Amherst Schools Urged To Drop Ability Grouping

By Peter Schmidt

A panel set up by the Amherst, Mass., school board has urged the district to abandon its controversial system for grouping students by ability.

The 14-member panel, formed to resolve a legal challenge to the district's instructional-grouping policies, recommended that the board scrap those policies as unfair to poor children and members of minority groups.

"That some students will perform better than others is natural and expected," the report says. "What is not acceptable, however, is that some students are challenged to thought-provoking analysis and problem-solving...