All for one and one for all: When mainstreaming isn't working

TAYLORSVILLE — Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Stacy Jones starts counting down backwards as she stands in front of her sixth grade math students who just came in from recess on a recent September morning. The students immediately sit down and get out slips of paper to work silently on the math problems on the board. Jones first has them do the assignment by themselves, then they correct it together. The children work in groups and then Jones pulls a few struggling students up front to help them. She tells one higher-achieving group in the back to do a little more work during certain portions of the day.

By knowing which students are struggling and which ones already have the concepts down, Jones is able to pull out particular students to give them extra help or extra assignments. And it's working. Two years ago, only 17 percent of Jones' sixth-graders passed the state math test. Last year 70 percent of her class passed. She attributes much of her success to trying to teach students more at their own pace.

This may not seem like that novel an idea — even one-room classrooms back in the 1800s had to teach differently for every student. But over the last 10 years, with the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act, there has been more focus on the basics, whole classroom instruction and helping the lowest performers in the class catch up, said Terra Tarango, vice president of content development and marketing for the Staff Development for Educators, based in New Hampshire and one of the national leading providers of professional development for teachers and administrators across the country.

Students who are ahead in a class are sometimes told to silently read or work on their homework while the rest of the class catches up, administrators say. The students aren't allowed to work at their own pace and some times get bored in the classroom, complain many parents. And with the recent national financial strain, growth in class size from Oklahoma to New York, demographic shifts in places like Texas where now one in two students is Hispanic and more rigorous passing standards for the No Child Left Behind Act, individualizing instruction becomes much harder.

But now, Tarango said, this method of trying to help every child excel individually in one classroom — from the lowest achievers to the highest — is on the upswing. Over the last year, 30,000 teachers nationwide have received training on this from her organization.

Provo School District is trying to implement this kind of learning model in every classroom by the end of next year. Students would be broken up for math and reading for certain portions of the day within their class, said Gaye Gibbs, director of K-12 instruction in the Provo School District.