Originally Posted by HowlerKarma
Placing high ability and low achievement kids in the same classrooms and giving them ALL the same instruction doesn't serve anyone very well.

Most states have a limit on class size. I sometimes wonder what would happen if class limits were expressed in standard deviations rather than numbers of students.

Imagine if you give the students an entrance exam for each subject. You calculate the mean and standard deviation of the scores. Then you divide them up into classrooms by standard deviations: Everyone between -3 and -1 SD in one class, everyone in -1 to +1 SD in another, and everyone in +1 to +3 SD in the last. You are treated as equally exceptional whether you are significantly above the mean, or below.

What would it be like to teach each of those classrooms?

Would this be fair?