The Need for Curricular Differentiation

The "Dumbing Down" of Textbooks

One reason that so many students who achieve at high levels are unchallenged or underchallenged in school is that contemporary textbooks have been "dumbed down," by as much as two to three years in grade level from the levels at which they were written in the 1940's and 1950's (Kirst, 1982). Chall and Conrad (1991) documented a trend of decreasing difficulty in the most widely used textbooks over a thirty-year period from 1945-1975. "On the whole, the later the copyright dates of the textbooks for the same grade, the easier they were, as measured by indices of readability level, maturity level, difficulty of questions and extent of illustration" (p. 2). Most recently, Philip G. Altbach (1991), noted scholar and author on textbooks in America, suggests that textbooks, as evaluated across a spectrum of assessment measures, have declined in rigor. Researchers have discussed the particular problems encountered by high ability students when textbooks are "dumbed down" because of readability formulas or the politics of textbook adoption. Bernstein (1985) summarized the particular problem that current textbooks pose for gifted and talented students, "Even if there were good rules of thumb about the touchy subject of textbook adoption, the issue becomes moot when a school district buys only one textbook, usually at 'grade level', for all students in a subject or grade. Such a purchasing policy pressures adoption committees to buy books that the least-able students can read. As a result, the needs of more advanced students are sacrificed'' (p. 465). Chall and Conrad (1991) also cite particular difficulties for the above average student with regard to less difficult reading textbooks.

Another group not adequately served was those who read about two grades or more above the norm. Their reading textbooks, especially, provided little or no challenge, since they were matched to students' grade placement, not their reading levels. Many students were aware of this and said, in their interviews, that they preferred harder books because they learned harder words and ideas from them. Since harder reading textbooks are readily available, one may ask why they were not used with the more able readers, as were the easier reading textbooks for the less able readers (p. 11).

Repetition in Content

Recent findings by Usiskin (1987) and Flanders (1987) indicate that not only have textbooks decreased in difficulty, but that they also incorporate a large percentage of repetition to facilitate learning. Usiskin argues that even average eighth grade students should study algebra since only 25% of the pages in typical seventh and eighth grade mathematics texts contain new content. Flanders corroborated this finding by investigating the mathematics textbook series of three popular publishers. Students in upper elementary grades who used these math textbooks encountered approximately 40-65% new content over the course of the school year which equates to learning new material only two to three days a week. By eighth grade, the amount of new content introduced in math textbooks had dropped to 30%, which translates into encountering new material only 1 1/2 days a week. Flanders suggests that these estimates are conservative, because the days that students spend reviewing and testing were not included in this analysis. He concluded: There should be little wonder why good students get bored: they do the same thing year after year" (p. 22).

Repetition in content is also reflected by the scores students attain on pretests that they take before they begin to use their textbooks. For example, a study conducted by the Educational Products Information Exchange Institute revealed that 60% of fourth graders in certain school districts studied were able to achieve a score of 80% or higher on a test of the content of their math texts before they had opened their books in September. In a recent study dealing with average and above readers, Taylor and Frye (1988) found that 78% to 88% of middle school students who were average and above average readers could pass pretests on comprehension skills before they were covered by the basal reader. The average students were performing at approximately 92% accuracy while the better readers were performing at 93% on comprehension skill pretests. The mismatch between what students are capable of doing, what they already know and the curricular materials they are expected to study becomes even more disturbing when one considers the heavy reliance on textbooks and their declining challenge level.

The Mismatch Between Student Ability and Instruction

It is clear that students should be matched with curriculum that is appropriate for their achievement level. That is, for learning to occur, instruction should be above the learner's current level of performance. Chall and Conrad (1991) stress the importance of the match between a learner's abilities and the difficulty of the instructional task, stating that the optimal match should place the instructional task slightly above the learner's current level of functioning. When the match is optimal, learning is enhanced. However, "if the match is not optimal [i.e., the match is below or above the child's level of understanding and knowledge], learning is less efficient and development may be halted" ( p.19). It is clear that the current trend of selecting textbooks which the majority of students can read is a problem for high ability students.

