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1. What is ability tracking ?
2. How does ability tracking affect students ?
3. How effective is ability tracking ?
4. Does ability tracking give each student equal education opportunities ?

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Source 1 : National Education Association 

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Source 1 : National Education Association 

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In the article, Research Spotlight on Academic Ability Grouping by the NEA research team, they states that ability tracking is is the practice of grouping children together according to their academic talents. The team does this by using logos. Ultimately, they are informing the reader on what ability tracking is.

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In the article, Is Ability Tracking the Way to Go -- Or Should It Go Away? published on Education World by a person unknown, he or she states that ability grouping increases student achievement by letting teachers to teach at paces that each group of student needs to be taught at, some faster or lower than others. He or she does this by statistics and logos. Ultimately, he or she is trying to persuade the reader to believe that Ability Tracking is the way to go.

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From time to time, Education World reposts a previously published article that we think might be of interest to administrators. Before reposting, we update all links and add new resources to the articles. We hope you find this archived article to be of value

Logic, emotion, and research often clash in the longstanding debate over the advantages and disadvantages of ability grouping (tracking). Should it be left up to the courts to decide whether such grouping is fair or not?

Is ability grouping (or tracking) an efficient way to handle differences in student abilities? Does such grouping benefit students---or does it unfairly label them? Research, logic, and emotion often clash when responding to those questions.

Ability grouping increases student achievement by allowing teachers to focus instruction, proponents say. Teaching a group of like-ability students allows teachers to adjust the pace of instruction to students' needs. For example, a teacher might instruct at a slower pace---providing more repetition and reinforcement---with a group of low-achieving students than he or she would with a group of high achievers. A class of high achievers might be given more opportunities for independent research and cooperative group discussion than a group of low achievers would be given; high achievers might be asked to apply their skills to solving higher-level thinking problems too.

So goes the theory behind grouping by ability.

But is that fair? Is the theory supported by research? And what do the courts have to say about grouping by ability?

In a comprehensive review of research on different types of ability grouping in the elementary school, Robert E. Slavin (1986) found that some forms of grouping can result in increased student achievement. Slavin's review focused on five grouping plans.

Grouping students as a class by ability for all subjects doesn't improve achievement.

Students grouped heterogeneously for most of the school day, but regrouped according to ability for one or two subjects, can improve achievement in those areas for which they are grouped.

Grouping heterogeneously except for reading instruction (commonly referred to as "The Joplin Plan") improves reading achievement.

Nongraded instruction---instruction that groups students according to ability rather than age and that allows students to progress at their own rates---can result in improved achievement.

In-class grouping---a common approach in which teachers break out two or three ability-based groups within a class for instruction---can benefit student achievement. (Slavin's research supports this practice for math instruction. Findings related to reading instruction aren't as conclusive; in-class grouping is so widespread a practice for teaching reading that it's difficult to find "control groups" for such a comparative study.)

Any grouping plan, Slavin concludes, must allow for frequent reevaluation of students' skills, and such grouping must allow for easy reassignment of students who show progress.

"UNTRACK" THOSE SCHOOLS!

Ability grouping doesn't improve achievement and is harmful to students. Such grouping should be banned, says Anne Wheelock, author of Crossing the Tracks: How "Untracking" Can Save America's Schools (New Press, 1992). The practice of grouping by ability is too widespread and too widely accepted, Wheelock adds.

Wheelock says that about 60 percent of elementary schools practice some form of whole-class ability grouping, including Chapter 1 classes and special classes for gifted students. Survey results published in Education Week (see Resources below) in 1995 found that two-thirds of U.S. high schools were at least moderately tracked.

Ability tracking is harmful for a number of reasons, Wheelock told Instructor in A Talk with Anne Wheelock.

The criteria used to group kids are based on subjective perceptions and fairly narrow views of intelligence.

Tracking leads students to take on labels---both in their own minds as well as in the minds of their teachers---that are usually associated with the pace of learning (such as "slow" or "fast" learners). Because of this, we end up confusing students' pace of learning with their capacity to learn.

We associate students' placement with the type of learners they are and therefore create different expectations for different groups of students.

