The research is overwhelming that things need to change within Education.
Change is always difficult, especially with the level of change needed here.
…"instead of mandating the nearly-impossible strategy of "differentiating instruction. (DI)" In other words, remove the obstacles (often ideological in nature) that are getting in the way of teachers achieving success in their classrooms".
(1) Students, at-risk, traditional and gifted are not learning, transferring and applying long term, critical, must know information effectively and efficiently because traditional teaching is one to many and all of the proven learning research points towards teacher facilitated, differentiated instruction (truly personalized instruction) , in a blended learning environment, supplemented by truly personalized learning technology.
Re – Read your post specific to the third party, proven learning research – (differentiated instruction, over time and differentiated reinforcement over time) – and the educational articles (including what Fordham Institute recommends) and you will see that your suggestions are not in sink with the learning research, as is so much discussion specific to educational reform.
Lets again visit what are organizational objectives are for learning (education).
"Individual student, long term: learning to fluency, transfer, adaptive reasoning skills to apply information to new situations; Better learning, more graduations, less drop outs, better trained students empowered to apply the learned information for personal and societal gain".
We need to follow the learning research consistent with the organizational goals and objectives.