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It's basically individualized education; differentiation that goes beyond the regular classroom, and includes flexible grouping for instruction across classrooms and grade levels.
In my k-8 school, they call it "walk to read," and "walk to math." It's new, and they are all excited about it. Excited enough that they don't hear me when I speak up about my experience, in the 90s, with leveled elementary groups.
I worked for a school that did something similar; it was a multi-age school, before the standards and accountability movement locked us into grade-level grouping that focused only on grade-level standards. We leveled kids by ability, not age or grade, and moved them during the day for math and reading according to those groups.
After 5 years, we quit doing that. Why? Because it didn't serve our lowest students. Our average, above average, and gifted students thrived. Our lowest students didn't. It turned out that heterogeneously grouping them brought them farther than ability groups.
The same with mastery learning, which is making a new, revised, upgraded appearance as "proficiency learning." Too much focus on one area, while deferring other things until "later" resulted in "later" becoming "never."
Personally, I'm fine with alternate grading systems. I've used some really good ones, and I've never liked the A/B/C format. There are things in "standards based education" that can be good; it can get teachers to really focus on what units of study are accomplishing, for example. Making sure that actual standards are embedded into a thematic unit, or any unit, is a good thing.
It can also be misused and abused. I'm cautious about embracing any "reform" without critically evaluating it's pros and cons, and keeping that evaluation to the forefront when discussing, doing staff development, or implementing it.
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