Is Ability Grouping the Way to Go---Or Should It Go Away?
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Logic, emotion, and research often clash in the longstanding debate
over the advantages and disadvantages of ability grouping (tracking).
Should it be left up to the courts to decide whether such grouping is
fair or not?
Is ability grouping (or tracking) an efficient way to handle differences
in student abilities? Does such grouping benefit students---or does it
unfairly label them? Research, logic, and emotion often clash when responding
to those questions.
Ability grouping increases student achievement by allowing teachers
to focus instruction, proponents say. Teaching a group of like-ability
students allows teachers to adjust the pace of instruction to students'
needs. For example, a teacher might instruct at a slower pace---providing
more repetition and reinforcement---with a group of low-achieving students
than he or she would with a group of high achievers. A class of high achievers
might be given more opportunities for independent research and cooperative
group discussion than a group of low achievers would be given; high achievers
might be asked to apply their skills to solving higher-level thinking
problems too.
So goes the theory behind grouping by ability.
But is that fair? Is the theory supported by research? And what do the
courts have to say about grouping by ability?
In a comprehensive review of research on different types of ability
grouping in the elementary school, Robert E. Slavin (1986) found that
some forms of grouping can result in increased student achievement. Slavin's
review focused on five grouping plans.
Grouping students as a class by ability for all subjects doesn't improve
achievement.
Students grouped heterogeneously for most of the school day, but regrouped
according to ability for one or two subjects, can improve achievement
in those areas for which they are grouped.
Grouping heterogeneously except for reading instruction (commonly
referred to as "The Joplin Plan") improves reading achievement.
Nongraded instruction---instruction that groups students according
to ability rather than age and that allows students to progress at their
own rates---can result in improved achievement.
In-class grouping---a common approach in which teachers break out
two or three ability-based groups within a class for instruction---can
benefit student achievement. (Slavin's research supports this practice
for math instruction. Findings related to reading instruction aren't
as conclusive; in-class grouping is so widespread a practice for teaching
reading that it's difficult to find "control groups" for such a comparative
study.)
Any grouping plan, Slavin concludes, must allow for frequent reevaluation
of students' skills, and such grouping must allow for easy reassignment
of students who show progress.
"UNTRACK" THOSE SCHOOLS!
Ability grouping doesn't improve achievement and is harmful to students.
Such grouping should be banned, says Anne Wheelock, author of Crossing
the Tracks: How "Untracking" Can Save America's Schools (New Press,
1992). The practice of grouping by ability is too widespread and too widely
accepted, Wheelock adds.
Wheelock says that about 60 percent of elementary schools practice
some form of whole-class ability grouping, including Chapter 1 classes
and special classes for gifted students. Survey results published in Education
Week (see Resources below) in 1995 found that two-thirds of U.S. high
schools were at least moderately tracked.
Ability tracking is harmful for a number of reasons, Wheelock told Instructor
in A
Talk with Anne Wheelock.
The criteria used to group kids are based on subjective perceptions
and fairly narrow views of intelligence.
Tracking leads students to take on labels---both in their own minds
as well as in the minds of their teachers---that are usually associated
with the pace of learning (such as "slow" or "fast" learners). Because
of this, we end up confusing students' pace of learning with their capacity
to learn.
We associate students' placement with the type of learners they are
and therefore create different expectations for different groups of
students.
Once students are grouped, they generally stay at that level for their
school careers, and the gap between achievement and levels becomes exaggerated
over time. The notion that students' achievement levels at any given
time will predict their achievement in the future becomes a self-fulfilling
prophecy.
Wheelock doesn't dismiss all forms of ability grouping. For instance,
she notes, a group might be set up within a class to help students who
are having difficulty with a specific skill. Or a group might be formed
to "pre-teach" a skill to a group of students who might have difficulty
grasping a concept.
ABILITY GROUPING'S EVERLASTING EFFECTS
Carol Nelson tells the stories of "Rick" and "Monica," two of her college
students who were majoring in elementary education in Organizing
for Effective Reading Instruction. Those two students talked about
the effects on them of ability grouping when they were in elementary school.
