February 2012 | Volume 69 | Number 5

For Each to Excel

The Teacher-Proof Myth

Marge Scherer

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Standards vs. Customization: Finding the Balance

Larry Cuban

Many of us highly value standardizing curriculum and instruction for students. Yet we also prize individual excellence. Despite the hype around the current standards versus customization issue, the conflict between the two has been around for more than a century. Education historian Larry Cuban describes how the pendulum has swung back and forth—and how educators have adapted and compromised along the way. He points out three obstacles to reform that characterize our public schools: Schools have conflicting purposes, looking to both social and individual ends; leaders hoist huge responsibilities on schools for a variety of national improvements; and the model of schooling we've embraced—the age-graded school—is poorly suited to student diversity.

Educators continue to search for viable compromises between standardization and customization through such approaches as online learning and hybrid schools. In addition, teachers have developed repertoires that blend whole-group instruction with individualized activities.

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Teaching to What Students Have in Common

Daniel Willingham and David Daniel

Although students vary in their abilities and interests, "hyper-individualizing" the curriculum in an attempt to accommodate these differences is not the best way to help each student excel, write Willingham and Daniel. Drawing on educational research, the authors give examples of several cognitive must haves (things that the cognitive system needs to operate effectively): factual domain knowledge, practice, and feedback from a knowledgeable source. They also describe several could dos (methods that seem to work well for most students to help them meet these needs): distributing study time, practicing recalling facts, and cycling between concrete examples and abstract concepts. They conclude that to improve student achievement, teachers should teach to commonalities, not differences.

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Preparing Students to Learn Without Us

Will Richardson

In this era of access, personalizing learning means allowing students to choose their own paths through the curriculum. However, the ability to learn what we want, when we want it, and with whomever we want creates a huge push against a system of education steeped in time-and-place learning. Fundamental changes need to happen in schools to provide students with the skills and experiences they need to do this type of learning well. Students need to be able to chart their own course and find their passion. Technology can help make this kind of learning routine in schools. The author cautions readers to not confuse the more in-depth, personal, self-directed learning that we can now pursue in online networks and communities with the "personalized" opportunities that some schools are currently opening up to students.

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Teach Up for Excellence

Carol Ann Tomlinson and Edwin Lou Javius

Sorting students into different tracks within a school correlates strongly with student race and economic status and predicts and contributes to student outcomes. Students in higher-level classes typically experience better teachers, curriculum, and achievement levels than peers in lower-level classes. Creating classrooms that support equity of access to excellence requires that educators at all levels focus on seven interrelated principles. These range from developing a growth mind-set to creating flexible classroom routines that attend to learner needs to becoming an analytical practitioner.

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Helping Gifted Learners Soar

Susan Rakow

Whenever educators talk about raising achievement, grade-level standards are most frequently the end goal for student learning. But what about students who have already met some, if not all, of those standards and who master material quickly and in-depth? Advanced and gifted learners often languish in our schools because teachers don't have the time, training, or skills to adapt instruction to their needs. Teachers need to pre-assess students to see how far above grade level some students are, then differentiate instruction on the basis of what they've learned. This will involve some crucial components, such as flexible achievement grouping.

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Clustered for Success

Dina Brulles and Susan Winebrenner

Schools need to address the needs of their students with high ability. Not only does this raise achievement levels schoolwide, it also attracts students from surrounding districts and recaptures advanced learners who left the school because their needs weren't being met. One practical intervention—cluster grouping—provides an inclusive environment that takes into account the needs of advanced learners. In cluster grouping models, all students in a grade level are grouped according to their ability and achievement levels. A cluster of either gifted or high-achieving students—one or the other—is in every classroom, along with only two or three other clusters. These remaining clusters are composed of students in the average, low-average, and far-below-average ranges. Cluster grouping makes teaching in classes with a range of abilities more manageable and more successful.

