Reply to Given the rigor of Basis, was it ever expected to be for every kid in the District?

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Reply to "Given the rigor of Basis, was it ever expected to be for every kid in the District? "

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous].

It is called differentiation, and anyone in the field of education gets inundated by this concept course after course regardless of the teaching method.
The sad thing however is that it is not being used, or is being used minimally by many teachers.
The same complex concept can be taught to the very advanced and below grade student in the same classroom if the teacher can create different test formats to accommodate  all students. This way everyone ( including ESL, learning disabled) is served.
Not too difficult to do. It's just more time consuming but gives every student an equitable chance to grow and succeed.[/quote]

Differentiation is a joke!! The bottom line is that when advanced learners are mixed with struggling learners, the teacher has no choice but to focus on the struggling learners.[/quote]

It is absolutely not a joke.
I have seen it done at the elementary, middle and even high school level in selective schools.
This is something consistently done in US schools overseas, where diplomatic and business communities are served. Teachers may not face the exact same challenges as in public schools but they have so many other ones.

At the elementary level, small group instruction is being used [b]consistently[/b]
At the middle and high schoo level, lessons are prepared and written in a simpler format (think abridged version of a complicated book).
Let's say it's history or social studies at the middle or high school level. Those students who are struggling with the language will have teacher-made simpler reading which does not sacrifice context.
Same happens with some of the homework and some of the testing.
The word "differentiation" itself is seldom used but expected to be  fully implemented.

Is it time consuming? You bet! However, once the teacher has the material, it is just a matter of implementing it. Instead of spending hundreds of hours on meetings and empty staff development, have the school concentrate on differentitation in the classroom and equity will definitely follow.
[/quote]

Hey! That's exactly what I wrote on my grad school essay. And graduated with honors! But then I got into actual classrooms and realized that differentiation is really only practical in certain circumstances.  It is not effective with the huge gaps in preparation/achievement we often see in the dc schools.  It is just not a miracle cure for the modern classroom. It is a useful tool among others, including flexible ability grouping.[/quote]

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