Once students are grouped, they generally stay at that level for their school careers, and the gap between achievement and levels becomes exaggerated over time. The notion that students' achievement levels at any given time will predict their achievement in the future becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Wheelock doesn't dismiss all forms of ability grouping. For instance, she notes, a group might be set up within a class to help students who are having difficulty with a specific skill. Or a group might be formed to "pre-teach" a skill to a group of students who might have difficulty grasping a concept.

ABILITY GROUPING'S EVERLASTING EFFECTS

Carol Nelson tells the stories of "Rick" and "Monica," two of her college students who were majoring in elementary education in Organizing for Effective Reading Instruction. Those two students talked about the effects on them of ability grouping when they were in elementary school.

Rick wrote about why he always worked so hard to remain in the middle group. "The higher group, you see, always had so much stuff to do and I never saw those kids out to recess because they had to stay in and finish what they had started. Now the lower group was not the group to be in either. Even as young as first grade, I knew what it meant to be in the lower group and how those kids were thought of as "lower" than the rest of us. This is the problem with labeling and grouping."
Monica wrote "I have nothing but bad memories about my reading groups in elementary school. I was constantly being left behind and humiliated by my teacher No attempt to help me as an individual by my teacher was ever made---and if it had, it probably wouldn't have been a pleasant one. I think that teachers should be more patient with those students who have reading problems and maybe offer other ways to help than put them in the low group."

BUT IS ABILITY GROUPING LEGAL?

Writing in Harvard Educational Review (see Resources below), Kevin G. Welner and Jeanne Oakes assert that the courts can play an important role in "detracking" America's schools. They point to research (Fullwood, 1991) that revealed that 53 percent of White Americans regarded African Americans as likely to be less intelligent that Whites; 55 percent of White Americans felt Latinos were likely to be less intelligent that Whites. Where does that perception come from? The perception might be based, in part, on school systems that track their students according to ability. Brown v. Board of Education (1954) might have started the era of desegregation, Oakes says, but ability grouping has canceled out many of the possible benefits of that landmark decision. Tracking, in many cases, is just another form of racial segregation. One test of the use of ability grouping was highlighted in an article which appeared in the magazine Principal (see Resources below). In that article, authors Perry A. Zirkel and Ivan B. Gluckman wrote:

Approximately half the students in the Augusta, Arkansas, school district are African American. The district has used ability grouping since 1970, when it was forced to dismantle its segregated system. In 1991, an African American parent filed suit, claiming that the district's ability grouping and placement practices violated the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause.
In 1992. . . . the district changed its policy of maintaining three homogeneous ability groups (low, middle, and high) for each class, an arrangement which saw a disproportionate number of African American students in the lower ability groups. Under the new policy, grades K-3 would gradually move from homogenous to heterogeneous grouping over a three-year period, and grades 4-6 would retain homogenous grouping only for math, reading, and language arts under a so-called "modified Joplin plan."

The court decided that the Augusta district's pervasive ability grouping policy for grades K-3 violated the Fourteenth Amendment, but that the modified Joplin plan for grades 4-6 did not violate the Constitution [Simmons v. Hooks, 843 F. Supp. 1296 (E.D. Ark. 1994)]. The difference appeared to be the evidence, in the form of expert testimony, that grouping for reading had beneficial effects that outweighed the stigma of homogeneity.

In their conclusion, Zirkel and Gluckman note, "the legal boundaries are, on the whole, notably broad with regard to ability grouping. Principals should recognize that the answer to the issue of heterogeneous versus homogeneous groups is in many cases a matter for educators, not judges, to determine."

THE DEBATE CONTINUES

So is tracking a fair way for educators to deal with the wide disparity in students' abilities? Or is it a form of discrimination that has few benefits for students and ought to be outlawed? The issue has been the subject of debate for many years---and will be for years to come. One thing is certain: Further research is essential for educators (and, perhaps, for the courts) charged with making informed decisions about the advantages or disadvantages of ability grouping.

Article by Gary Hopkins
Education WorldÂ® Editor-in-Chief
Copyright Â© 2006 Education World

Related Resources

It's the Law: Ability Grouping
By Perry A. Zirkel and Ivan B. Gluckman,Principal, September 1995.

Ability Grouping: The New Susceptibility of School Tracking Systems to Legal Challenges
By Kevin G. Welner and Jeanne Oakes,Harvard Educational Review, Fall 1996.

Tracking May Not Be as Common a Practice as Assumed, Study Says
The results of a survey published inEducation Week, May 3, 1995.

