How important is maintaining that balance between standardizing and differentiating instruction, and on what side should teachers err?
I think they can balance these very well, but it’s best to err on the side of being compassionate and humane. The key is to focus on the big ideas and concepts of the curriculum for all kids and differentiate how each child will gain access to them and be evaluated. Schools need to reexamine this whole issue of coverage, which is bizarre in view of the fact that our hard drive is now on our desk. So many of the kids who are struggling in school have good ideas and are good at critical thinking, but they may not be quite as good with taking in and retaining information. Assignments and tests ought to be more flexible so that different kinds of minds can be effective. We allow this to happen all the time in the adult world. Is the high-stakes testing movement in opposition to what you are advocating? My philosophy is kind of swimming upstream but not entirely so because you can still embrace what I’m talking about and foster accountability. We need to have more than one way of evaluating