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All Students Are Artists

Linda Nathan

As co-headmaster of Boston Arts Academy, the author tells the stories of two students whose passion and talent in the arts helped them become more successful in academic subjects. Boston Arts Academy accepts students on the basis of auditions, regardless of their previous academic or discipline records. Yet a large majority of its students go on to two-year and four-year colleges and universities. Nathan explains how the school's focus on the arts enables it to foster individual students' strengths and interests. But the arts, she writes, are not just important for such artistic students—they must be part of the core curriculum for all students if we want to produce active, engaged, 21st century learners.

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Planning for Personalization

William Powell and Ochan Kusuma-Powell

Now that many schools are developing curriculums thoughtfully linked to standards—including benchmarks for achievement—many teachers wrestle with this question: Can we still make room for individualized instruction? The authors, who have taught at diverse international schools in many countries, believe the answer is yes. They argue that under the right conditions, personalized learning and standards are not only complementary, they are mutually dependent. Two key ways to foster an environment in which standards for learning and personalization flourish: (1) shift from planning curriculums and units around topics (such as the Italian Renaissance) to planning around global concepts (such as "what makes a renaissance?"); and (2) consider carefully what elements of the curriculum can and cannot be personalized. Learning outcomes and the criteria by which students' achievement is measured can generally not be personalized; activities toward outcomes and the forms of assessment can.

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Data, Our GPS

Rich Smith, Marcus Johnson and Karen D. Thompson

A low-performing California school district experienced a dramatic turnaround when faculty members began studying student assessment data and working together to ensure students had the support they needed. Sanger Unified School District began its reform journey in 2004 when district leaders launched an effort to focus deliberately on student data. Teachers and administrators received training in instructional strategies, and the district began assessing students more regularly so that teachers and students would know where they stand. Teachers participate in professional learning communities to group and regroup students on the basis of assessment data. This approach has improved student performance across the district, with especially strong improvement appearing among English language learners.

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Invested in Inquiry

John H. Clarke

Imagine a learning format that engages high schoolers personally in their learning while ensuring that they meet their school's prescribed standards. Clarke describes how the Pathways program created at a combined middle/high school in Bristol, Vermont (Mount Abraham Union High School), allows students to center school work around their personal interests, strengths, and aspirations. Each student receives guidance about how to design projects that incorporate personal interests and make sure their performance meets graduation standards. Adult mentors—including a teacher advisor and a community mentor with expertise in the skills a student seeks to master—help Pathways students explore questions related to their interests, select resources and community internships, and design meaningful projects. Clarke shows how involvement in Pathways has helped students who were formally stalled as learners take off, and how adult roles and community connections needed to change for the program to inspire learning and achievement.

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"Just How I Need to Learn It"

Cheryl Becker Dobbertin

What if teachers not only made clear the learning expectations at the start of each unit, but also helped students see where they stand in relation to those expectations? Students would realize what specific skills and understandings they most needed to work on and would clearly see the need for differentiation in the class. Dobbertin describes how "learning targets"—standards-based statements of intended learning—help teachers focus the differentiated learning activities they provide students so that each activity connects to needed skills. As the examples indicate, teachers can develop interdisciplinary projects that combine standards and result in student-created projects. She maintains there is no contradiction between standards-based instruction and differentiation; differentiation is about using varied methods or activities (the how) to help diverse learners to meet a common learning standard (the what).

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The Right Fit for Henry

J. Christine Gould, Linda K. Staff and Heather M. Theiss

When Henry was enrolled in a gifted program in 3rd grade, he showed many of the classic signs of giftedness, but his reading and writing skills were below grade level. An evaluation revealed that he was twice-exceptional—he was gifted and he had a learning disability. Believing that both his giftedness and his learning disability warranted attention, his teacher worked with the school's special educator to provide remediation and accommodations that enabled Henry to remain in the gifted program while building his reading and writing skills.

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Senseless Extravagance, Shocking Gaps

Richard Weissbourd and Trevor Dodge

Although most people in the United States believe, at least theoretically, in educational equality, fewer and fewer appear to care about the resource gaps between affluent and poor schools, says Weissbourd. He illustrates these gaps with vivid descriptions of what he calls an "opulence arms race" among affluent independent schools, but points out that some well-to-do suburban public schools have also fallen into the trap of over-spending on luxuries that do not promote learning. In the meantime, middle-class and poor schools are cutting arts and sports programs, laying off teachers, and scrambling to provide basic supplies. Weissbourd calls on parents and educators to become more aware of "the frightening degree to which we are passing on and locking in inequality" and to recognize that educational equality is the heart of any healthy, just democracy.