An Organizational Analysis of the Effects of Ability Grouping
A study of the effects of ability grouping in 92 honors, regular, and remedial English classes in eighth and ninth grade, by Adam Gamoran, Martin Nystrand, Mark Berends, and Paul C. LePore,American Educational Research Journal, Winter 1995.

Learning: Tracking
By Naomi Barko,Parents, January 1996.

Related Sites

Does Ability Grouping Help or Hurt? -- A Talk with Anne Wheelock
Grouping students by ability is one of the most talked-about topics in education. Does it benefit students? Inhibit their learnin? Not matter?

Ability Grouping in Elementary Schools
An ERIC Digest report by John Hollifield. This report summarizes the conclusions of Robert E. Slavin's 1986 comprehensive review of research on the different types of ability grouping in elementary schools.

Organizing for Effective Reading Instruction
An ERIC Digest report by Carol Nelson looks at studies of within-class reading ability grouping.

Originally published 07/18/1997
Last updated 02/24/2009

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Is Ability Grouping the Way to Go---Or Should It Go Away? | Education World

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From time to time, Education World reposts a previously published article that we think might be of interest to administrators. Before reposting, we update all links and add new resources to the articles. We hope you find this archived article to be of value Logic, emotion, and research often clash in the longstanding debate over the advantages and disadvantages of ability grouping (tracking).

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In the article Setting the Record Straight on Ability Grouping published on EdWeek.org on May 20, 2010 by Paula Olszewski-Kubilius, she claims that ability tracking or grouping is the low-cost way to go. Olszewski-Kubilius does this by using ethos, or providing evidence from already conducted experiments. Ultimately, she is trying to motivate schools to take part in ability grouping or tracking.

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First Person

If committed educators could be easily trained to implement a low-cost intervention that boasted consistent learning gains for all students, headlines would herald the discovery of the educational holy grail.

That low-cost intervention is here and readily available. It's called ability grouping. Unfortunately, despite overwhelming evidence that the flexible and appropriate use of this intervention benefits learners at all levels, some have opted to smear it as an evil twin of tracking and to lament its resurgence in the nation's classrooms.

Flexible ability grouping, when used appropriately, works. According to a 2010 meta-analysis by Kelly Puzio and Glenn Colby, students who were grouped by ability within a class for reading were able to make up to an additional "half of a year's growth in reading." Similarly, a 2013 National Bureau of Economic Research study of students who were grouped by ability found that the performance of both high and low performing students significantly improved in math and reading, demonstrating the universal utility of this tool, particularly as our classrooms become more academically diverse.

For years, ability grouping has been unduly criticized and misconstrued. Contrary to what some may say, flexible ability grouping is not tracking, which typically sets a far more rigid and defined path for a student to traverse and where breaking out of one track and into another often requires the skills of Harry Houdini.

Flexible ability grouping could not be more different. When used properly, ability grouping does not affix permanent labels to students and does not prevent students from moving-either up or down-during their educational careers. Rather, flexible ability grouping is a tool used to match a student's readiness for learning with the instruction provided, delivering the right content to the right student at the right pace and at the right time.

Ability grouping should not be static. Rather, flexible ability grouping, as its name implies, is an ongoing process where student assignments can and do change based on performance, requiring teachers to be on the lookout for signs of improved competency and skill development in their students.

It must be based on student performance data so decisions are objective and not subject to bias, and it must be customized by subject, never assuming that because a student is either advanced or in need of remediation in one subject he or she would require that same level of instruction in all subjects.

Constant Reassessment

To understand how flexible ability grouping works, imagine the following scenario: A 2nd grader's past performance, including test scores, indicates he needs some additional support in reading. As a result, at the start of the school year, he starts off in a less-advanced reading group.

Over the course of several months, as a result of instruction aimed just above his skill level, his reading ability improves markedly. Based on daily work, his teacher notes this progress and moves him to a more advanced reading group. This same process of grouping based on data and reexamining based on performance happens constantly throughout the year for all students.

As noted above, ability grouping is not an effortless panacea for all of our education woes. Teachers must be willing and able to detect signs students are demonstrating changes-hopefully for the better-in their learning abilities and thus may be ready for movement to a different group. They must also be trained on how to differentiate their instruction to learners at different levels within the same classroom. To be effective, this requires that teachers are able to add advanced content and adjust pacing for students who are ready to move ahead. It's important to emphasize that without modified instruction, the learning gains that are possible will fail to materialize.

