Mixed Classes Prove That Intelligence Can Rub Off

Like many other schools, Brea Junior High once practiced a form of segregation, but not by race.

Segregation at the school, and most others in Orange County and the state, was by academic achievement. Gifted students were placed with other bright ones, remedial students paired with other low achievers.

The result: Bright students, spurred by challenging lessons, became brighter. Remedial kids, placed in weaker courses, never learned more than the basics--and often not even that. They became the victims of a relentless downward spiral of low expectations and, as a result, poor grades.

“Self-esteem was very low in those students,” said Lisa Oliver, a teacher of seventh-grade language arts at Brea Junior High. “The quality of their work was much lower. . . . We watered down the program for them.”

But now, in increasing numbers, schools are scrapping the old method and instead mixing struggling students with the very bright.

Under the new method, called heterogeneous grouping or cooperative learning, a computer randomly mixes students of all levels of intelligence, allowing them to work together and challenge each other. The theory is that the achievement levels of the brighter students will rub off on their slower peers.

“The idea behind cooperative learning is that if students are rewarded based on the performance of a group or team, they will be motivated to help and encourage one another to achieve,” wrote Robert E. Slavin of the Center for Research on Elementary and Middle Schools at Johns Hopkins University in a 1987 report published in Educational Psychologist.

“Our feeling is that the student who traditionally does poorly in the classroom has a great deal more to benefit from being in a classroom where he or she has models of students who have mastered the ability to study,” said Kenneth L. Stichter, principal of Sonora High School in La Habra, which has installed cooperative learning curricula.

At Brea Junior High, where heterogeneous grouping of language-arts classes began two years ago, improvements have been dramatic. At the program’s outset, eighth-graders scored an average of 276 (in a possible 400) on the California Assessment Program writing test. This year, the school’s average score was 352, well above the statewide average of 255.

“Because all of the kids in the (lower-level) classes were experiencing difficulty with language arts,” Brea Principal Mike Condiff said, “they were not exposed to any exemplary writing samples from other kids, and that resulted in lower expectations. In this process, we changed the instruction to cooperative groups, and that includes all levels of kids, all of different abilities. Now we’re seeing regularly wonderful standards of writing.”

In the cooperative group system, the traditional classroom setting of uniform rows of desks is replaced with a sort of round-table format, in which small groups of four or five students work together. Reader workshops, in which students read selected works for 45 minutes of the two-hour class period, are held twice a week. The other three days are devoted to writer workshops, in which students confer on writing styles and critique their partners’ work.

Condiff emphasized that neither students nor teachers are informed of any student’s academic achievement level.

“I prefer not to know,” said Julie Crane, an eighth-grade language-arts teacher. “Your expectation levels tend to be higher if you don’t know.”

While test scores have risen, Crane said a more important result of heterogeneous grouping has been an increase in self-esteem among students, with their confidence in themselves apparent in their writing.

“As a teacher, I’m excited,” Crane said. “I don’t have to read 90 of the same essays. The kids really have some great ideas. . . . It’s the only situation I can imagine where the kids are self directed. They don’t need to be prodded all the time by the teacher.”

Indeed, Crane’s class operated smoothly after she set guidelines, then grouped students together for independent work. And while the room was noisy, the chattering among students was about their writing.

“You can talk to your group and work together and find out what questions they have” about essays, said Jennifer Schoen, 13. “If you have a disagreement or something, you can’t just let it go. You have to work it out with the group.”

Other students said that spirit of cooperation and the informal format of the course make learning an enjoyable experience.

“The workshop program gives students an opportunity to express what they’d like to be reading and writing,” said Ryan Moore, 13. “That’s better because you get to know and express yourself through writing.”

Another student, Chris Davis, 14, admitted that he was once uninterested in school and said he had problems with attentiveness and discipline before being placed in the mixed class.

Being paired “with a bunch of smart people,” he said, has changed his attitude: “It makes you feel freer. You don’t have to sit there and listen to a teacher lecture you. . . . Reading is one of my favorite things now. I hated to read before I got to (Crane’s) class.”

He added that he has read five books since September and has improved his writing skills.

“I never wrote anything before,” Davis said. “The first story I ever wrote in my whole life was in here.”

While the success of the project is evident, it started amid controversy. When the plan was first presented about five years ago, “there was concern by parents of the top-achieving kids that their curriculum would be toned down,” Condiff said.

But rather than toning down the language-arts course for gifted students, the school toughened it for everybody, Condiff said.

“What we did in order to be sure we hadn’t diluted the GATE (gifted and talented) program is we took that program and made it the curriculum for the whole school,” Condiff said.

Since then, he added, “we haven’t heard a word” of concern from parents. “They’re seeing the enthusiasm in their kids,” Condiff said.

In a recent letter to teacher Lisa Oliver, a parent noted the sharp improvement in her daughters’ test scores and congratulated the school on the new program.

“Keeping 13-year-old adolescents interested to listen and to write for two hours a day is a real test of one’s patience and creativity,” the parent wrote.

In a recent interview, Bill Honig, state superintendent of public instruction, said the state has been pushing heterogeneous grouping “for quite some time.”

“Just grouping kids by level doesn’t necessarily work,” Honig said. “When you begin holding kids back, the research shows it’s counterproductive and very expensive.”

Among the several recent studies on cooperative learning is a report published in the September, 1988, issue of Educational Leadership that noted: “Ability-grouping plans may stigmatize low-achievers, put them into classes or groups for which teachers have low expectations or lead to the creation of academic elites.”

And an April, 1989, report in the Harvard Law Review noted that homogeneous grouping has raised the issue of racial and class discrimination for many years.

“Critics, pointing out that low-income and minority students are placed disproportionately in low tracks, argue that tracking unnecessarily perpetuates inequality,” the report said. “Proponents argue that tracking is a necessary response to the widely divergent abilities and needs of students.”

Honig noted that mixing students with varying ability is not the solution to the state’s educational woes, because the system does not lend itself to such highly structured courses as math, science and foreign languages. But in less formal classes, such as language arts, the approach can yield dramatic results.

Despite the favorable findings, the system has been slow to win converts. Condiff said the mixed groups were begun slowly at Brea because of the difficulty in persuading veteran teachers to change their methods radically. That, he said, could be why the approach is only now beginning to gain widespread acceptance.

Kathy Cardiff, an eighth-grade language arts teacher at Brea Junior High, said heterogeneous grouping has made her job tougher because it involves more complex teaching plans and largely eliminates uniform tests, making grading harder. For example, her class, which just finished reading “The Call of the Wild,” was assigned three essay topics, at different levels.

Devising and grading such assignments takes time--Cardiff said she and her colleagues can often be found on campus as late as 7 p.m. But she added that the improvement she has seen among her students makes it worthwhile.

“I enjoy coming to work, because the kids enjoy it more,” Cardiff said. “On days when they are in cooperative groups, my discipline problems disappear, because they’re engaging each other.”