Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion After decade of criticism, student grouping rises

http://news.yahoo.com/decade-criticism-student-grouping-rises-170948578--politics.html
After decade of criticism, student grouping rises
By PHILIP ELLIOTT | Associated Press – Mon, Mar 18, 2013

WASHINGTON (AP) — Teachers say they are grouping students of similar abilities with each other inside classrooms and schools are clustering pupils with like interests together — a practice once frowned upon — according to a review of federal education surveys.

The Brookings Institution report released Monday shows a dramatic increase in both ability grouping and student tracking among fourth- and eighth-grade students. Those practices were once criticized as racist and faced strong opposition from groups as varied as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund to the National Governors Association.

"Despite decades of vehement criticism and mountains of documents urging schools to abandon their use, tracking and ability grouping persist — and for the past decade or so, have thrived," said Tom Loveless, a senior fellow at the centrist Brookings Institute's Brown Center on Education Policy, who wrote the report.

Ability grouping was common during the 1960s and '70s in elementary school and allowed educators to put their students already in the same classroom into smaller clusters based on their understanding of the lessons. For instance, students who already had mastered their basic multiplication tables could go ahead and start working on more advanced calculations.
Tracking is similar, but happens between academic years and divvies the high school students up into schedules based on their records. An example would be to send some sophomore students into honors courses while others remained in basic courses.

Both faced criticism because they exacerbated racial and socioeconomic differences.

"What happens is ability groupings create stigma and stigma is a bad thing," American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten said in an interview. "The moment that you create a label that says 'this is a slow learner' or 'this is a fast learner,' that's a stigma you've created for a kid."

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Comment on the last paragraph -- there *are* fast learners and slow learners.

They do this (pretty much only with reading) at my daughter's elm school, and they do it for nearly everything at DS9'd charter school. I am a big fan.

Honestly, I get pretty tired of the high-flown theoretical discussions of both tracking and clustering/grouping-- on EITHER side.

The bottom line is that the people actually working in real classrooms with real students have always done this, WILL always do it, and pretty much cannot serve ANY students well unless they do it, and they don't need a lot of data on "best practices" and "inclusion" to know how to do the right things with the construct.

Seriously. This isn't rocket science. Teachers are NOT about making kids in the "elephant" group feel like crap because they aren't "tiger" kids. Try teaching BOTH groups of kids that material all at once and only the central quartile is going to be getting "appropriate" instruction, however-- and who does THAT help??

There is also a significant amount of flexibility involved in most 'tracking' systems-- that is, few kids are "locked" into a particular track without any way to flex the placement if it becomes less suitable.

Sheesh.

I have to disagree HK. I'm sure that thoughtful teachers group by ability, but I've met too many people who are offended by the idea to believe that everyone who works in a classroom groups by ability. DS12's second grade teacher had him tutor the other kids when the work was too easy for him; when I complained after he told me, she told me that she'd "been taught to use her best students." Another one told me, in a panel discussion where I was the odd man out, that advancing the better students wasn't necessary because "they were already proficient [in the task at hand]!!!" The idea that they could move to the next task seemed alien to these people. Etc. Isn't lockstep teaching one of the things that drives many of us to this site?

It's an ideology thing. Randi Weingarten wouldn't be where she is today if her ideology represented a small minority.

True that.

I guess I'm used to hanging out with the trouble-making sort of educator.

LOL.

On the other hand, that attitude of "well, this is the ceiling" isn't entirely inconsistent with ability grouping, either.

When you outstrip what "the top group" is doing, then you get to be a tutor, see...



Some teachers do this as self-defense alone, incidentally, since that particular kind of child can either be introverted and quietly read much of each day, or a complete and total disruptive force within a classroom. Best to keep the latter sort busy with SOMETHING. LOL.

Yeah, but I think that this really just argues semantics.

Which I still see as rather ridiculous since in my mind (and that of many good educators I've known) it's all ONE thing-- kids need the education that they are ready for, are capable of learning from, and they need to feel included in a classroom environment of peers.

The labeling and hand-wringing over the labels is just-- well, it's just weird. It ignores the pragmatic aspects of things which are more or less unchanging generation after generation. Some kids ARE at different readiness levels. That's all.

