Apparently her reading group, which was the highest group in the class, only 'read' as a group with the teacher a few times all year. So I'm guessing ...
My first thought when I read this is perhaps even more cynical - are you sure the other groups are actually getting any more of the teacher's time?
Only one of my children's teachers ever seemed to be very actively engaged with her students during reading group time... and to be honest, if a teacher is stressed for time and has high-needs students who are struggling to read, I'm ok with her spending more time with those students. I've had both extremes in my family - my EG ds who seemed to learn to read through osmosis - once he knew how to read there wasn't really much of anything (from my perspective) he was going to pick up from being "taught" reading - does that make sense? And my HG+dd who does struggle with reading - kids who struggle really really *need* one-on-one or small group attention to further their reading skills. As long as my EG ds was able to select books at his level to read from and wasn't being held back in those selections, I wasn't really concerned about his teachers not spending time working with him on reading - and it doesn't seem to have hurt him in any way.
Please know I'm completely in favor of all of our kids having the opportunity to work and learn at their ability levels in the classroom - I'm just not sure this statement would have bothered me much. What would bother me re reading would be if my child had to work with a group that was a lot lower than her ability level, was told she had to read books much lower than she was capable of, or had to do a ton of phonics worksheets when she was way past that.
polarbear
