It’s time to drop the “gifted and talented” label and use personalized, mastery learning to challenge all students, argues Michael Horn. A co-founder and distinguished fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute, he is a principal consultant for Entangled Solutions. Sixth graders work on a genetics lesson at a Seattle-area school. Photo: Mike Siegel/Seattle Times) Bright students from disadvantaged backgrounds may not be identified as gifted, according to a Fordham report. Th

In We’re Doing It Wrong, David Michael Slater goes after 25 bad education ideas and provides his alternatives. A middle-school English teacher, he’s taught mostly low-income students in Oregon and gifted students in Nevada. He’s also written more than 20 fiction books for children, teens and adults. The book criticizes grouping students by age, rather than performance, then asking teachers to “differentiate.” Instead, he suggests letting students win badges for mastering skil

“Direct Instruction is the Rodney Dangerfield of education,” writes Fordham’s Robert Pondiscio. Despite 50 years of research showing its effectiveness, DI “gets no respect.” A new meta-analysis in the Review of Educational Research finds “strong positive results” for DI “regardless of school, setting, grade, student poverty status, race, and ethnicity, and across subjects and grades” in studies from 1966 to 2016. So why are so few schools using it? Many teachers see it as lim

In last week’s post on “grading floors,” Memphis teachers debated whether giving minimum grades for minimal achievement motivates failing students — or misleads them and their parents. lowering expectations for students’ achievement and work habits. District policies discourage teachers from setting “hard” deadlines or “giving a student less than 50 percent on an assignment (regardless of the quality of work or level of completion),” Langhorne writes. Teachers are encouraged

Enrollment is soaring at Benito Juarez Community Academy. Photo: Amadou Diallo/Hechinger Report Choice has emptied many low-performing Chicago schools, but enrollment is climbing at Benito Juarez Community Academy, reports Hechinger’s Amadou Diallo. A skills-mastery model adopted in 2013 got the school off academic probation. Juarez now ranks 49th out of 658 Illinois public high schools based on test scores and college readiness. When Principal Juan Ocon started in 2008, Juar

Mastery learning — enabled by technology — is gaining popularity, reports Kyle Spencer in the New York Times Moheeb Kaied, a seventh grader at Brooklyn’s Middle School 442, knows his computational profile. “I can find the area and perimeter of a polygon. I can solve mathematical and real-world problems using a coordinate plane. I still need to get better at dividing multiple-digit numbers, which means I should probably practice that more.” A learning outcomes chart. Photo: Sa

Western Governors University, a national nonprofit, has been providing online, self-paced competency-based education to career-minded students for 20 years now, reports Jon Marcus on Education Next. Some 80,000 undergraduate and graduate students are studying education, business, health professions, and information technology. Each of its degree programs includes a list of topics to be mastered, called “domains,” determined in consultation with employers. Students must “prove

Teachers can raise graduation rates — and their own performance ratings — by giving D’s instead of F’s to poorly prepared students, writes Rob Barnett, a D.C. high school math teacher, in Washington City Paper.  Instead, he’s experimenting with mastery learning , requiring student to master one topic before moving on the next. Credit: Stephanie Rudig In DC Public Schools, teachers must “develop, document, and communicate a written plan for grade improvement” for a failing stu

High school grades are rising, even as SAT scores remain flat, reports the College Board. In 2013, the average 12th grader earned a 2.90 — nearly a B — average, yet only 43 percent of SAT takers were prepared for college work. The Mastery Transcript Consortium, a group of 100 elite prep schools, proposes to eliminate grades in favor of creating digital transcripts showing “micro-credits” earned for skills such as “analytic and creative thinking, leadership and teamwork, globa

Windsor Locks students master a set of skills to pass courses. In Windsor Locks, Connecticut, “24 credits and a D-minus average” aren’t good enough to earn a high school diploma, Superintendent Susan Bell tells Hechinger’s Tara Garcia Mathewson. The small, formerly low-performing district has shifted to a “mastery” model, sometimes called “competency-based learning.” Coursework is broken down into skills. Students must learn the skills to move on to something new. If they nee