Those among you who are interested in an international perspective on gap closing may be interested in this blog post on Finland, which has been widely commended for being one of the countries where the gap between the lowest and the highest performers in the OECD's PISA assessment is smallest, and, most importantly, cuts across SES lines and school.
https://fillingmymap.com/2015/06/08/the-three-real-reasons-for-finlands-high-pisa-scores/One reason of course is that SES spread simply isn't as wide and there is a low level of immigration and schools are highly integrated (though there is considerable ethnic and linguistic diversity with the large Swedish and the smaller Sami minority, so it's not like it's a homogeneous society by any means).
Another very important reason, though, seems to be that there simply are hardly any low achievers. I don't think it's in the blog but apart from the SES thing, I read that it's credited to extremely fast, targeted and specialized intervention as so as learning difficulties appear. And the regular classroom teacher is NOT responsible - fully one third of Finnish kids is considered special ed students at. any one time, with targeted services by specialized teachers or even special classrooms,m and by the time they reach high school, half of all Finnish kids half had special ed designation at some point.
So, classroom teaching is clearly geared towards the average to above average cohort, with the weaker students expected to catch up with targeted support -no child left behind, but no waiting around, either.
And nothing for the high achieving and/or the gifted. Interestingly, even with short schooldays and little homework they still do much better than almost any other Western country - but are completely blown out of the water by Asian countries with high levels of homework, cram schools and tutoring.
I think the inefficiency of school systems like South Korea is mind blowing and the work expectations abusive, and would not want results like theirs at this price. But where is the middle ground?
