James R. Delisle took aim at differentiated instruction (DI) in his commentary in the latest issue of Education Week, noting the challenge of making this nice-sounding idea work with the reality of many of today’s classrooms.
As our own Mike Petrilli wrote in 2011: “[T]he enormous variation in the academic level of students coming into any given classroom” is the greatest challenge facing America’s schools. The implication is that those teachers seeing success with differentiated instruction—however few they may be—simply have less variation in learning levels among their students and, therefore, have less differentiation to do. (Oh, and that they have the right training, full understanding, endless diligence, and loads of time.)
So what’s the answer? Delisle wants to bring back ability grouping to fully replace DI. It is hard to deny that America’s classrooms have changed greatly over the last few decades, so perhaps it’s time to toss out “one or the other” thinking and go for something new—a hybrid of sorts.
How about curriculum-based mastery instead? A content sequence with multiple check points along the way (yes, that’s testing). Master it, move on. Don’t master it, remediate until you do. In such a case, you can get the advantages of both DI and ability grouping. Students at both the high and low ability levels start at the same point in a new content area. Groups of students with similar achievement move forward together; those needing similar remediation work do so together. All with the same end goal of content mastery. Onward and upward. Such an approach works well for my own kids and their diverse classmates.
