Au Contraire: Differentiation Requires HOPE

Abstract

Everybody's doing it: differentiating curriculum to make it deeper, broader, parallel (to what?) and more complex. No longer the private property of gifted specialists, differentiation is now a democratic pursuit of classroom teachers, curriculum specialists, and anyone else who subscribes to Educational Leadership. In an era of competency-based tests that seek to measure schools and students on the lowest common denominator—“Who knows their basic skills?”—differentiation has become a beacon of hope for learners who require more than just the same old stuff. At least that's the theory.