The bottom line on student tracking
In recent days I have published two pieces on the practice of grouping students by ability in schools,one post against and one post in favor of it. Here is a new piece on the subject in the form of a response to a story in Monday’s New York Times, titled, “Grouping Students by Ability Regains Favor in Classroom.” This post was written by Kevin Welner, director of the National Education Policy Center, housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education.By Kevin Welner
Readers of an article on ability groupings on the front page of Monday’s New York Times couldn’t help but come away uninformed in at least three different areas.
1. While ostensibly about ability grouping, the practices described in the article appear to be in-class regrouping, or differentiation, within elementary school classrooms. The article does make clear that it’s focused just on elementary schools, but readers will likely be confused when it shifts to a broader discussion of tracking. At the secondary school level (middle and high), tracking is a very different animal – students are placed in a given level or “tracked” classroom based on their perceived abilities.
The elementary school practices described in the article are certainly “grouping” but they have few of the characteristics that dominate actual between-classroom tracking at the secondary levels and sometimes at the elementary level. The article describes
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