A mismatch seems to exist between the difficulty of textbooks, the repetition of curricular material in these texts, and the needs of high achieving learners. It is reasonable to conclude that many of these students spend much of their time in school practicing skills and learning content they already know. All of these factors may be causing high potential students to learn less and may be encouraging their underachievement.

Three recent studies have analyzed whether the needs of high ability students can be met in regular classroom settings. This research presents a disturbing picture of the degree of differentiation taking place in classroom. The Classroom Practices Survey (Archambault, Westberg, Brown, Hallmark, Emmons & Zhang, 1992) was conducted by The National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented (NRC/GT) to determine the extent to which high achieving students receive differentiated education in regular classrooms. Six samples of upper elementary grade teachers in public schools, private schools, and schools with high concentrations of four types of ethnic minorities were randomly selected to participate in this research and over 51% of this national sample of classroom teachers responded to the survey. The survey revealed that sixty-one percent of public school teachers and fifty-four percent of private school teachers reported that they had never had any training in teaching gifted students. The major finding of this study was that classroom teachers make only minor modifications in the regular curriculum to meet the needs of gifted students. This result holds for all types of schools sampled and for classrooms in various parts of the country and for various types of communities.

The Classroom Practices Observational Study (Westberg, Archambault, Dobyns & Salvin, 1992) extended the results of the classroom practices survey by examining the instructional and curricular practices used with gifted and talented students in regular elementary classrooms throughout the United States. Systematic observations were conducted in 46 third or fourth grade classrooms. The observations were designed to determine if and how classroom teachers meet the needs of gifted and talented students in the regular classroom. Two students, one high ability student and one average ability student, were selected as target students for each observation day. The Classroom Practices Record (CPR) was developed to document the types and frequencies of differentiated instruction that gifted students received through modifications in curricular activities, materials, and teacher-student verbal interactions. Descriptive statistics and chi-square procedures were used to analyze the CPR data. The results indicated little differentiation in the instructional and curricular practices, including grouping arrangements and verbal interactions, for gifted and talented students in the regular classroom. Across five subject areas and 92 observation days, gifted students received instruction in homogeneous groups only 21 percent of the time, and more alarmingly, the targeted gifted and talented or high ability students experienced no instructional or curricular differentiation in 84% of the instructional activities in which they participated. A content analysis was also conducted on the 92 daily summaries completed by the trained observers. The most dominant theme in this content analysis involved the use of identical practices for all students. Phrases such as "no differentiation", "no purposeful differentiation" appeared on 51 of the 92 daily summaries. Anecdotal summaries provided poignant glimpses into the daily experiences of high ability students, such as the following: "It should be noted that S#l (the targeted high ability student) was inattentive during all of her classes. She appeared to be sleepy, never volunteered, and was visibly unenthusiastic about all activities. No attempt was made to direct HOTS (higher order thinking skills) questions to her or to engage her in more challenging work. She never acted out in any way."

The Curriculum Compacting Study (Reis, Westberg, Kulikowich, Caillard, Hébert, Plucker, Purcell, Rogers & Smist, 1992) examined the effects of escalating levels of staff development on the teaching practices of teachers throughout the country as they implemented a plan, called curriculum compacting (Renzulli, Smith, & Reis, 1982; Reis, Burns & Renzulli, 1992) to modify the curriculum for high ability students. Curriculum compacting involves three steps: first, assessing students' academic strengths; second, eliminating skillwork and content that students have already mastered; and third, replacing the work that has been eliminated with more challenging alternatives, some of which are based on students' interests.

