ABSTRACT
Before coming to Ms. P’s classroom, I had never encountered a classroom where the hierarchy of the “low-” to “high-performing” students was so clearly delineated, and, as Ms. P reminded me, all of these students were on the lower end of an even larger and invisible hierarchy relative to the district (and national) standard. I had only to mention a student by name, and she could instantly tell me where their reading, writing, or math level placed them in relation to their peers. Part of this clearly defined hierarchy arose from what in Ms. P’s eyes was a positive improvement in education over the past decade. As she had said in our initial interview, schools have made great progress in individuating student assessment so that their learning can be tailored exactly to their needs. An unexpected outcome of such extreme individuation of student learning-which might from an international perspective seem to be a peculiarly American value-may be that students feel entitled to pick and choose what they want to learn and opt out of what they decide is inappropriate for them.
