Education Next – Alina Adams
“Last month I suggested that grouping New York City schoolchildren by age rather than ability would address two issues that stymie the NYC Department of Education: strict birthday cut-offs that ignore readiness and the perennial shortage of Gifted and Talented seats. In this post I cited a report which asserted that, in some American classrooms, as many as fifty percent of students are performing above grade level, and, in the majority of schools, at least ten percent are. This assessment was done in order to encourage differentiated instruction within the classroom. But I’d like to propose it proves something even simpler: The US bar is simply set too low. For all children.”(more)