Ds6s teacher gave me the print out of the overheads from a training day on the "modern learning environment". There were 20 overheads. 6 were on "ability grouping or tracking".

they use a scale of -1 to 1 for affect ratio. 1 highest positive, -1 lowest negative, 0 neutral.

overhead 1/ tracking .11, reading 0, maths .02, attitude .10.
Minority students are 7 times more likely to be labeled low ability.

OVerhead 2/ potential for racial discrimination where tracking is used.

Overhead 3/ as above for socioeconomic factors.

Overhead 4/ children in low tracks suffer from low expectations.

Overhead 5/ experiment of labelling kids in 1968 and affect on teacher perception.

Overhead 6/ ability grouping for gifted .3
enrichment .39, acceleration .84.

But if all students respond to high expections and acceleration, is there a need for Gifted and Talented tracks.



Great. The one good thing for my son is that from next year (equiv g2) there is some ability grouping across g2/g3 and g4/5 groupings.

I have a bad feeling but I hope I am wrong.

Really just venting. Thanks.

I don't really understand what your concern is? The training day did admit to some positive effects of things they can do for gifted children, which isn't always the case! Also seems positive that the teacher shared it with you... What am I missing?

Maybe I am missing something? But it seems like the presentation is a clear argument against tracking/ability grouping?

Yeah, this looks like an anti-tracking/grouping presentation to me. Was this given personally to you in response to something in particular?

I guess you could seize on the fact that their data (likely cherrypicked) is endorsing acceleration, and demand it.

Using an experiment from 1968 is...uh, not the greatest way to convince me.

Seems like it is designed to fail. If you come out of the gate giving positive and negative labels, yikes.

No; the presentation gave positive scores to both. It did also mention some issues, but those issues exist, so...?

Well, I'd be a little concerned that this is was written by an educator without a great grasp on grammar and usage. But I'm guessing that isn't what the OP was most concerned about.


Leaving aside for a moment the issue of the missing question mark at the end of the clearly rhetorical question, there, I'm concerned with the ASSUMPTION being made in that rhetorical question.

The underlying assumption is in the word all in that sentence. If all students respond (equally well) to high expectations and acceleration...

WHOAH.

Do they??

Well, they DON'T. Where is the evidence for THAT statement-- even the more lukewarm version actually stated, I mean.


There are studies which suggest that enrichment and exposure to brighter peers is good for ALL children. There are mixed ones that say that "high expectations" may be good-- but ONLY to the point that they remain "appropriate" to the child's underlying ability, that is.

It is a LONG way from that set of facts to the statement above.


The assumption implicit in that statement is that while, sure, GT children respond VERY well to enrichment, tracking, and to acceleration; it is probably only because we don't make those things available to all children.

I see this statement as a covert "all children are gifted, so shut up about your special snowflake-- they're ALL snowflakes." Or even "there's no such thing as gifted."

It would make me wary, too.

This is a clear (and I say this as someone who grew up learning the peculiar language of elementary educators in an immersion environment) coded message for

in-class differentiation.

Probably to rather limited practical affect, at that. "Enriched" for the center of the distribution unfortunately looks very little like "enrichment" that HG kids need in early elementary.


It also has a bit of the subtext that it's wrong of the GT children to be selfishly "sucking up" all of those resources directed JUST at them...

Sorry, but I've seen this kind of attitude before-- and it has used pretty much the same language for forty years. That finishing statement is EXACTLY what my mother (a lifetime educator) firmly believed. Even though such an outlook actively damaged me as a child.


The one effective tool that I ever found for combatting this set of beliefs with educators was the question;

What, then, about "high expectations" for highly capable children? Don't their expectations need to be "higher" by definition?

But I'm going to make a prediction here-- I predict that such inquiry will be met with "Oh, but _____ can learn other things in the classroom... like helping. Sharing... being more compassionate and developing social skills with age-mates. Fostering patience."

Which of course is based on a number of other assumptions.

This is an argument for sending all of the kids to classes a grade below, because don't we want ALL kids to learn sharing, compassion, and patience?

I think that is where all students in all classes are presented the same material, in which case, being with brighter peers can only be of limited benefit. The huge benefit of ability tracking comes when advanced students are taught advanced material.

Right-- the point is that it isn't good for any students to be too far from the center of the distribution relative to a peer setting.

But this ignores the mathematical reality that someone has to be on the edges.

It also ignores the reality that there is a pretty hard delineation in terms of "gap" there-- that is, exposure to people half a standard deviation beyond yourself in ability is GOOD, and encouraging since you can practice full cognitive extension/reach regularly, but placement with those TWO standard deviations beyond your current ability is highly detrimental and damaging.