When flexible ability grouping is used appropriately and effectively, students win. They receive the right content at the right time from teachers better able to direct their instruction to a smaller group of students. Additionally, because the students are concentrated with others who have similar levels of knowledge and learning rates and clear learning goals, they can better challenge one another to grow further.

The latest evidence makes clear that flexible ability grouping is effective, enabling students to make the types of gains all educators should desire and expect. The time has come to dispel the myths, to stop criticizing ability grouping using disingenuous rhetoric and to redouble efforts to support teachers and others as to how to appropriately use this tool so all students can maximize their abilities and achieve their full potential.

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Setting the Record Straight on Ability Grouping

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First Person If committed educators could be easily trained to implement a low-cost intervention that boasted consistent learning gains for all students, headlines would herald the discovery of the educational holy grail. That low-cost intervention is here and readily available. It's called ability grouping.

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In the article Ability Grouping, Tracking, and How Schools Work published on Bookings.edu by Tom Loveless on April 3, 2013, he claims that ability tracking is growing in the US and give a run down on what it is. Loveless does this by using statistics and states the percentage it has grown over the years. Ultimately, he is suggesting schools to use ability tracking.

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The 2013 Brown Center Report on American Education was released two weeks ago. One of the studies is on ability grouping. A key finding is that elementary teachers are using ability grouping again. Ability grouping is the practice of dividing classes into small instructional groups, especially for teaching reading. According to data collected by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the frequency of ability grouping's use in fourth grade reading instruction rose about two and a half times, from 28 percent in 1998 to 71 percent in 2009.

This year marks the 30 th anniversary of the publication of How Schools Work by Rebecca Barr and Robert Dreeben, a book in which ability grouping plays an important role. I became aware of the book at the University of Chicago in 1988 as a Ph.D. student. Robert Dreeben was my program advisor and dissertation chair.

Ability grouping is one method by which educators differentiate instruction. The term "differentiation" refers to the many ways that schools try to tailor different learning experiences to children's varying levels of performance. In the 1980s, I earned a masters degree in special education and taught both learning handicapped and gifted students. Differentiation was in my blood when I arrived at Chicago.

Differentiation was also under fire. Ability grouping and tracking were becoming taboo. The popular research at that time, which was predominantly qualitative and impressionistic, condemned tracking and ability grouping for harming black, Hispanic, and economically disadvantaged students. This literature often depicted teachers as stupid or evil: stupid by robotically following tradition and unwittingly imposing harmful practices on students; evil by harboring race- or class-based prejudices that manifested in low expectations for many kids.

That is what made How Schools Work so refreshing. The book honors teachers in a profound way, not in a "you are all saints and we love you" way, but in a manner much more meaningful-by studying teachers' work. Barr and Dreeben followed a group of Chicago first grade teachers as they taught reading. A wealth of data was collected so that hypotheses could be tested empirically. In How Schools Work, readers discover that first grade reading groups operate within a grand organizational scheme: groups nested in classrooms, classrooms housed within schools, schools situated within a big urban district. Seemingly routine tasks of teaching are transformed into thoughtful, important activities. Teachers do not appear to be stupid or evil. They appear to be professionals engaged in purposeful activities.

In 1988, "The Formation and Instruction of Ability Groups," was published in the American Journal of Education. Adam Gamoran, a Chicago graduate student at the time, worked on the project producing this paper. Dreeben and Barr describe as "technological" the ways in which teachers form groups and then instruct them; not technological in the sense of using computers or electronic media but in the sense of applying craft knowledge in the pursuit of an occupational end, in this case, the goal of organizing a classroom full of first graders so that they can be taught how to read.

The notion that teaching is primarily intuitive ("teachers are born not made") was directly refuted. When they teach reading, teachers must juggle four inputs, each with its own constraints -student aptitude, the difficulty of reading materials, time devoted to instruction, and coverage of curriculum. The combination of these four inputs must be expertly managed to optimize learning. Sure, sometimes teachers have to fly by the seat of their pants while teaching, but for most of time, they employ craft knowledge to attain just the right mix. Kids do in fact learn how to read, and first grade, more than any other grade, is where that wonderful accomplishment can be observed while it happens.

