Tracking vs Differentiated Instruction: company stew or smorgasbrod?

Jack Spratt could eat no fat; his wife could eat no lean.
And so, betwixt the two of them, they licked the platter clean.
-- Nursery Rhyme

It makes a big difference in cost, preparation, and meal timing whether you serve the same mixed dish to everyone or have each person choose from a selection of offerings. School curriculum tends to vary from stew, for example, 11th grade English or geometry, to smorgasbrod, band, AP Calculus and astronomy.

Except to save time and money, it would not make sense to serve stew, if you knew some people would pick out the carrots; others, the meat; still others, the potatoes and everybody left the string beans. So we might try differentiated instruction (DI), instead.

SmorgasBoard by bigmick - flickr

On the other hand, very many varied foods may not be necessary, since people have tastes in common. In addition a smorgasbrod is likely to generate more garbage, as jalapeno-stuffed olives and raw oysters are passed over. It all depends on the clientele and the biggest constraint is cost.

Differentiated instruction (DI) is an attempt to serve each person his or her own special meal, a controlled smorgasbrod, if you will, based on curriculum theory. If, for example, the curriculum model for the school assumes are 4 ability levels, 7 “cognitive styles,” and 3 levels of subject development, then a teacher in a pure DI classroom would have potentially 4x7x3 = 84 basic models of preparation. Taught simultaneously! For a 45 minute class?!

Know-it-all pundits are always carping that education is not rocket science. No, it is harder, so far as the practice is concerned.

Pure DI is not practical. Kids get lost with only a few variations going on. And then there is the grading. How does a teacher give grades based on even three kinds of differentiation without seeming to parents and kids to be unfair? Because no matter how many times and with what sincerity you intone your mantra, “Equality is not necessarily fairness! Fairness is not necessarily Equality!” you will not convince the kids with the lowest grades – nor their parents. And why sweat the grades? What's the point? College, career, salvation? Will your smorgasbrod get you there?

So, suppose we de-emphasize DI and go back to tracking: put potato eaters together; and, also carrot munchers; and, meat grinders, etc. We say they are in different “tracks,” each with its own shared “curriculum stew.”

But where do these tracks lead? To the same place? Or, perhaps, we don’t know for sure. Then the word “tracking” is something of an illusion; at best, a schoolhouse distinction only vaguely mirrored in the outside world.

Did Steve Jobs study computers in school? Did Warren Buffet study stock investment in school? No and no. Do you know college-graduates working at retail selling? Have you heard of doctors or dentists who have dropped out to become painters or farmers? Probably yes and yes.

So where does all this tracking lead? College, career, salvation? Will your portion of stew get you there?

To examine four fallacious arguments for tracking, see Tracking in Public Schools

For some notes on constructivism and DI see Constructivism: the new scientism?

Cordially
-- EGR

Is Your Child Really At Risk? Lessen Your Worries.

The sky is falling, the sky is falling. -- Chicken Little

So your kid doesn’t do homework regularly, or cuts class, or doesn’t seem interested in school. Think of the kids from your own school days. How many did the same? Perhaps, you slacked off, too. And yet many of these same kids pulled it together later in life and are doing OK right now. Why I bet you could even name a former President of the United States (or two or more if you really know your history) who goofed his way through school, even through college!

There is a lot of money to be made by getting parents to worry that their children are “at risk.” Some parents are seduced into believing that poor grades predestine their adolescents to a life of crime or poverty. Others are more concerned with bragging rights in comparing their offspring with their neighbors’ brats: Mom or Dad really would like an Ivy League window sticker for a car.

Luckily, we live in a society where school success and life success are only tenuously related, despite the efforts of panting pedants to make a high school diploma the only door to human happiness. There are many more paths to adult success than might be considered by a middle school guidance counselor, or parent -- for that matter.

To examine these issues further, see Identifying the ‘At Risk’ Student


Cordially
--- EGR

What is School For? Honors or Knowledge?

Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them. -- Aristotle

Kindergartners “graduating” in caps and gowns to first grade are just so cute! High-schoolers in caps and gowns, too, are “cute” even though they may still be reading on pretty much the same level as the little tykes.

Too many people see the point of schooling to be the collecting of gold stars, trophies, diplomas and the like, irrespective of whether these are indicators of practically useful or self-transforming knowledge acquired and retained.

Parents want their kids to get high grades no matter what; cheating and plagiarism are frequently thought of as just techniques for “getting through.”

A billion-dollar industry exists to help parents place their darlings in the “highest-ranked” colleges; little does it matter what the students will do once they get there.

What does all this cost? What is all this worth?

To examine this issue further, see Educational Assessment: 
confusing status with achievement

Cordially,

---EGR