<p>Our high school recently announced a plan to merge the classes classified as G level with the B level classes. The school offers AP classes and regular high school curriculum in a, B, and g levels. The reason given was that a too many of the G level seats were low income and special ed kids. Also, the G level students were unlikely to pursue higher education after graduation. The remedy is the proposed merger of classes. Teachers are to be given instruction in something called differentiated instruction. The change is to take effect beginning next Sept for english and history classes. </p>
<p>Parents voiced concern about the change and one response invoked social apartheid, ‘class-ism’, and Nazi Germany policies as reasons for parents to oppose the move.</p>
<p>The goal seems to be to improve the lot of less advantaged students, but can/will it really provide a ‘better learning experience for everyone’, as promised? Has anyone experienced this kind of shift from 2 levels to ‘differentiated instruction’?</p>
<p>Economics are likely behind this. By combining levels, they can combine sections, which means they can reduce the numbers of teachers.</p>
<p>You are right to be concerned about instruction at the higher end. In a “differentiated” classroom, the instruction in evitably moves to the mushy middle unless you have a very skilled teacher.</p>
<p>“One-size-fits-all” curricula and classes don’t work for anyone – including teachers. … We had to invoke State laws for gifted education to reverse this at our high school.</p>
<p>Teachers should be differentiating at ALL levels already. All classes, even if leveled, have students of varying levels of ability, commitment, and achievement. </p>
<p>By combining the levels as you describe, they will probably simply widen the range of student teachers must serve in each class, making it even more difficult to challenge each appropriately. When you combine that with NCLB, you have a situation where teachers are forced to spend most of their time trying to drag up the bottom of the class, leaving the rest to fend for themselves, comparatively speaking.</p>
<p>In Mass, they did away with “tracking” kids long ago. Now, at the high school level, kids simply sign up for the courses they want, and all courses are geared toward preparing every student to attend college, if that is what they want. No more “business”, or “technical” classes, except for electives, which anyone can also choose as long as there is an open seat. In the general curriculum (English, history, science, foreign lang, math, etc) some courses are offered at AP level, some are honors, and some are general level. Most kids try to pick honors/AP for most, but, for instance, in my D’s pre-calc class, which was neither honors or AP, there were higher performing students and lower performing students. Kids perform to whatever their own ability is. In high school, where there should be less hand holding anyway, unless a student has special education needs, it is unusual to find “leveled” classes anymore, besides honors and AP offerings. To get into those level classes, you need to show certain aptitude/work ethic. I would think students from your high school, where general ed kids are homogenously leveled, must be in shock when they get to college, where everyone is in one class, and teachers simply teach the material and it’s up to the student to sink or swim. I would guess that low motivated students will go for your high school’s general offerings, and everyone else will work to get into honors and AP classes.
The differentiated instruction techniques and practices are very common here at the elementary level, and modified assignments might be given at the middle or high school level for kids who are special education, but otherwise, by middle school kids are taught in heterogenously (different abilities) grouped classes for everything. (I don’t know of any middle schools that offer advanced classes). Massachusetts kids attend college in very high numbers, so all of this obviously works…</p>
<p>It’s one thing to have 3 levels to choose from: AP, Honors, Regular, it’s another thing to only have the AP/Regular choice. Differentiation is hard to do, especially when the teacher’s have little familarity with the plan.</p>
<p>To be clear, our high school had done away with honors classes in English and Social Studies in 9th and 10th grade, which meant there were students reading way below grade level and students reading way above grade level in the same class. Guess who the curriculum and day-to-day teaching were geared towards? Not that the school admitted that, of course.</p>
<p>To offer a range of curriculum and then let students choose their courses based on their interest and motivation is different from the tracking of yesteryear, where students were placed in a track by the school, typically based on a single test, for all courses as they entered high school. Unfortunately, these days, anything that allows students to group themselves by ability and/or level and/or pace of learning is erroneously called “tracking.”</p>
