After decade of criticism, student grouping rises

By Philip Elliott
Associated Press  • 

Teachers say they are grouping students of similar abilities with each other inside classrooms and schools are clustering pupils with like interests together - a practice once frowned upon - according to a review of federal education surveys.


"Despite decades of vehement criticism and mountains of documents urging schools to abandon their use, tracking and ability grouping persist - and for the past decade or so, have thrived," said Tom Loveless, a senior fellow at the centrist Brookings Institute's Brown Center on Education Policy, who wrote the report.



Both faced criticism because they exacerbated racial and socioeconomic differences. In response, educators moved away from the practice.

But they didn't stay away for long - if, in fact, they really ever disappeared in practice.





While the numbers tell an increased reporting of ability grouping and tracking, it's hard to extrapolate meaning. It's possible that increased demands on teachers led to more grouping to help students catch up in reading and math skills ahead of tests mandated in the 2002 No Child Left Behind education law. Teachers perhaps identified students on the cusp of passing those tests - which in some places determines teachers' evaluations - and worked more closely with the pupils they could pull to a passing grade.

The report's numbers themselves do not assign blame or motive.






Not everyone is convinced that tracking really ever faded.

"People don't like to admit they were tracking. But if you look at what they're doing, they were clearly tracking. It was politically incorrect to say they were tracking, but they were doing it," said Kevin Welner, an educator professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder and a critic of systems that group students.

Students in the slower groups, he said, often were the ones to suffer.

"As a rule, if you're talking about low-track classes, you're talking about a situation where there are tremendous obstacles for students and teachers. For teachers, you have institutionalized low expectations and you have a situation that's incredibly tough to overcome," he said.

While much of the research on ability grouping and student tracking indicates students of color and from lower incomes were given short shrift, there are classrooms where it can work if teachers are given proper instruction how to group kids based on ability, not on appearances, advocates said.

"In exceptional classrooms, ability grouping can be used to the benefit of all students, meeting them where they are," Hall said. "We know that when done badly, it relegates students of color to the corner."