While this may seem self-evident, I'm not immediately convinced. The variation in the middle of the bell curve is much smaller than at the edges. The entire cohort in the 25th-75th percentile range may still be substantially at the same point in the curriculum and capable of being taught in a single class effectively.
IQ test scores are normed to have standard deviation of 15 or 16. If the deviation scale is comparable to the mental_age/chronological_age scale (which is why a standard deviation of 15 or 16 was chosen), then in a class of 6-year-olds, the +1 SD children have a mental age of 6*1.15 = 6.90 and the -1 SD children have a mental age of 6*0.85 = 5.1. So in 1st grade you have a spread of almost 2 years of mental age between +1 SD and -1 SD children, who are certainly not outliers. The within-school standard deviation of IQ may be less than 15, compressing the range, but OTOH chronological ages vary, causing another source of variation.
I don't think dividing children into three groups is overdoing things. Elementary schools commonly have 3 or 4 classes per grade.Hear, hear.
I have also been stunned that anyone could
actually believe that simply dropping students into coursework that they are ill-suited to, and even
less well-prepared for is somehow an...
opportunity for those students. ???
I'm baffled by that sort of thinking. Truly. I'll go even further than Val does, though, and call it what I think it actually is--
magical thinking at its finest.
And for the record, there are
neither magnets NOR GT schools here. Cheers.
What this means in practical terms is that there
is no GT in secondary here due to the egalitarian thinking behind algebra-for-all. Here, of course, it's AP-for-all. Which has a lot in common with the term "free-for-all" but that is beside the point, I think.
