You’ve done some great posts around education- and this is another.

I agree with Brandon – my daughter goes to a private Montessori school for this very reason. Her learning is at her pace and she learns things from other students all the time.

Part of the difficulty in changing ideas around education is how teachers are trained. The Schools of Education at most colleges are bastions of tradition and the “correct method” of teaching.

Teachers who are trained in multiple methods of teaching and are determined to raise achievement levels regardless of technique have astounding results. (Have you been in contact with Teach For America at all?) But many are hampered by the need to fulfill testing requirements. NCLB and AIMS may have been some of the worst things that have have happened to our education system. Especially since they further the traditional style of teaching and rote learning that has been detrimental to poorer communities.

In effect, only the best teachers, irrespective of credentials, or experience could thrive in such a scenario. I think it would get shot full of holes… but its likely great from an educational point of view, but not for get rich quick folks.

It’s not “purely” what you’re describing, but it does embrace many of the same concepts. For example, several different ages of children are typically included in the same classroom. What you call “level” is represented on a per-task basis using physical shelves, where children master the work on a lower shelf in order to be allowed to use the work on the next shelf above it, and so on. Students are encouraged to share space and collaborate. There is typically no “front” of the classroom, and the teacher interacts more as an interactive guide than a lecturer.

It eludes me how we’d accurately determine a child’s “level” and thereby ’sort’ them into groupings… Is that not part of the problem we currently have in schools? And how many levels are there, how far do you break it down? who determines that?

There are honors classes that I was in during school and those that I wasn’t asked to partake in, where I excelled in one area (physics/science) I didn’t in another (english) for instance. Are levels all encompassing or still separated to different degrees.

It all gets convoluted again; just in another way. Like the government, education can’t change quickly – they’re too far into their hole w/o the ability to change course with any haste.