I found the article Differentiation Does Not Work quite intriguing and informative at the same time. I liked the way the author articulates his points. After reading the article, I share his opinions that differentiation in classrooms cannot work. It is a hype that has been promoted by the media and educationists. I believe that it is impractical to combine academically gifted pupils with the slow learners. How would one teacher assess every student individually and understand their unique requirements? Such pupils will perhaps require special needs assessment that needs experts in the field. I opine that students should be grouped according to their shared attributes.
Bright students should be grouped with their fellow bright students. The learning conditions should be streamlined according to the difficulty levels of every child. I do not fathom how one teacher would be able to attend to the differentiated requirements of, say, fifty children. There would be serious implications such as the lack of individualized attention, tedious learning methods, among other issues. On the contrary, I believe that an effective education system is one that has different programs such as special needs option.
Besides academic ability, other factors such as attention span, lack of graphic learning models, and incentives could lead to dismal performance among pupils. Differentiation does not work, and on the contrary, the issues leading to the disparity in learning should be addressed. Perhaps, the bottlenecks that hinder performance in public schools such as understaffing, high student population, and shrunk resources should be solved first. Next, students should be classified not only according to their academic abilities but also according to their talents. I believe such a holistic approach would improve performance and develop talents.
