My colleagues challenge my thinking everyday....With No Child Left Behind, we're faced with the constant charge to close the achievement gap. During a recent book study discussion (Dufours' Learning by Doing) with the CSIP Leadership Team, one of the teachers posed the question, "If we are truly moving ALL learners forward, then we should never close the gap. If we closed the gap, wouldn't we be holding some learners back while waiting for others to catch up?" Oh boy!! Pregnant pause! Take time to reflect on this one.
If we truly honor differentiation, aren't ALL students learning? I don't think anyone would agree with me that it's okay to tell a student, "I know you already know this, but I want you to do it anyway." Really? Would you want that for your child? I can't say that I'd want it for mine. She deserves better. And so does your child.
Let's not close the gap. Let's take each child from where he/she is and MOVE them. EXTEND them. CHALLENGE them. INSPIRE them. EMPOWER them.
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Jill,
ReplyDeleteJoe Bower tweeted tonight and it reminded me of your post. He wrote:
Why do so many of us recognize the need for differentiated instruction but subscribe to such monolithic assessments?
I'm interested in your thoughts on that idea. We do all agree on the need for differentiation, but do we all agree that differentiation should extend not just to instruction, but to assessment as well? To what percentage of our students are we saying, as we pass out our ITBS tests, "I know you already know this, but I want you to it anyway"?
As to the achievement gap, I think we need to reframe our thinking. Each student has an individual achievement gap. Where they are --> where they can be. That's the gap we need to work on.
Keep up the great thinking!
Differentiation should extend to assessment. By close the gap they probably mean bring the bottom up closer to where the top is. Bottoms and tops are good for clothes.
ReplyDeleteOur differentiation guru, Carol Ann Tomlinson, reminds us that differentiation should/could include content, process, and product. When we think of "product," that could mean so many things in regards to assessment! It's amazing what students can come up with when you engage them in brainstorming ways they can represent their learning. As long as you measure their representations against the required curriculum standards, the possibilities for these summative assessments are endless! And the best part is that they're student-driven, not teacher-directed. This makes me think of Charlotte Danielson's Framework for Teaching....the more you involve the students in directing their learning, the more you are defined as a "distinguished teacher" on the Danielson rubrics! (Isn't is amazing how everything we do really is connected in the big picture?)
ReplyDeleteIn addition to the summative assessments, we certainly cannot forget the formative assessments along the way. These are most important because they give us the day-to-day measurement of how students are learning to guide further instruction....our assessment FOR learning. This, my friends, is the magic piece to differentiation. I'm convinced more and more as I visit classrooms and study performance data that if a teacher is formatively assessing AND differentiating instruction based on the formative data, each student WILL learn!
Reflective questions for teachers that come to mind are...
*How are you using formative data to impact grouping patterns in your classroom?
*What insight have you gained about this particular class period from your formative data? And, as a result, what have you done differently with this class when compared to your other class periods?
*How do you know your students know?
*How are you measuring what students know when they arrive and when they leave your classroom?
*What formative assessment data did you use to plan the groupings and learning activities for today? What formative assessment data did you collect today that has guided your instruction for tomorrow?
Formative assessment AND taking action with the data will close each individual student's achievement gap. It's finding out what they don't know and then giving them what they need, as individuals, to learn it. They can't get there without us. They can't get there if we teach to the large group every minute of every day, giving everyone the same assignment and activity.