Ability Grouping

Presented by:

Britt Cagnole

Scott Melograna

Kelly Morrison

Ruth Muenchenbach

Troy Rees

Shelly Waltz

Ability Grouping

Introduction
What is the definition and history of ability grouping?

Ability grouping has traditionally been used often in schools as a means of organizing a wide range of students. It is used as a simple way to narrow the range of students' achievement and motivation, thus making teaching easier and supposedly more efficient. It also has been used as a way to prevent lower achieving students from holding back the higher achieving students.
The practice of ability grouping has been traced to when the children of upper middle class families began attending public schools. However, as increasing numbers of minority and lower class children began entering the schools, as a result of mandatory schooling and an influx of immigrants, separate curricula was developed. This separated the students who were going on to higher academic endeavors from those who were going on to more industrial focused professions. As a result, schools became internally segregated.
Despite the fact that our world is becoming more of a global community, tracking still remains a practice in the majority of public schools today. "Ability grouping has become a national assumption: more than 80% of American middle and high schools have at least two different levels of math classes for each grade" (Education, September 14, 1998).

A Look at Both Sides of the Debate

Why are some people proponents of ability grouping?
Supporters of ability grouping argue that this practice benefits the higher achieving students in our public schools. These advocates assert that talented and gifted students benefit greatly from work in accelerated classes. For instance, "Gallagher argues forcefully that ability grouping is a useful tool, especially in accelerated programs for bright children. It should not be rejected outright for approaches that ignore individual differences" (Gallagher, 1993). Even though some people use the terms ability grouping and tracking interchangeably, James J. Gallagher proposes that these terms are not synonymous. He states that the system of tracking places students in upper, middle, and lower sections with little to no consideration for modifications in lessons and/or curriculum that are needed. Gallagher separates ability grouping from tracking in that ability grouping provides students with a different curriculum designed to meet their individual, specific needs. For instance, highly talented students benefit greatly from an enhanced curriculum that is designed to broaden and deepen their learning and critical thinking skills. Overall, Gallagher feels that one reason research has shown a wide range of results about ability grouping is that the curriculum itself and the presentation of it isn't taken into account.
A second reason why some people advocate ability grouping is that curriculum, in a tracked system, is modified to meet the specific needs of a special needs student. In this way, students placed in ability groups will receive more appropriate and individualized instruction. These students are also given the opportunity to progress at their own rate, thus avoiding competition. Therefore, proponents of ability believe this will increase their self-confidence and social skills because they see themselves as successful and capable rather than facing repeated failure.

Why do some people oppose ability grouping?
Those who oppose ability grouping believe that students can often be tracked too early in their educational career. "They oppose a system which they say permanently condemns many students" (Education Week on the Web, 1998). In other words, opponents fear that students who are placed in ability groups will be labeled for the rest of their education. The earlier students are placed into a given track, the less opportunities they will have to break out of that track.
Next, opponents argue that ability grouping has negative effects on self-esteem and produces lower teacher expectations for students. Simply stated, this means that teachers who teach lower achieving students will tend to expect less from them. Clearly, "...a steady diet of lower expectations leads to a steadily low level of motivation toward school" (Education Week on the Web, 1998). High track students are generally taught by more experienced teachers and those who hold master's degrees. Consequently, inexperienced teachers are given the lower tracked students. According to research conducted by Ross, Smith, Lohr, and McNelis in 1994, remedial students were more often described negatively by their teachers. Also, there was a wider variety of positive occurrences in the regular classes as opposed to the remedial classes. This study showed that it may not be beneficial for remedial students to be given more time in a weak subject area with ineffective instructional strategies as opposed to using alternative methodologies aimed at low achievers (Oakes, 1992; Stein et al., 1989).
A third reason why some oppose ability grouping is that there are factors outside of a student's academic ability which influence placement. A disproportionate number of minority and lower socioeconomic students end up in lower tracked classes. Similarly, parental influences are yet another factor in placement. For example, Useem conducted a study in 1992 focusing on parent's involvement in their child's math placement. By interviewing 86 mothers in suburban communities, it was found that there is a high correlation between a parent's educational background and their child's placement in junior high math. Higher educated parents tend to be more cognizant of their child's placement. These parents are also more actively involved in the school through activities and networks. In addition, they will step in and discuss and/or challenge decisions made by the school, and these parents have more influence over their children's course choices.
Finally, another reason for opposition in reference to ability grouping is the absence of peer modeling. In homogeneous classes lower ability students may not have peers that they can emulate. In other words, cooperative learning groups in any homogeneous class would likely lack social and academic diversity.