<p>“Differentiated instruction” is the politically correct edu-speak buzz word of the day, all right. What no one will admit is that very few teachers are truly capable of it (capable of teaching effectively to ALL of the students in their classroom, so that ALL of the students in their classroom actually learn new material), all the moreso if their students span a range of, say, 5 or 6 grade levels.</p>
<p>In practice, it’s the dumbing down of American public education.</p>
<p>The school the OP described is going to have three levels when the dust clears – AP, A, and B. It has four levels now – AP, A, B, G. I believe differentiation can work, and I agree that even “level” classes ought to have differentiated instruction, but like everyone else I’m skeptical that you can suddenly combine levels and expect the same teacher to teach successfully in a completely different way. On the other hand, though, it’s hard to argue that every school needs to have four levels per subject, or that it’s appropriate to create low income / special ed ghettos.</p>
<p>I suspect that in practice, “differentiated instruction,” to the extent it exists at all, will simply be in the form of optional extra assignments for the above-grade-level students.</p>
<p>“Ask them if they will also be merging the varsity and jv sports teams.”</p>
<p>And then alter coaching so that all players “achieve” at the same level. (We’ll need some measurements of achievement naturally. Let’s call them ‘Athletic Mastery Tests’ … or perhaps ‘No Athlete Left Behind.’)</p>
<p>“I suspect that in practice, ‘differentiated instruction,’ to the extent it exists at all, will simply be in the form of optional extra assignments for the above-grade-level students.”</p>
<p>I suspect your suspicions are unfounded in many schools. I know for a fact it’s not true in our public school system … because we asked on behalf of our extremely bored child, and we were turned down.</p>
<p>Realized I hadn’t answered this: "Has anyone experienced this kind of shift from 2 levels to ‘differentiated instruction’? "</p>
<p>Yes. Our district went from three levels – pre-AP, honors and regular – to two years ago in the middle schools. The well-known secret was that a kid with any snap took pre-AP-level courses, run-of-the-mill kids took “honors” courses and largely special-ed kids took the regular classes. Think of it as “vanity sizing” in an academic setting. Under the old system, you had to qualify for pre-AP courses. You had to have a certain GPA, and your current teacher had to sign off on your preparedness. Under the new system, after the pre-AP level was eliminated, anyone who wanted to could take the honors level without any prequalification. And once they started “stacking” classes (combining the honors and regular sections), obviously most of the rigor went out the door unless you had a particularly skilled teacher.</p>
<p>Middle school parents were furious, especially at “better” schools where principals said they would never go along with the district mandate. Two big results: increase in private school enrollment, which is such a negative for the district, and an increase in applications to the middle school magnets and alternative programming.</p>
<p>Actually, it’s more like there is no varsity/jv. There is a ‘team’ and anyone can be on it, and everyone gets equal playing time.</p>
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<p>For DD, differentiation meant that for part of the day, she sat at a separate table with another high achieving kid and they taught each other. Sadly, this was the highlight of her day.</p>
<p>“Two big results: increase in private school enrollment, which is such a negative for the district, and an increase in applications to the middle school magnets and alternative programming.”</p>
<p>There were two big results in our district as well: a big increase in private school attendance; and a marked change in where top students attended college … from schools readily identifiable by CCers, to schools where HS students with pedestrian SATs are automatic accepts.</p>
<p>At my kids’ school, typically honors/AP are indeed the same thing - so there is honors/AP, regular, and I suppose remedial or lower-level of some sort. I’m not sure what the big deal is. I don’t know that they could really sustain (say) AP bio, honors bio, and regular bio, and I may be naive but I don’t see what’s the big deal about having AP/honors be the same.</p>
<p>The big deal is that because teachers must meet the needs of the “honors” kids, they may not be able to teach the AP curriculum with sufficient rigor to enable the students to get a decent score on the AP test.</p>
Under the old system, you had to qualify for pre-AP courses. You had to have a certain GPA, and your current teacher had to sign off on your preparedness. Under the new system, after the pre-AP level was eliminated, anyone who wanted to could take the honors level without any prequalification. And once they started “stacking” classes (combining the honors and regular sections), obviously most of the rigor went out the door unless you had a particularly skilled teacher.</p>