Three treatment groups of second through sixth grade teachers from across the country received increasing levels of staff development as they implemented curriculum compacting. A control group of teachers continued with normal teaching practices. Four hundred and thirty-six teachers participated in this study as did 783 students. Students in both control and treatment groups took the next chronological grade level Iowa Test of Basic Skills in both October and May. When classroom teachers in the treatment group eliminated between 40 and 50% of the regular curriculum for high ability students, no differences were found between treatment and control groups in Reading, Math Computation, Social Studies and Spelling. Students in the treatment group whose curriculum was compacted in Science and Math Concepts, scored significantly higher than their counterparts in the control group. Accordingly, teachers were able to eliminate as much as 40-50% of material without detrimental effects to achievement scores. And in some content areas, scores were actually higher when this elimination of previous mastered content took place.

Common Sense About Grouping

Grouping is an intensely debated issue that has always been the subject of much controversy in American education, and the pendulum between homogeneous and heterogeneous grouping has continued to swing back and forth since the beginning of public education. The present day debate about grouping also carries with it some added baggage about the inclusion of special education students in regular classrooms, the proper way to provide challenging levels of learning for high achieving students, the adequacy of teacher preparation for dealing with an extremely broad range of learning levels within a single classroom, and the under-representation of minorities in advanced level and honors courses and in special programs for the gifted. This last concern has resulted in battle lines being drawn along class and racial lines, which in many cases pits White middle class parents and parents of students who participate in traditional "gifted programs" against the parents of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Some parents of poor and minority students believe that a second class education, and even racial segregation, are being perpetuated in the form of classes organized according to achievement levels, and that their sons and daughters are being denied equality of educational opportunity because of homogeneous classes. Some middle class parents, on the other hand, believe that heterogeneous grouped classes slow the rate of learning, drag down achievement test scores, and place their daughters and sons in classes with unmotivated and frequently disruptive students.

The issue is compounded at the middle school level because a general commitment to heterogeneous grouping in the middle school philosophy represents a transition from the within-class achievement grouping frequently practiced at the elementary level, especially in basic skill subjects, and the continued widespread practice of establishing advanced level or honors classes at the high school level. Middle class parents view the middle school curriculum as the beginning of "the pipeline" leading to advanced courses in high school and admission to competitive colleges. These parents argue that a lack of differentiation in the middle school curriculum causes a watered-down high school curriculum, and they frequently gain support for this conclusion from high school teachers of Advanced Placement and honors courses. Declining SAT scores among students at the top of the scoring continuum are also offered as further evidence of declining rigor in the middle schools (Singal, 1991).

Further down the pipeline, persons in higher education are also expressing concern about pre-college preparation. A recent article (Knowlton, 1995) indicated that fully a third of each year's freshman class at U.S. colleges and universities is in need of remedial work, and that 85 percent of the nations 3600 college campuses offer remedial courses. While it is true that remedial education is found more frequently in two-year community colleges and open enrollment four-year colleges, even the most prestigious universities offer remedial courses and academic tutoring. Syracuse University, for example, offers a credit-bearing course called College Learning Skills 105 to teach students how to study and take notes, and Princeton University offers tutorial programs for entering freshmen who are described by the university as students "whose high schools have not given them the opportunity to study math and science at a level commensurate with the fast paced curriculum they will find here" (p. 17). In an article dealing with declining SAT scores and other indicators of lower national performance, Singal (1991) reports on college level writing:

[A]ccording to Richard Marius, the director of the expository writing program at Harvard, 'the number of words [students have] available to express their thoughts is very, very limited, and the forms by which they express themselves are also very limited. The average incoming Harvard student has a utilitarian command of the language resulting in sentences that follow a simple subject-predicate, subject-predicate format, with little variation in richness of verbal expression.' Harvard, of course, gets the cream of the crop. Those of us who teach at lesser institutions would be happy with utilitarian but serviceable prose from our freshmen. More often we get mangled sentences, essays composed without the slightest sense of paragraphing, and writing that can't sustain a thought for more than half a page (p. 62).

