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[quote=Anonymous]Differentiated instruction in the classroom is a popular buzzword and concept I'm education today.  The idea is that the teacher can adapt instruction and activities to reach all the students in the class no matter what their level of performance or ability.  This is especially important in inclusion classrooms with special ed students and students learning English.

It is an important and useful skill for teachers to reach all kids in their class and not leave anyone behind.

But, any teacher will tell you that it is very difficult and very time consuming and most will admit a) they don't do it as well as they would like and b) if the gap of prior knowledge/ability/achievement is very large it becomes nearly impossible c) when stretched, the teacher will focus on struggling students and even use the more advanced students to tutor others ( for better or worse ).

It is a complete crock that this method is a panacea or even minimally effective at teaching kids in the upper elementary/middle and high school years when content becomes key and those who.missed the foundational skills in the younger graded fall further behind.  Do not buy any administrator telling you that this is how they are going to deal with cohorts of kids with big gaps in academic achievement above 3rd grade.

What Brent is doing with flexible tracking bases on individual skill sets and subjects is a reasonable way to begin to reinstate some form of tracking using what was learned from the failure and damage of the earlier incarnation of tracking which was much more rigid and open to prejudicial influences.[/quote]

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