Gisselle Esquivel Honors English 10 Period 7 13 April, 2017 The Effects of Ability Grouping in Schools Over the past years ability grouping has been on the rise as one of the most commonly discussed and controversial topic in the academic world. So many people around the world have accepted and become used to ability grouping being used in schools. Individuals do not realize that grouping by ability causes more harm than it does good. There has to be an end to the program in existing schools and not be put in act in schools. Ability grouping has been so widely accepted and has only show the people one side of what ability grouping really does to the children, there needs to be a balance. Ability grouping is known to be beneficial for …show more content…
Even though many people may think that ability grouping is best for the children the people do not know that most grouping is based on students' background. The NEA has tried to straighten out this issue of the non privileged children being put into lower track groups "yet the practice of separating students by "ability" still contributes to the poor academic performance of low-income and minority students" (Futrell and Gomez 1). Ability grouping is not only non beneficial it is also an unfair practice, which is probably the worst type of discrimination that can occur to a student, not being able to challenge themselves since they have already been label as incapable to because of their background. An example of a school detracking their school and it showing improvement in the low-income students is in the Rockville Centre School district. After three years of dismantling ability grouping from their schools an increase from 22 percent to 71 percent occurred in the amount of low-income students earning a regents diploma, which also surpassed the percentage of white and Asian students who earned the diploma (Futrell and Gomez 1). Labeling students not only contributes to poor academic performance it also causes the students to develop self-esteem issues, social problems and loss in motivation. Students start to notice that they …show more content…
When students are separated into their groups they most likely stay in that group level which makes it difficult for students in the ability grouping program to move up levels. This mostly targets the low- achieving students, ability grouping is unlikely to give students an equal opportunity to master the subjects enough to pass their assessments. Ability grouping also makes it even more difficult for the lower track students to challenge themselves. A solution to this is to detrack schools currently using the grouping by ability program. An example of detracking schools being a solution is the Rockville Centre School District on Long Island, they began to detrack their schools in 1989 in effort of improving their academic performance of students. The school had started to see improvement in the lower tracks students' scores, there was an impressive percentage boost of the amount of students who passed (Futrell and Gomez 1). However not all schools are smart enough to change their system like the Rockville Centre School District did, which means that there are still many students struggling to get through the obstacles that keeps them from being able to reach their full capacity. There has been occasions where teachers will hold a student back from moving up a level because the teacher thinks that the