At the local school level, concerns about grouping are expressed by parents in various ways. In Cheshire, Connecticut, for example, a group of middle school parents petitioned the school board to allow students a choice between Algebra I, and an Integrated Math I course that replaced the traditional sequence in mathematics. Several persons, including Yale and University of Connecticut math professors, reviewed the integrated math textbooks; and while they found them well-written, they concluded that texts were far below the level of challenge that should be provided for top math students. "All we want is a choice," said one parent whose eighth grade daughter attends the middle school.

In a recent evaluation study conducted at the local school level (Reis, 1994), parents of middle school students who were formerly involved in enrichment programs were asked to complete a questionnaire about their perceptions of the level of challenge their children had encountered in their heterogeneous academic classes at the middle school level. One hundred per cent of the parents responding to the questionnaire indicated that their children were not challenged in their academic classes. The majority of the parents said no unequivocally but two parents did say that their needs were met in one class but not in most. Many parents wrote fairly long and eloquent responses and some were direct and to the point such as: "Absolutely not," and "NO NO NO. Thank you for finally asking." The following comments were representative of the responses:

"No, my child seems to have less homework and studying now than he did in fifth grade."

"No, the needs of high ability students are not being met in most classes. In our case, our child often describes his school day as pathetically boring."

"No, it is difficult for higher ability students to be challenged while the teacher has to teach to the lower level students, especially in English, Social Studies, and Science. The reading material, especially, is not at all challenging."

Data were also gathered on teachers' perceptions of their ability to meet the needs of high achieving students in their classes, what they did to modify curriculum in their classes, their perceptions of the need for accelerated classes, and an open-ended question about how the district addresses the needs of high ability students. When asked whether they believed they were currently able to meet the needs of high ability students in their classes, 43% of the teachers indicated yes and 57% said no, they were not able to meet the needs of high ability/achieving students. The teachers who said they could not address the needs of high ability students indicated three reasons for their inability to accomplish this goal. The most frequently cited reason was the nature of their heterogeneous classes and the amount of time involved to do the job well which took time away from what could be done to address the needs of high ability/achieving students. They also mentioned their lack of materials, and students with behavior problems who took time away from the rest of the class.

When asked what types of services they would need to work with high ability students in their classes, teachers responded with the following in this order of frequency: supplies, time, ideas, an enrichment teacher to help with student projects, staff development, and the return to the use of achievement groups which enabled them to have one class of high achieving students out of the thirteen content area classes offered at each grade level. One teacher's comment summarized the comments made by many: "More challenging curriculum, time to assist and encourage research and greater development." It was clear that the middle school teachers who responded to this questionnaire had mixed opinions about their ability to meet the needs of high ability students in their classes. The majority did not believe they were currently addressing the needs of this group and many were frustrated at what they did not know or have (materials, challenging curriculum) to be able to help these students.

These concerns, up and down the educational pipeline, have implications for the grouping issue, and collectively, have resulted in unrelenting pressure on school boards, administrators, and policy makers to provide an educational solution to what is largely a broader range of societal problems. These problems include the concentration of low income housing in restricted geographic areas, unequal employment opportunities, inequitable access to adequate health care, the byproducts of teenage pregnancy, single parent families, and the despair that surrounds growing up poor in America. These problems, taken collectively, have created strong ideological differences of opinion about how to deal with inequity in our society, and schools have been caught in the middle of these larger societal and ideological issues. Honest attempts on the parts of educators to respond to these problems typically have been: redistricting and busing programs, the creation of regional or magnet schools that are intended to attract students across class and race lines, the re-deployment of school resources, and yet another round of regulations on grouping--most of which are unsatisfactory to persons on both sides of the issue. Only two things are clear about the grouping issue. First, grouping will continue to remain the major controversy in American education as long as differences of opinion exist about the role that schools should play and can play (two essentially different concerns) in achieving equity and excellence in education. Second, there are no "silver bullets" that will satisfy persons on opposite ends of the controversy; and therefore, a compromise is necessary in order to avoid outright warfare between persons with differing points of view. Before presenting recommendations that represent such a compromise, some of the issues associated with grouping will be discussed.