Reply to Explain to Me How You Fund and Staff a Deal for All-in-Development

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Reply to "Explain to Me How You Fund and Staff a Deal for All-in-Development"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The equities of tracking and ranking students are a lot more complicated than you seem to realize.  Try reading some of the research literature on it. [/quote] 
Can you please link some of the research you're describing?  I'm not sure I totally follow what you mean by "the equities of tracking and ranking."  Does that just mean, "It's not fair to label some students 'catching up' or 'not-proficient'," and it might give them a poor self-concept?  If so, DCPS is already giving them that label with the PARCC scores.  I don't see how generating classrooms based on that same data is a problem.

[quote]The immediate problem is that it would create scheduling difficulties.  If all the classes are the same, it is a lot easier to put together student schedules.   Much harder if you have to put them with a specific teacher at a specific time.  It is really hard to design a schedule that gets kids into the right levels in every subject.[/quote]
Fair enough that it's more complicated to schedule for 3 large groups of students than it is if you treat all students as identical.  But it's not that complicated.  Surely a principal could figure this out.  Indeed, lots of schools that are less sophisticated than DCPS do this, so it's not rocket science.

[quote]Might be an improvement, but it isn't a total fix.[/quote]
Totally agree with that.  But the problems DCPS middle schools face are not going to be solved by any single solution.  It's going to be a bunch of different steps that collectively push toward improvement.  This effort also might be a complete failure - but it can't hurt to try since so many parents seem to be clamoring for it.  At the very least, if it's a complete failure after 2 years, then DCPS can shut down the differentiation experiment and point to it whenever parents ask![/quote]

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