Hess: Differentiated Instruction = “benign neglect” for gifted learners

In his latest dispatch, Rick Hess makes the following observations about “differentiated instruction” and how, in general, some education “reforms” offer diminishing returns for children with parents who actively take a role in their education:

In K-12 schooling, most of the nation’s schools and systems avidly encourage teachers to “differentiate instruction.” In plain English, this means tailoring instruction to individual students. In theory, this makes terrific sense. In practice, it’s really hard to do for everyone. Today, given education’s monomaniacal emphasis on basic proficiency rates and closing “achievement gaps,” teachers tend to devote less attention to students whose parents have already equipped them to learn. For instance, pollsters Steve Farkas and Anne Duffett have reported that teachers believe their students are all entitled to equal attention but that, when asked who is most likely to get one-on-one attention, 80 percent said academically struggling students and just 5 percent said academically advanced students.

The “Teacher’s Guide to Success,” published by Pearson, lists 15 techniques to differentiate instruction for struggling learners, but less than half as many for gifted learners — and many of those for the latter group amount to euphemisms for benign neglect. Teachers are advised to “encourage the reading of library books” and “provid[e] opportunities to sit in on special unit activities in other classes.” In June, the nonprofit literacy organization Reading Is Fundamental reported that just one in three parents read bedtime stories to their young children daily. The same report noted that children in families with an annual household income below $35,000 are more likely to watch TV (40 percent) than read books (35 percent). Reformers horrified by such statistics nonetheless promote policies and practices that effectively neglect the children of those parents who read to their kids, turn off the television, and focus on academic success. State accountability systems that emphasize minimum proficiency and teacher evaluation systems that focus monomaniacally on improving reading and math scores have the effect of marginalizing those students whose families have taken care to read to them and do math problems with them — and who look to schools for more….school districts should adopt formal policies making it clear that accountability systems and established practices should not be taken as an excuse to short-change students whose families have helped them master basic skills. They should devise metrics and evaluate principals and teachers with an eye to ensuring that the focus on “closing achievement gaps” does not serve as an excuse to ask more-prepared students to babysit themselves for large portions of the academic day.

…As usual, the penalties for parents who read to their children nightly or who save assiduously for college have little impact on the truly wealthy, who can insulate themselves in ritzy private schools and easily afford even Ivy League tuition. Instead, the costs fall most heavily on responsible working-class and professional families.

Education policy can and should help level the playing field. It’s admirable to put a thumb on the scale towards equalizing opportunity, but the aftermath of the Great Society should have taught us that nothing good is accomplished when technocratic reforms are allowed to displace responsible familial norms. A good place for reformers to start might be by taking their own version of medicine’s Hippocratic oath. They should pledge to at least ask whether their bright ideas are poised to weaken or impugn the very filial behaviors that they purport to uphold.

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