Who really benefits from ability grouping?
The answer to this question is complex. Research consistently shows that low achievers suffer the consequences of ability grouping while high achievers reap the benefits. It is also obvious that there are factors other than academic ability that play a role in ability grouping placement. This debate will undoubtedly be on-going, and research on this issue will continue to be conducted and debated.

Connections to Human Theories of Learning

How does ability grouping work against the interactive models of teaching and authentic assessment?
In one interactive model of teaching known as cooperative learning, students work in small groups to achieve a common goal. According to Ormrod: "We find justification for cooperative learning in a number of theoretical perspectives...From the standpoint of social learning theory, ...students can model effective learning and problem-solving strategies for one another" (Ormrod, 392-393). Clearly, this works best when their is a mixture of abilities and not when students are grouped homogeneously.
In another interactive approach known as peer tutoring, "...students who have mastered a topic teach those who have not, can provide an effective alternative for teaching fundamental knowledge and skills" (Ormrod, p396). If students are grouped by ability, it eliminates this wonderful technique to help enhance student learning.
It is important to also consider authentic assessment. In authentic assessment, students demonstrate their knowledge and skills in real-life tasks. "...portfolios can be used to show students' diversity of accomplishments and continuing development of skills...Some evidence indicates that ...authentic assessments promote students' learning because they tend to influence what teachers teach. Teachers tend to devote more class time to activities involving higher-level skills when they anticipate using assessment techniques that focus on such skills" (Ormrod, p315). It is important for teachers to consider this type of assessment before ability grouping because it would show students' strength in a non-traditional manner. If higher level thinking skills could be taught to all children, it would mean a way to meet the individual needs of all students without ability grouping.

How does ability grouping work against or even prevent the development of culture and community in the classroom?

Through interacting with others children discover what culture is about and how it interacts with and becomes part of their world. People teach each other through interactions with one another; a verbal exchange and through showing. When learners help each other learn, each according to their abilities, we have the formation of a community, in which respect, commitment and sharing are taking place. Jerome Bruner, through his extensive research, identifies the classroom as a mutual community that models ways of doing or knowing, provides opportunity for emulation, offers running commentary, provides scaffolding for novices and even provides a good context for teaching deliberately. He further states, it even makes possible that form of job-related division of labor one finds in effective work groups: some serving pro tem as memories for the others, or as record keepers of where things have got up to now, or as encourages or cautioners. The point is for those in the group to help each other get the lay of the land and hang of the job. Learning is an interactive process in which people learn from each other, not just by showing and telling.
When ability grouping takes place, there is that great division of those who are okay and those who need HELP! With this stigma comes the treading on children's self-esteem. Schools are the foundation for the development of self. Bruner points out that school is supposed to provide a setting in which performance has fewer esteem-threatening consequences than in the real world, presumably in the interest of encouraging the learner to try things out. Ability grouping disables the learner by drawing a box around them instead of enabling the learner to learn from experiences gained through interaction in heterogeneous settings.

How does ability grouping affect teacher expectation and motivation?

Naturally, ability grouping will affect teachers' expectations of student performance and their motivation to teach the class. Educators that teach the "honors" classes typically have higher expectations of student performance as well as a higher motivation level to teach such classes. Brophy & Good, Cooper, Harris and Rosenthal all say, in such instances, teachers "are more likely to teach more material and more difficult material, insist on high student performance, give students more opportunities to respond to questions, rephrase questions when students are having trouble answering them, and provide specific feedback about the strengths and weaknesses of various responses" (Ormrod, 316). Overall, such teachers take a more active role in each student's educational experience; they challenge their students' intellectual abilities and accept nothing less than success.
Graham says, "In contrast, teachers who hold low expectations for their students often present easy rather than challenging tasks, give students more assistance than necessary, accept low levels of performance, criticize incorrect answers to questions, and overlook good performance when it occurs" (Ormrod,450). These are frequently the teachers who are "stuck with" the remedial courses as well as the ones with the least amount of teaching experience. Usually, such teachers have the preconceived notion that their students are "failures" who have few aspirations to change that label; often their goal is simply to "survive" the year and teach the students some basic skills that will hopefully get them out of their particular remedial class. Hence, students in lower ability groups are at a disadvantage from day one compared to students in honors courses.

