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Andy Rotherham at Eduwonk highlights two writing assignments, both given to seventh-graders, with widely different levels of difficulty. As Rotherham says, this is what wonks mean when they worry about an “expectations gap.”
I’m highlighting this because we would like to collect similar comparisons from New York City. What does student work look like at your school? What do the assignments look like?
Send us your stuff so we can start comparing. We’re happy to keep you and your students anonymous, as long as you give some identifying information (grade, district, public/private, charter/traditional public, large/small).
The first seventh-grade assignment:
The second:
I attended a good middle school, and I think that the Anne Frank assignment would have been very tough for nearly all of my classmates. Psychological and intellectual changes? Yikes. On the other hand, that other seventh grade assignment is pretty awful too. As much as I’ve had to tailor things to my more struggling students, I’ve never given them anything that low-level. I’ll try to send along some samples to you.
It’s so much easier in math…
The Diary of Anne Frank is a novel?
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