I mean, I do get what you're saying, MoN. I do. This is what our district does, too. There really ISN'T any meaningful GT here, because it is what has been used to replace that nasty term "tracking."

Oh, except that we no longer even call it "GT" after elementary school. It's just "honors" or "advanced" or "AP." (You know, versus "standard" or "basic" or "foundations" or "essentials.")

But it's still ability grouping, when you get right down to it. How could ANYONE think that an AP class is a "mixed ability" classroom?? Well, I mean-- technically, it IS, but only in the sense that you can call it either thing, depending upon how narrowly you define "similar ability." KWIM? This is the problem with GT programs that try to be "inclusive" and wind up capturing 20%+ of a school population-- they really amount to tracking at that point, which is just the broader version of ability grouping. Kind of, anyway.

Often, in elementary, kids with similar needs CAN be grouped in one classroom, and then swapped out to other subject specialist teachers within a grade cluster. That actually works tolerably well when implemented carefully, since you can have three second grade teachers, each an endorsed subject specialist in Math/Science, Literacy, in Social Sciences... that way, all the kids in the grade can be grouped into classrooms based on language arts levels (or math levels- whatever you want to consider the "base")... and from there, pulled into other rooms for on-level instruction in the other areas in the instance of the kids who need either much more intensive instruction, or those ready for advanced material (past grade level). It's a little complicated to schedule, but it can work really well. Some kids will be paired with particular teachers for reasons other than their basic academic placement (so perhaps one of those teachers is better for dealing with kids who have anxiety, or another who is great with psychomotor OE's or something).



This business of "spreading them out" has never made sense to experienced classroom teachers, I'll say that. Aside from fairly serious behavioral problems, I mean. It doesn't help anyone-- well, except for administrators who get soundbites that deliver the warm fuzzies. :sigh:


Of course, mandatory test-test-testing gets in the way of all of this authentic learning anyway. So it's still sort of a moot point.

The Brookings report

"How Well are American Students Learning: With sections on the latest international tests, tracking and ability grouping, and advanced math in 8th grade"

is at http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2013/03/18%20brown%20center%20loveless/2013%20brown%20center%20report%20web.pdf .

Except for math, our district worked to dismantle all ability grouping/tracking mechanisms until just 2 years ago when they were found to be out of compliance on state gifted policy.

While it's true that differentiating in the normal classroom "can be effective" it's also show in studies that it rarely comes close to approaching the effectiveness and growth rate that pull out classes do for GT students. This is only looking at academic outcome, it doesn't address the social / emotional aspects of GT education, which also are much easier to address in a classroom full of peers.

Knowing numerous GT educators in numerous schools, they often tell me that they discourage the idea of normal classroom differentiation as opposed to pull out programs, however, administration prefers normal classroom differentiation as it doesn't create scheduling problems and it puts an additional teacher into a normal classroom where the GT teacher can model differentiation to the normal classroom teacher, "Team Teaching" as the administration likes to label it. The problem with "Team Teaching" is that there is no study that shows it to be anymore effective.

I had a meeting with the local school district's curriculum coordinator and superintendent a couple of years back. The district claims in their literature and website to be "Data driven and committed to best practice" I asked what data and or studies they used to to determine that differentiation in the normal class room was best practice for GT students, the only answer I got back was, "Well.......lots of school districts do it that way." When I persisted about the data or studies they used to base their decision on, they changed the subject. No surprise there.

Schools will often spin the method they use in a very pretty picture, however, when it comes to backing that method with data and studies, they have trouble doing so.

I didn't go to school in the US . But the school where i went to was in Asia , and over there , back in high school , they have classes for the " super smart ones - fast paced " and " smart ones - regular pace " and finally " and okay ones = slower pace "

This worked just fine for us , we didn't have label this or label that , despite the fact that our classroom was divided based on the intelligence of each students . We still hung out with each other , we never said you're slow learner , or you're the smart ones . Well we acknowledged that they're from which class , but we never really thought it would label us and stick to us forever .But again , this worked just fine for all of us .