Focus on Leadership 7-17-17

I enjoyed having a book study and reading Focus on Leadership. Loved the themes of simplicity and literacy across the curriculum. I found myself completely buying into these two themes, wishing my schools embraced them, and loving the case studies. There were some parts of the book that surprised me. Two in particular. For one, I thought the type of lessons the author described as being best practice was interesting. As a special education teacher, the lessons seemed very similar to Direct Instruction, which many schools are against. Learning seems to be much more of a constructionist approach at this time in education.  The second piece that surprised me was the author's stance on differentiation. I was surprised to read that he felt if you embraced the evidence-based lesson plans he described that differentiation is not needed in the sense we as educators push for it today. I am curious to know how others felt about these two pieces? I wonder if strong lesson plans and literacy across the board were in place if less differentiation would indeed be needed?