With few exceptions, kids enter school with the prerequisites and motivation to learn to read and to succeed academically. It’s not in the kids; it’s not in the water; it’s in the instruction. If a child hasn’t been taught to read by grade 3, there is a high probability that the individual will never acquire reading expertise. Yet we only begin to look at achievement at grade 3 or 4. Why? Because younger kids are unable to fill in the bubbles on multiple-choice tests.

Where is the transparency and responsibility for the unaccountables who perpetuate these conditions?

1. Using teaching techniques that allow for high degrees of differentiation so we can teach in classrooms with wide ranges of ability.

2. Changing student motivation by teaching kids how to pick their own books, writing topics, and subjects of study within in responsible boundaries, and by teaching them how to assess their own work and behavior.

3. Giving kids a high percentage of authentic tasks when it comes to assignments — things kids recognize as real and relevant to their lives.

Now, each of these “techniques” work for “high” kids, too. But what we have found interesting is that while high kids stay high, low kids come up faster. Thus, any gap is narrowed, just as one would expect.

Now, to be sure, the lower the kid is, the harder he or she has to work. That’s why we use a student-enabled homework system (virtually identical to the way adults in the work world do homework). In such a system, kids look at the amount of work they have to do, where they are in the term, and whether they are ahead or behind. Kids who are behind schedule themselves a lot more homework to do — most most of them actually do it. As a result, low kids really have to do more work than high kids — just as you would expect if you wanted to close a gap of some kind.

Finally, we use a non-traditional, yet research-based, grading system that allows kids to view their achievement from several different perspectives. Again, this gives kids more information about how they’re doing and more choices in how they set goals for their improvement.

The gap, however you define it, is real. And in many cases it is truly Grand Canyon-esque. But it is not insurmountable over time. It does, however, require a thoroughly different way of looking at teaching and learning than our current standards-based curriculum implies.