Ability Grouping In American Schools

Ability Grouping:

Should it be used in American Schools? Modern day American schools can be compared to factories. Students are taught basic concepts and moved along a conveyor belt through the school system. Most importantly, though, students are grouped by age. What happens when a student’s academic ability is higher than the grade level they are in? That is where ability grouping comes in. The definition of ability grouping is simple because there are two main parts to this kind of teaching and the importance of this kind of schooling is astounding and how it works is fairly easy to understand. There are great benefits to grouping American students by ability, but with all good there is bad, even with the criticism of the late twentieth

In classrooms without ability grouping teachers have to teach to the middle, or average, students. This leaves out two thirds of the students in the classroom (Yee, 2013). That is completely unacceptable in the high accountability world of teachers. There are also disadvantages for all students in mixed ability classrooms. Low achieving students are often faced with comparison to the high achieving students, and high achieving students are often bored when they are constantly reviewing material they already understand.

Moving students into groups within the classroom is critical to the helping each pupil to reach his/her full potential. When moved into groups, students in lower achieving groups profit in self-evaluation because they have been removed from high-achieving peers. Along with that, high achieving students profit because they are able to learn more complex material and learn at a faster pace that is more suited to them (Mulkey, Catsambis, Carr, & Crain,

In Yee, 2013 a teacher named Ms. Vail talks about students losing confidence if they are placed in a low achieving group. “When she moves students to new groups, she tells them it is because she can best help them there, and she believes they are seeing the grouping positively. She said ‘It has to be done properly – you can’t make a kid feel small because they’re in group A,’ her lowest achieving group, she said. ‘If you don’t have a stigma attached to the group, then I don’t see the problem.’” This is very important, teachers have to make sure that all students feel equal and wanted in the classroom. When there is no stigma attached to the groups, none of the disadvantages of ability grouping have the opportunity to occur. Also from Yee, 2013 “Teachers and principals who use grouping say that the practice has become indispensable, helping them to cope with the widely varying levels of ability and achievement.” Also, In Ms. Sear’s classroom, the minority students are spread evenly throughout her