How does ability grouping work against the concept of distributed intelligence?

Both Jerome Bruner's (1996) and Jeanne Ormrod's (1999) discussions could be used as arguments for the necessity of heterogeneous classrooms. Distributed intelligence is the idea that a person's intelligence exists in not only himself/herself, but in the people and resources around him/her. If lower ability students are in a classroom full of other lower ability students, then the opportunities to learn from their environment are diminished. Whereas, if students are in a heterogeneous classroom, then all ability levels have a variety of intelligences from which to learn. Bruner used the example of a person's chances of winning a Nobel Prize increasing by simply working in the same laboratory as someone who has already won one.
In addition, Ormrod discusses how teachers' expectations of students influence the teachers' assessments of the student and perhaps their behavior toward the students. This can indirectly affect student achievement and performance by creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. In other words, the students may actually perform at the lower level the teacher expects of them. However, if the classroom is heterogeneous, the chances are greater that the teacher will have higher expectations for all the students than if one classroom contained all lower ability students. A heterogeneous classroom may also cause student expectations of each other to be higher, and, therefore, the students may benefit from distributed intelligence in this environment.

How does ability grouping work against a student's sense of self-efficacy?

Bandura and Schunk say, "People are more likely to engage in certain behaviors when they believe they are capable of executing those behaviors successfully--that is, when they have high self-efficacy"(Ormrod, 133). Clearly, if children are tracked into ability groups at an early age, students in the lower and even middle tracks may not feel as if they are as capable of executing certain academic tasks. In addition, students who are placed into ability groups may not feel capable of understanding and remembering ideas that are presented to them through classroom instruction. Ability grouping will surely have an effect on the way students perceive themselves as learners in specific situations.
Because self-efficacy affects behavior, students who are placed in lower tracks will undoubtedly be negatively affected. Students in lower tracks often have limited educational opportunities. Students in these tracks are given more "drill and practice" type work or even "busy" work. In this sense, because students are not necessarily being challenged, a student's sense of self-efficacy may decline. Students may even begin to choose only tasks and activities with which they feel they can succeed. More importantly, they may begin to avoid tasks with which they think they may fail. Students may not see themselves as capable of taking risks or working to reach their full potential.
Similarly, these students in lower ability groups may not be as likely to persist when they encounter obstacles in their learning. Because some students in ability groups do not perceive themselves to be as "capable" as the students in higher tracks, they may feel it is not important to give their best effort or persistence. This is especially true if students feel that they can never "break out" of a given ability group. Along the same lines, students in lower tracks may have a lower sense of self-efficacy in reference to learning and achievement. Because students are often placed in ability groups at an early age, even students who have the same ability as those in higher ability groups may perceive themselves to be less capable of successfully learning and achieving. When students are told by an educational system that they are not capable of performing beyond a certain level, they may consequently begin to believe that they will never be successful. Ability grouping, in these cases, will certainly work against their sense of self-efficacy.
Bandura says, "Students usually hold fairly accurate opinions about their own self-efficacy; They typically have a good sense of what they can and cannot do" (Ormrod, 134). Phillilps and Zimmerman say, "But sometimes students seriously underestimate their chances of success, perhaps because of a few bad experiences" (Ormrod, 134). Theorists believe that at least three factors influence a students sense of self efficacy: previous personal successes and failures, messages from others, and the successes and failures of others.
If students have been personally successful in the past, they will tend to have a greater sense of self-efficacy. Unfortunately, in a school system with ability grouping, students are told, directly and indirectly, from an early age that they can only be successful in certain academic situations. Therefore, students in lower tracks will probably not feel personally successful from their past experiences; thus, they will have lower self-efficacy. It is obvious, then, that students with a history of academic success, those generally in higher tracks, will have greater self-efficacy for academic tasks than students in lower tracks. Failure in the classroom, or perception of failure in the case of ability grouping, will most likely lead to lower self-efficacy.
Similarly, students in ability groups are being sent strong messages from those around them. Schunk says, "To some extent, students' self-efficacy beliefs are enhanced when others provide assurances that success is possible" (Ormrod, 135). Implied messages can be just as powerful as directly stated messages. By placing students in lower ability groups, we are inadvertently telling them that they are not capable of achieving beyond a certain point. In this way, our messages, direct or indirect, will negatively affect their sense of self-efficacy. With ability grouping, we are not reassuring these students that success is possible.
Following the same line of thinking, a student's sense of self-efficacy is also determined by watching the successes and failures of others. Students in lower tracks do have peers to emulate, and peer interaction is often more powerful than teacher instruction. In homogeneous ability groups, students are not able to necessarily see another student successfully solve a problem or independently learn a concept. Therefore, because these students are unable to rely on others, they must depend primarily on themselves. Without seeing other students succeed and fail, students in lower ability groups will not likely feel they have a chance of success where academic tasks are concerned, and, consequently, this may lower their sense of self-efficacy.
Clearly, we have a great responsibility as educators to help our students increase their sense of self-efficacy. We must help students feel they can succeed and execute certain behaviors that will lead toward meaningful learning. Students placed in ability groups will undoubtedly face many challenges. Often, students in ability groups may limit their choice of activities due to low self-efficacy. In addition, their sense of effort and persistence may decline, and their learning and achievement may also be affected. Also, a student's sense of self-efficacy may be negatively affected by their previous failures or perceived failures. Messages from others and a lack of peer support are other factors that may negatively influence their sense of self-efficacy. Ability grouping clearly works against a student's greater sense of self-efficacy.

