Can Ability Grouping Set Students on Path to Failure?

Within the larger debate about whether and how to reform public schools, a lot of smaller debates have sprouted, and perhaps none is more impassioned than the argument over ability grouping.

Thousands of articles and speeches have been presented on both sides of the topic at teacher meetings, conventions, PTA meetings, and in teaching and parenting magazines.

Even so, many parents and much of the general public are still unsure about what ability grouping is, and the reasons for and against it.

This week, I’ll summarize the anti-grouping view; next week, I’ll present the opposing view.

First, bear in mind that the terms “ability grouping” and “tracking” are often used interchangeably, but they’re actually different practices.

In tracking, students are labeled as being college-bound or not, then given a corresponding curriculum.

Ability grouping means that students are placed in separate classes for high, average and low achievement, usually based on standardized test scores or grades in a related subject.

The practice is used most often in the higher grades, and in subjects such as science, math, social studies and English.

Ability grouping was introduced to American public schools in the 1920s, largely abandoned in the 1930s and 1940s, then revived in the 1950s.

Opponents want ability grouping to disappear permanently in the ‘90s for many reasons.

They say, for example, that the practice creates an unhealthy hierarchy where kids are labeled “high,” “average” and “low.” This, critics say, translates too readily to “smart,” “average” and “dumb.”

And although most research shows that ability grouping helps high achievers, opponents say it hinders the others (about 60% of students at a typical secondary school) by creating unequal access to opportunities. The students in average and low groups don’t receive equitable exposure to the kinds of knowledge, skills and experience needed to enter top colleges and jobs.

Studies show that more time tends to be devoted to actual learning and teaching in high groups because less is needed for discipline. In addition, high-level classes are sometimes given to better teachers, while low-level classes are assigned to inexperienced or burned-out teachers.

But in the eyes of some critics of ability grouping, all these shortcomings are secondary to the stigmatizing effect. They say that the average and low students feel dumb, misbehave out of frustration, then often drop out permanently. Representation of poor and ethnic minority students is also a problem, say grouping opponents. Indeed, surveys show that low and average classes tend to have higher shares of black, Latino and low-income students than do the high-achieving groups, where such students are few.

Part of this problem may lie in yet another component of ability grouping: testing. Standardized tests used to assign students to their groups are too often biased in favor of white students of the middle class and higher, critics of grouping say.

But even if testing were unbiased, grouping opponents would still question the fairness of determining so much of a child’s future by a score on just one or a handful of tests.

Thus, the ultimate fear of ability grouping opponents is that a child could be initially labeled a low achiever and never allowed to prove otherwise.