Teachers aren't perfect. They can make mistakes. They can form groups that are too large, too small, or too unwieldy in composition; move groups too fast or too slow; teach from a curriculum that is too demanding or too easy; or fail to provide enough time for instruction. They can also be unfair - even bigoted - but that's not the norm.

It is heartening to note that as the use of ability grouping is increasing a new generation of researchers is bringing sophisticated statistical techniques (and open minds) to bear on questions involving both ability grouping and tracking. Tracking, the middle and high school practice of grouping students into separate classes as opposed to grouping students within a class, has always drawn the most scholarly attention. And the most opprobrium.

In a recent NBER working paper, Courtney A. Collins and Li Gan classify Dallas schools as sorted or non-sorted based on the heterogeneity of classes in math or reading achievement. The study also considers heterogeneity in the dispersion of students identified as gifted and talented, limited English speaking, or special education. Sorting is found to produce significantly positive effects in both reading and math - and for both high and low achievers. The researchers conclude:

This study has valuable policy implications because unlike many school policy variables, the composition of classes can often be changed with little need for increased funds. A school with a fixed number of classrooms and teachers can increase efficiency by rearranging students in the most effective way possible. This study suggests that creating classes with lower levels of dispersion of score or ability level may improve the achievement outcomes for students across the score distribution (Collins and Gan, 2013, page 20).

The study joins a long line of research dating back to at least the 1920s. The overriding concerns have been to determine whether tracking and ability grouping are good or bad (whether they produce positive effects) and whether they are equitable (even if some students benefit, is it at the expense of others). The evidence on these questions is mixed. To adequately summarize the literature would require a series of posts, and I will return to this topic in the future. The main point I would like to make in concluding this post pertains to the renewed popularity of tracking and ability grouping, not to whether either practice is warranted by research.

In the late 1980s and into the 1990s, powerful groups condemned ability grouping and tracking, among them, the National Governors Association, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and the Children's Defense Fund. The use of ability grouping dropped significantly in the 1990s. Tracking in middle schools declined in all subjects but math. According to the NAEP data reported in the Brown Center Report, ability grouping has made a strong comeback in the past decade.

The resurgence of ability grouping accentuates the need for new research questions. If educators are going to use ability grouping again, how should they employ this tool so as to maximize potential benefits and minimize potential harms? How large should groups be? How many groups should a teacher create, and how much time should be spent with each one? Do low achieving groups require more direct instruction than high achieving groups? How often should students be assessed and regrouped? Are different curricula more effective with different groups? Notice the thrust of these inquiries. Such questions are directed towards producing new knowledge on the craft of teaching and to guide teachers in improving their practice, not towards the policy question of whether to group or not to group.

A fine example of this kind of study is provided by Carol McDonald Connor and colleagues at Florida State University. The researchers conducted a randomized field trial of software that organizes first grade reading instruction. The algorithm employed by the software considers each child's entering skill level and progress made during the school year to recommend several dimensions of instruction, including assignment to small, homogenous ability groups, the amount of time spent on code- versus meaning-focused literacy, and teacher/child versus child-managed delivery. The targets for these recommendations are dynamic; that is, they change in response to periodic assessment of children's progress. Children in the experimental classrooms gained about two months in reading achievement over those in the control group.

I hope the new generation of researchers will take up more questions like those in the FSU study. The debate over tracking and ability grouping has gone on for nearly a century. Research has not answered the key questions in dispute, at least not to the protagonists' satisfaction. It's time for some different questions. How should researchers proceed? A good place to start is reading How School's Work. It's just as fresh and illuminating today as when it was published thirty years ago.

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Ability Grouping, Tracking, and How Schools Work

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The 2013 Brown Center Report on American Education was released two weeks ago. One of the studies is on ability grouping. A key finding is that elementary teachers are using ability grouping again. Ability grouping is the practice of dividing classes into small instructional groups, especially for teaching reading.

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In this pdf, The Tracking and Ability Grouping Debate, they argue that ability tracking and grouping is a very good idea and should be used more in schools around the US. The author does this by stating their opinion and the topic and gives examples of tracking and grouping in use and it worked out well. Ultimately, the author is trying to convince schools to put ability tracking and grouping in play.