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My analysis of them showed what anyone immersed in reading research would have predicted: The value-added data are modestly stable for math, but are fuzzy and unreliable for reading.

Math tests are based on the school curriculum. What a teacher does in the math classroom affects student test scores. But reading-comprehension tests are not based on the school curriculum. (How could they be if there's no set curriculum?) Rather, they are based on the general knowledge that students have gained over their life span from all sources -- most of them outside the school.

The whole project is unfair to teachers, ill-conceived, and educationally disastrous. The teacher-rating scheme has usurped huge amounts of teaching time in anxious test-prep. Paradoxically, the evidence shows that test-prep ceases to be effective after about six lessons.

the inadequate theories of reading-comprehension that have dominated the schools -- mainly the unfounded theory that, when students reach a certain level of "reading skill," they can read anything at that level.

The Common Core-aligned tests of reading comprehension will naturally contain text passages and questions about those passages. To the extent such tests claim to assess "critical thinking" and "general" reading-comprehension skill, we should hold on to our wallets. They will be only rough indexes of reading ability -- probably no better than the perfectly adequate and well-validated reading tests they mean to replace.

The solution to the test-prep conundrum is this: First, institute in every participating state the specific and coherent curriculum that the Common Core Standards explicitly call for. (It's passing odd to introduce "Common Core" tests before there's an actual core to be tested.)

The middleman is vanishing as peer to peer interactions flourish. Teachers no longer stand between the content and the student. This will change the nature of the profession.

Technology is no longer an option when it comes to learning at mastery levels.

Curriculum is just a guess, and now that we have access to so much information and knowledge, the current school curriculum bucket represents (as Seymour Papert suggests) “one-billionth of one percent” of all there is to know. Our odds of choosing the “right” mix for all of our kids’ futures are infinitesimal.

The skills, literacies, and dispositions required to navigate this increasingly complex and change filled world are much different from those stressed in the current school curriculum.

In fact, instead of being delivered by an institution, curriculum is now constructed and negotiated in real time by learner and the contributions of those engaged in the learning process, whether in the classroom our out.

“High stakes” learning is now about doing real work for real audiences, not taking a standardized subject matter test.

While important, the 4Cs of creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, and communication are no longer enough. Being able to connect to other learners worldwide and to use computing applications to solve problems are the two additional “Cs” required in the modern world.

Our children will live and work in a much more transparent world as tools to publish pictures, video, and texts become more accessible and more ubiquitous. Their online reputations must be built and managed.

Workers in the future will not “find employment;” Employment will find them. Or they will create their own.

Embracing and adapting to change must be in the modern skill set.

In theory, differentiation sounds great, as it takes several important factors of student learning into account: • It seeks to determine what students already know and what they still need to learn. • It allows students to demonstrate what they know through multiple methods. • It encourages students and teachers to add depth and complexity to the learning/teaching process.

Although fine in theory, differentiation in practice is harder to implement in a heterogeneous classroom than it is to juggle with one arm tied behind your back.

'We couldn't answer the question ... because no one was actually differentiating,'

"In every case, differentiated instruction seemed to complicate teachers' work, requiring them to procure and assemble multiple sets of materials, … and it dumbed down instruction."

It seems that, when it comes to differentiation, teachers are either not doing it at all, or beating themselves up for not doing it as well as they're supposed to be doing it. Either way, the verdict is clear: Differentiation is a promise unfulfilled, a boondoggle of massive proportions.

The biggest reason differentiation doesn't work, and never will, is the way students are deployed in most of our nation's classrooms.

It seems to me that the only educators who assert that differentiation is doable are those who have never tried to implement it themselves: university professors, curriculum coordinators, and school principals.

Differentiation is a cheap way out for school districts to pay lip service to those who demand that each child be educated to his or her fullest potential.

Do we expect an oncologist to be able to treat glaucoma?

Do we expect a criminal prosecutor to be able to decipher patent law?

Do we expect a concert pianist to be able to play the clarinet equally well?

No, no, no.

However, when the education of our nation's young people is at stake, we toss together into one classroom every possible learning strength and disability and expect a single teacher to be able to work academic miracles with every kid … as long as said teacher is willing to differentiate, of course.

A second reason that differentiation has been a failure is that we're not exactly sure what it is we are differentiating: Is it the curriculum or the instructional methods used to deliver it? Or both?

The terms "differentiated instruction" and "differentiated curriculum" are used interchangeably, yet they are not synonyms.

Differentiation might have a chance to work if we are willing, as a nation, to return to the days when students of similar abilities were placed in classes with other students whose learning needs paralleled their own. Until that time, differentiation will continue to be what it has become: a losing proposition for both students and teachers, and yet one more panacea that did not pan out.