How does ability grouping play an integral role in the self-fulfilling prophecy?

Grouping students based on their academic abilities plays an integral part in the lower functioning students adopting a self-fulfilling prophecy, where they feel that they are unable to succeed academically. Grouping by ability decreases a student's self-esteem when they discover that they are in the "stupid" group. This hurts their academic performance because "students must believe that they are capable of accomplishing school tasks," (Ormrod, 143). These students don't experience this. Students who are tracked into the lower academic groups become used to failing in the classroom and develop a resilient self-efficacy. This causes them "to have little confidence in their ability to succeed at school tasks in the future" (Ormrod, 135). This lack of confidence becomes a negative attitude towards the subject that the students are being tracked in. This negative attitude could move into other subject areas where the student feels that they are unable to perform academically. They would fall into the "self-fulfilling prophecy."
Ormrod says that "people tend to choose tasks and activities at which they believe they can succeed; they also tend to avoid those at which they think they will fail" (p.134). These students then feel that there is no reason to try, because they already know that they are going to fail. This would also be the "self-fulfilling prophecy." Also, these lower tracks will have more students with inappropriate behaviors. Other students in the classroom might model these behaviors, because "students often learn a great deal simply by observing other people" (Ormrod, 141). If these students were in heterogeneous classrooms, they would have more appropriate behaviors to model, including better study habits. Ormrod says that "students solve mathematics problems more successfully when they see others demonstrate the appropriate procedure" (Ormrod, 125). Students who demonstrate weaker skills in math need models that are skilled in mathematics. Another problem that faces students tracked into lower groups comes from teacher and student expectations. The teachers recognize that these groups are lower functioning, so they don't expect as much from their students' performances. The students also know that they are in the lower groups and feel that they are incapable of succeeding in a given subject area.

Conclusions

Although the reteach overwhelmingly shows that ability grouping has negative effects on students, there are many educators, politicians and parents who strongly support this practice. While our research has only touched the surface of this highly volatile debate, it has made us more aware of our own classroom practices. We, as educators, will undoubtedly continue to reflect upon ability grouping and its connections to the way our students learn.

References

Bruner, Jerome. The Culture of Education. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, 1996.

Education Week (1998). Retrieved from the World wide Web: http://www.edweek.org/

Gallagher, J. J., (1993). Ability Grouping: A Tool For Educational Excellence. The College Board Review, 168, 20-27+.

Oaks, J. (1992). Can Tracking Research Inform Practice? Technical, Normative, and
Political Considerations. Educational Researcher, 21, 12-21.

Ormrod, Jeanne. Human Learning. Merrill: Columbus, 1999.

Ratnesar, Romesh (1998). Lost in the Middle. Time. Retrieved from the World Wide Web: http://www.time.com

Ross, S. M., Smith, L. J., Lohr, L., & McNelis, M. (1994). Math and Reading Instruction in Tracked First-grade Classes. The Elementary School Journal, 95, 105-119.

Stein, M.K., Leinhardt, G., & Bickel, W. (1989). Instructional Issues for Teaching Students at Risk. R. Slavin, N. Karweir, & N. Madden (Eds.), Effective programs for students at risk(pp. 145-1940). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon.