ABSTRACT
The knowledge, experiences, and developmental levels of students in a given classroom vary tremendously. Teachers are aware of this and understand that they must meet the needs of each individual student. However, many feel unprepared or unsure of how to actually accomplish this in a regular classroom setting, and they report this as one of their greatest challenges (Baumann, Hoffman, Duffy-Hester, & Ro, 2000; Jordan & Stanovich, 2004; Tomlinson, 2004). With the push to meet the continuous improvement targets required by the No Child Left Behind (2002) legislation, many teachers are implementing instructional practices that are not consistent with what research shows is best practice. McTighe and Brown (2005) explain that these practices being implemented include:
1. “broad or overloaded written curricula” that do not address deep understandings 2. “educators’ perceptions that they must cover every mandated standard” in prepa-
ration for high-stakes testing 3. whole class teaching that models and prepares students for testing formats 4. adoption of a “teaching to the test” method to raise test scores (p. 235).
