Teacher-Led School Innovates With Student Regrouping

Heather McCowan, center right, a 7th grade English teacher a Palmer Park Preparatory Academy in Detroit, hands a "pom," or token, to Monique Whittaker, while Micah Whittaker, left, and Dezhane Norton work on a grammar lesson last week. Students are rewarded with poms when they answer questions correctly and participate in class.

—Brian Widdis for Education Week

By Stephen Sawchuk

Detroit’s troubled school system remains in emergency management, its enrollment dwindling and its labor-management relations contentious. Yet in spite of those challenges, a school there is making a bid to innovate with many of the formal structures that have long guided not just teachers’ roles, but also how students are organized in classes.

At Palmer Park Preparatory Academy , teachers are gradually assuming administrative duties to become the city’s first teacher-led school. An extended day, part of the district’s reform policy, gives the staff time every afternoon to compare teaching strategies. And finally, a new, pilot schedule for 7th and 8th graders lets teachers regroup the middle school students in different English/language arts and math classes frequently, based on the students’ performance and how quickly they are learning new material.

The changes are the K-8 school’s attempt to get concrete about the much-touted but often vague concept of “differentiated instruction” for students, especially for those who have struggled to grasp key concepts and...