It's the second part of that which seems to have completely eluded most educators, I have found. That boggles my mind.
This is why students are retained. Sheesh.

I agree that it may be. The question to ask would be, "I see this provides very strong evidence for the benefits of acceleration. How do you define acceleration here at School X? What would that look like for my child?"


Well, the scores for GT programming were relatively positive--acceleration most of all, clearly, But these? These look pretty darn lukewarm, esp. given the 4 slides afterwards listing reasons not to track...


I have mixed feelings on tracking because it's obviously a complex issue, but no one benefits from avoiding the truth, whatever it may be. If the truth is that disadvantaged kids lose out from tracking and our kids benefit, we need to look at that honestly and consider what can be done--not just focus on our kids. If the truth is that our kids lose out by not tracking, but disadvantaged kids gain, the system needs to not just blow off our kids, but take that seriously as well.

"I have mixed feelings on tracking because it's obviously a complex issue, but no one benefits from avoiding the truth, whatever it may be. If the truth is that disadvantaged kids lose out from tracking and our kids benefit, we need to look at that honestly and consider what can be done--not just focus on our kids. If the truth is that our kids lose out by not tracking, but disadvantaged kids gain, the system needs to not just blow off our kids, but take that seriously as well."

Yes. Totally agree. And this is coming from someone with kids in a school that does not accelerate or track until 8th grade. Granted, we have a (relatively) very small population of disadvantaged kids here, but this is a very important point. I also wanted to go against the grain mention that we have been fortunate to have had a very positive experience with in-class differentiation- once. The teacher has to be exceptional, and there needs to be at least 1-2 other kids in the class somewhat near your kid's level, but it can be done.

DS is about to enter the same class, which was fantastic for our DD; the school created a mix of special Ed and high GT kids, and armed them with 2 teachers, one a spec Ed teacher and one an expert at differentiation, and the outcome was a huge win-win, with everyone getting their needs met, more-or-less together. I am not sure how they justified the whole plan and it was decidedly under-the-radar for those not involved in the class- I'm sure they were wary of parents who felt these kids were getting "more" of something. Seems like it will take a seismic shift in mindset, for both teachers and parents.

Maybe going too far off center from the thread... but I've been thinking about this on and off for years. This and having a kid sort of brings it together more. I remember in the eighties reading an article in I think Omni about a "mastery based" approach to education. Where once you achieved 90% you moved on to another topic (and I was like "holy $#, wish school had been like that.")

If you pair that with a measure like "repetitions to mastery," then you get a "you got it, move on" acceleration along with a sense of how much time/practice each student needs. Obviously the mastery list is dynamic, similarly the average repetitions to master change as students may change their rates. If you look at the sort of concepts/topics common core points at, you don't necessarily have to ask for qualitatively different instruction unless it fits a concept that has been mastered. If you've mastered "extracting theme" then your reading instruction should include discussions of theme or whatnot.

Fairly high level and unpolished, but sorta serves as my mental yardstick, and I think done right it dodges tracking and its conceptual baggage.

I'm going to beat the same old drum and say that many of these problems would be ameliorated by doing away with age based cohorts. Innately low ability children would still benefit from the presence of high ability students at all levels, with the added benefit that the high ability children would be motivated to achieve at their potential. The aspirational benchmark for non-GT students would be higher, and there would be greater commingling across abilities, presumably with trickle down.

The slides are pretty dire. Talk about a straw man presentation.

There was probably a lot of talking along with the slides. This school doesn't do ability based tracking except the "walk to maths thing". I have been looking forward to that because even his teacher who doesn't really believe his test results mean anything admits he needs extension.

While being exposed to kids with a range of abilities may be good for some kids my son is 2 points short of 4 standard deviations above the mean and has to be asked to give others a turn to answer (how long before he stops answering questions?)

oh well, time will tell.

Puffin, what I'm imagining is a +4SD child of, say, 6 being grouped with average 12 year olds (and, hopefully other >+2SD students). So, they'd have different innate abilities when indexed to a common age, but similar achievement levels on comparable material.

That would be good wouldn't it. Especially if there was some way of ensuring cross class playing at breaks - maybe change classes for some things. My son is pretty average at writing (I think it is the creative process not physical as he is fairly good if he is writing about a book or non fiction) but is way above in reading and maths. My mother went to a school with 18 kids from 5 to 13 which would be good for him with the right teacher. In fact the teacher my mother remembers who taught them all sorts of obscure natural science and classics stuff would be perfect.

Yes, agree with this totally.