Differentiation and Opportunity in Restructured Schools

In this article, the authors examine the responses of 24 highly restructured schools to a persisting tension in American education: balancing the competing aims of providing students with common experiences, on the one hand, and addressing differences among individual students, on the other. Conventional schools typically respond to this dilemma by dividing students for instruction into different tracks and ability groups. Because of tracking's role in promoting inequality, however, many restructured schools have tried to minimize such differentiated structures. Data from the highly restructured schools show that elimination of tracking is a goal that is idealized more often than it is achieved. Detracking appeared to face more barriers in secondary than in elementary schools, and it was resisted in math more than in other subjects. High-quality instruction appeared both in the high tracks of some structurally differentiated schools and in a few heterogeneous classes in schools that eliminated tracking. More in-depth analyses of two schools that allocated high-quality instruction to a wide range of students show that neither heterogeneous nor homogeneous grouping present insurmountable barriers to high-quality instruction, but neither approach ensures effective teaching, either. Conditions that supported high-quality instruction in a heterogeneous context included small class sizes, extra resources that permit a highly individualized approach to instruction, strong intellectual leadership, and the opportunity to select teachers and students. Conditions that supported effective instruction in the context of structural differentiation included a commitment to equity across classes, teacher and student selection of courses, and teachers' intellectual commitment to subject matter.