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Academic Competitions as Tools for Differentiation in Middle School

Differentiating the curriculum has been a challenging task for classroom teachers, but it has become even more challenging after the No Child Left Behind Act (2001), because the emphasis in programming and funding in schools has shifted from realizing the individual potential of every student to raising all students to the same level of minimum competency. This change has been felt more deeply in schools that have difficulty meeting these minimum standards and are likely to face the sanctions by this accountability movement.1 Under these circumstances, it has become more important for those interested in gifted education to use every means of differentiation available, especially those that depend only minimally on mainstream programming and funding. In our experience, we have seen that academic competitions can provide wonderful opportunities for differentiation at the middle school level. Here we want to relate our experience along with research to document how they can be effective tools for differentiation, situating our discussion within Maker’s (1982) framework of differentiation in content, process, product, and learning environment.