Ability Grouping
Learn more about the practice of grouping students according to their academic skills, either by tracking or within-class grouping
Special Education
Opinion
The Gifted Express, Now Leaving on Track 1
Stephen L. Gessner explains how the abandonment of ability grouping has been particularly harmful to highly able students.
Teaching
Opinion
It’s Time to Focus on the Forgotten Middle
Mary Catherine Swanson, founder of the AVID center, writes that "the vast middle" in our schools—education's average students—are being ignored and the education system has returned to a tracking system by default.
College & Workforce Readiness
Study Finds Social Barriers To Advanced Classes
Simply opening up access to honors and advanced courses is not enough to encourage substantial numbers of poor or minority students to take them, a study suggests.
Special Education
Opinion
The Miseducation of Our Gifted Children
Numerous studies confirm a sad finding: The most intellectually
gifted students in the United States typically have little good to say
about their schooling. Gifted children are usually bored and unengaged
in school; they tend to be highly critical of their teachers, who they
feel know less than they do, and they are often underachievers. In the
best-case scenario, teachers recognize a student as gifted but, unable
to teach at this level, they let the child learn independently. In the
worst-case scenario, teachers fail to recognize a child as gifted and
classify the child as unmotivated or even hostile.
Teaching
Ky. Bill To End Multi-Age Grouping in Grades 1-3 Advances
Kentucky lawmakers forwarded a bill last week that would gut the most prominent part of the state's ungraded-primary program.
Education
Amherst Schools Urged To Drop Ability Grouping
A panel set up by the Amherst, Mass., school board has urged the district to abandon its controversial system for grouping students by ability.
Education
Debate Over Ability Grouping Gains High Profile
The debate over ability grouping in public schools appears to be escalating, and supporters of the practice are increasingly being placed on the defensive, experts on both sides of the issue agree.
Education
Mass. Leads Mounting Charge Against Ability Grouping
QUINCY, MASS.--When school districts in this state group students according to their academic ability, Daniel V. French in turn groups the districts, separating those that agree to abandon the practice from those that face losing some state funds for declining to do so.
Education
Opinion
When Ability Grouping Makes Good Sense
The recent educational literature has been filled with discussions
of the effects of ability grouping, tracking, etc., and new virtues
have been found in the concept of heterogeneous grouping of students.
The homogeneous grouping of slow-learning children does not appear to
be profitable, but the homogeneous grouping of bright students is a
very different matter, and often ignored in these discussions.
Education
Report Attacks Enforcement of Ability-Grouping Practices
About 10 percent of the nation's public middle schools use ability-grouping practices that verge on outright racial discrimination, a new report by the General Accounting Office has concluded.
Education
Mixed-Ability Groups Win Teacher Converts
"Teachers find that they are really unable to teach to the middle, which is what we've all tended to do for so long,'' says Jane Denton, an English teacher at Saginaw's Arthur Hill High School and K-12 language arts coordinator for the city's schools. "Now, we have to remember to challenge that higher-skilled student and to bring along the lower-skilled student.''