this but it's a natural part of learning. "
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&#...
It is good to see some studies being done in this area (even if the one in the article is not particularly rigorous). I am convinced that there is tremendous value in the new online opportunities (Khan Academy, Stanford, Coursera, Udacity, etc), but there are limits to what they can accomplish. For one thing, an online course being done individually requires a higher level of student discipline than a learning activity involving the personal interaction of a teacher. My mind is less likely to wander when a teacher is staring me down :).
The difference is so small that even if it's not noise, it could be very well caused by other factors (teachers more motivated in the test group, for example).
Also note: the teacher doesn't have to really lead the class. The report says that the teacher spent most of their time 1 on 1 helping students who were stuck. Teachers may see value in simply having to do less work to achieve the same (or slightly better) result.
Also, this class was only a couple months. There is a question whether the small improvement would have continued and would have become wider when applied over a whole school year.
Is 23% improvement considered that small(assuming it's statistically significant) ?
Might be easier to see if you think of it as 106.6/105.2, in order to include the baseline.
