Reply to Those of you asking for differentiation in ES have unrealistic expectations

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Reply to "Those of you asking for differentiation in ES have unrealistic expectations"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I went to an excellent public school system in New England, and we had no differentiation or G&T in elementary school. Honors classes (for a couple of subjects) started in middle school (7th grade), with expanded honors/AP options in high school. I graduated in 2002.

However, the parent population was pretty well educated and kept tabs on their kids. Not many behavioral issues or disruptions to distract the teachers. And class sizes were ~22 kids. Everyone was taught the same lesson though. I felt I received a good education (later went to HYP for undergrad)[/quote]

Teaching to one level works great when the kids are generally above average upper middle class kids.  Many private schools work on exactly that model, where the median kid is solidly above average, they're teaching at an above average level, and there are relatively few outliers on either end.

You're comparing apples to oranges in any DC area publics, where there are a lot of kids with IEPs, kids who don't speak English, kids who are far below grade level, kids who are very advanced, etc. all in the same class.  The median in many DC area publics is much lower than what you had in your neighborhood school, and the variance is so much larger that there is no reasonable way to teach to the median without leaving the bottom kids behind and doing nothing at all for the top kids.  Last year, my kid's 6th grade gen ed FCPS class had 28 kids crammed in a classroom, including several ESOL kids who still were struggling with English, a couple kids with behavioral issues, non-ESOL kids who were still years below grade level, all the way through a handful of LIV eligible kids who chose to remain in gen ed.  There was no feasible way for the teacher to teach to the median without losing over half of the class from both the top and bottom.  
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