Originally Posted by indigo
Originally Posted by blackcat
Why can't they ability-group the kids for math and send the high kids to one teacher, the middle to another, and the lowest to the third. Then they could even break it up further and have 2 or 3 different groups within a group. It could be flexible so if a kid makes progress they can move to a higher class. If they are not, they can move downward to a lower group. It wouldn't cost any money--all the teachers would need to do is schedule math at the same time.
Operating within the current paradigm of sorting children first by chronological age, this may not receive broad support... Teachers may be evaluated based upon student performance as an indicator of teacher efficacy, therefore some unions may preclude the grouping of students who may naturally perform better, as this may been seen to give an advantage to those teachers. This has created a teacher-centric (or union-centric) system.

Remove chronological age, sort by readiness and ability, and the process becomes student-centric.

In our school, when the topic of sorting all children by ability and not age has come up, there have always been 2 responses: it's racist/classist and it's not fair to the bottom performing children because they will know that they are "less than" and their self esteem will be hurt.