A few evenings ago, I had a brief conversation with another mom during a swim practice. She is currently attending college for an education degree and I think she is on the parent board at our zoned public elementary school. The issue of ability grouping was brought up in regards to the swim class where it seemed that some students are not advanced enough, yet somehow are in the same class with more proficient swimmers who have to stop in the lanes on a regular basis so as not to run them over. I mentioned that I am in support of ability grouping in all situations including education. She agreed which is great since she will probably be a new teacher in our district in a few years.
What she said next didn�t make a huge impression at the time because I had been aware of it for years. Afterwards, I thought about it more and have come to the conclusion that it is an unethical practice (though it hadn�t appeared to me at first glance).
She reminded me that even though the school district does not �track� children officially, the teachers and principles do so �unofficially�. I had heard this when my daughter was in public school six years ago. She was one of the �unofficially identified� gifted (high achieving, compliant, cooperative, cheerful, and confident) students.
If she were my only child, I may never have questioned this classification and assumed that the teachers were always right in their determinations and that they would �take care of her� despite the official stance. Fortunately, we also have a son who was the catalyst for the advocacy we pursued for both children. We were somewhat on the fence with our first because it was hard to come to terms with the fact that we intuitively knew better than the educators what our kids needed. We also knew that even though our son was overtly intelligent, he would not be a favored student especially considering that they would not grade advance (except for a few �connected� cases-another unethical practice) and that their curriculum for K and 1st (at least) was excruciatingly average.
I now believe that teachers are right approximately 50 percent of the time when identifying their most intelligent students. Yet they make these determinations based simply on their impressions. This school district also (unless things have changed recently) considers the group administered �intelligence test� �(multiple choice, low ceiling) as more valid than a �real� I.Q. test such as the Stanford Binet or WISC. The group test is the only official criteria for qualification for the enrichment based gifted programming.
I guess my point here is that this practice of classification is wrong even if your own child may benefit as a result. We tried to change the system for all children and failed. The �off line� advice we were given was to just advocate for your own children rather then pursue systematic change. I don�t think that would have helped us anyway as we didn�t know anyone with real influence at the time. We were forced to go private.
I admire some of the progressive public school systems in a nearby state that have very objective ways to identify gifted students. Individual I.Q. tests, grades, achievement tests, teachers and parents� opinions are all assigned specific weight. Ex. I.Q. test has the highest weight at 40%, grades and achievement are 20% each and parent and teacher recommendations are worth 10% each. Points are assigned for varying ranges within each category. So if a child scores 144-148 on the I.Q. portion, only minimal additional points in the other categories may be necessary to qualify for gifted programs. Of course they should also consider other types of accommodation as well.
I believe that the less defined methods of identification (such as our public school system uses) are very subjective, archaic, suspicious and contentious in comparison. I don�t understand why they don�t adopt the well developed models from these other highly regarded school districts.
Do any of you have strong opinions on this topic? Where do your school districts fall on this continuum?