Rick wrote about why he always worked so hard to remain in
the middle group. "The higher group, you see, always had so much stuff
to do and I never saw those kids out to recess because they had to stay
in and finish what they had started. Now the lower group was not the group
to be in either. Even as young as first grade, I knew what it meant to
be in the lower group and how those kids were thought of as "lower" than
the rest of us. This is the problem with labeling and grouping."
Monica wrote "I have nothing but bad memories about my reading groups
in elementary school. I was constantly being left behind and humiliated
by my teacher… No attempt to help me as an individual by my teacher
was ever made---and if it had, it probably wouldn't have been a pleasant
one. I think that teachers should be more patient with those students
who have reading problems and maybe offer other ways to help than put
them in the low group."
BUT IS ABILITY GROUPING LEGAL?
Writing in Harvard Educational Review (see Resources below),
Kevin G. Welner and Jeanne Oakes assert that the courts can play an important
role in "detracking" America's schools. They point to research (Fullwood,
1991) that revealed that 53 percent of White Americans regarded African
Americans as likely to be less intelligent that Whites; 55 percent of
White Americans felt Latinos were likely to be less intelligent that Whites.
Where does that perception come from? The perception might be based, in
part, on school systems that track their students according to ability.
Brown v. Board of Education (1954) might have started the era of
desegregation, Oakes says, but ability grouping has canceled out many
of the possible benefits of that landmark decision. Tracking, in many
cases, is just another form of racial segregation. One test of the use
of ability grouping was highlighted in an article which appeared in the
magazine Principal (see Resources below). In that article, authors
Perry A. Zirkel and Ivan B. Gluckman wrote:
Approximately half the students in the Augusta, Arkansas, school
district are African American. The district has used ability grouping
since 1970, when it was forced to dismantle its segregated system. In
1991, an African American parent filed suit, claiming that the district's
ability grouping and placement practices violated the Fourteenth Amendment's
equal protection clause.
In 1992. . . . the district changed its policy of maintaining three
homogeneous ability groups (low, middle, and high) for each class, an
arrangement which saw a disproportionate number of African American
students in the lower ability groups. Under the new policy, grades K-3
would gradually move from homogenous to heterogeneous grouping over
a three-year period, and grades 4-6 would retain homogenous grouping
only for math, reading, and language arts under a so-called "modified
Joplin plan."
The court decided that the Augusta district's pervasive ability grouping
policy for grades K-3 violated the Fourteenth Amendment, but that the
modified Joplin plan for grades 4-6 did not violate the Constitution
[Simmons v. Hooks, 843 F. Supp. 1296 (E.D. Ark. 1994)]. The difference
appeared to be the evidence, in the form of expert testimony, that grouping
for reading had beneficial effects that outweighed the stigma of homogeneity.
In their conclusion, Zirkel and Gluckman note, "the legal boundaries
are, on the whole, notably broad with regard to ability grouping. Principals
should recognize that the answer to the issue of heterogeneous versus
homogeneous groups is in many cases a matter for educators, not judges,
to determine."
THE DEBATE CONTINUES
So is tracking a fair way for educators to deal with the wide disparity
in students' abilities? Or is it a form of discrimination that has few
benefits for students and ought to be outlawed? The issue has been the
subject of debate for many years---and will be for years to come. One
thing is certain: Further research is essential for educators (and, perhaps,
for the courts) charged with making informed decisions about the advantages
or disadvantages of ability grouping.
It's the Law: Ability Grouping by Perry A. Zirkel and Ivan
B. Gluckman, Principal, September 1995.
Ability Grouping: The New Susceptibility of School Tracking Systems
to Legal Challenges by Kevin G. Welner and Jeanne Oakes, Harvard
Educational Review, Fall 1996.
Tracking May Not Be as Common a Practice as Assumed, Study Says
The results of a survey published in Education Week, May 3, 1995.
An Organizational Analysis of the Effects of Ability Grouping,
A study of the effects of ability grouping in 92 honors, regular, and
remedial English classes in eighth and ninth grade, by Adam Gamoran,
Martin Nystrand, Mark Berends, and Paul C. LePore, American Educational
Research Journal, Winter 1995.
Learning: Tracking by Naomi Barko, Parents, January
1996.
Ability
Grouping in Elementary Schools
An ERIC Digest report by John Hollifield. This report summarizes the conclusions
of Robert E. Slavin's 1986 comprehensive review of research on the different
types of ability grouping in elementary schools.