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Double Take

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Make Standards Engaging

Bryan Goodwin

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Writing to Learn

Robert J. Marzano

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Lessons from Steve Jobs

Thomas R. Hoerr

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For the Unlikely Ones

Carol Ann Tomlinson

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How You Get to Know Your Students

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Educational Leadership Themes for 2012–2013

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Index to Advertisers

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ASCD Community in Action

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Math Groups That Make Sense

Sandra Dean and Michael Zimmerman

Tracking in elementary school mathematics is currently out of favor because of concerns about inequity and the undeniable fact that being placed in the lowest achievement group can be demoralizing for students who need the most support. The authors point out, however, that supposedly "heterogeneous" classes are usually homogeneously grouped for math instruction, and present an impossible management challenge for the teacher trying to differentiate for students at widely different levels. The offer an alternative strategy—guided choice—which the Philadelphia School has used for 12 years in 4th and 5th grades. When teachers make students aware of their levels of knowledge and skills and give them a voice in choosing their own groups, both low-achieving and high-achieving students are empowered to excel.

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What Neuroscience Says About Personalized Learning

Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa

Although much information about the brain has been disseminated in recent decades, many misleading overgeneralizations about learning and the brain have also been spread—and commercial products based on half-truths have been aggressively promoted to teachers. Many teachers hope to use advances in neuroscience to better personalize their teaching. But teachers are confused about which claims and information they can reliably draw on to improve practice. The author, a writer in the new field of Mind, Brain, and Education science, describes how scientists have divided learning concepts about the brain into four categories: (1) well-established information; (2) information that is "probably so;" (3) intelligent speculation; and (4) neuromyths. She shows where a few high-profile concepts fall in these categories and shares some implications for personalizing instruction.

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Setting the Stage for Differentiation

Cindy Massicotte

Not every student is immediately comfortable with personalization and with the challenge to work to his or her own potential that makes differentiated classrooms great learning climates. For some students, a differentiated classroom will be the first time a teacher has recognized that student's interests or learning styles; the learner may feel uncomfortable trying something new or embracing personalized learning because that learner fears being different from his or her friends. Massicotte argues that teachers need to set the stage in classrooms for students to be prepared for differentiated instruction. She shares practices and tools she has discovered work well for preparing students to thrive in differentiated elementary school classrooms, including ways to arrange the room and classroom resources, learning style surveys, and children's literature that encourages acceptance of diversity.

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Making Standards Serve the Student

Jennifer Tuzzeo

In 2006, Adams 50 School District in Colorado began the process of adopting a competency-based learning system, which enables students to progress through the established curriculum standards at their own pace. This article describes how the system works and discusses the challenges and benefits of competency-based education. The author cites results from Adams 50 and other districts demonstrating that competency-based systems can boost student engagement and achievement.

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Stepping into a Student's Shoes

Margery B. Ginsberg

In recent years, schools have tried various strategies based on classroom visits to inform instructional practice, such as instructional rounds and Data in a Day. Although these practices provide a big-picture view of teaching and learning in a school, Ginsberg describes here a strategy that focuses on individual students—shadowing. Shadowing is the process of following a student through all or part of a school day to gain insight into what that student experiences. Ginsberg gives an extended example of a middle-school teacher in a school with many English language learners who shadows an ELL student and gains ideas about how to make English language learners feel more included and less invisible in mainstream classes. She discusses preparatory steps teachers must take before shadowing, how to best record observations, and how to draw insights for teaching practice from a shadowing experience.

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Someone Has to Fail: The Zero-Sum Game of Public Schooling by David F. Labaree

Naomi Thiers

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EL Study Guide

Teresa K. Preston

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Inservice Guest Blogger: Larry Cuban http://ascd.typepad.com/blog/educational_leadership/

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Watch This Spot!

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