Education Insights • 2024 • Volume 2 • Issue 1 5 arrangement ignores the complexity involved in educating diverse learners.20 The exclusive use of one instructional technique often leads to classroom issues.21 With modern ability grouping, students are placed in different levels of the same course that is more or less rigorous.22 This form of grouping is based on student performance data that requires teachers to make decisions based on curriculum objectives. Scholars have discovered strategies for creating equity and excellence by effectively sorting and selecting students.23 Advocates of ability grouping argue that flexible use of grouping between or within classrooms is more effective. Flexible ability grouping does not attach permanent labels to students and allows movement based on the student’s needs. Implementation of flexible ability grouping is sometimes confused with tracking. Burris and Garrity explained that some schools begin tracking with a kindergarten screening to determine placement for early elementary grades that develops into an educational route through the twelfth grade.24 While some schools use testing to help determine placement, others use teacher recommendations, grades, and a student’s motivation to dictate tracking placement. Some studies have concluded that students in high ability tracking courses encounter a challenging curriculum at a faster pace taught by experienced teachers perceived as the best.25 Low ability students tend to be allocated to teachers who are less experienced. Researchers have discovered that low ability students tend to correlate with the socioeconomically disadvantaged. Moreover, tracking not only widens achievement gaps, but it also reinforces social inequalities.26 Kalogrides and Loeb conducted a study involving three large urban school districts.27 Their findings corroborated that sorting students relegates low-achieving students to lesser quality teachers. Furthermore, assignment of students to educators based on a social agenda can be a disadvantage for both high and low performing students. 20 Michael F. Opitz and Michael P. Ford, Reaching Readers: Flexible & Innovative Strategies for Guided Reading (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2001). 21 JoAnne Caldwell and Michael P. Ford, Where Have All the Bluebirds Gone: How to Soar with Flexible Grouping (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2002). 22 Carol Corbett Burris and Delia T. Garrity, Detracking for Excellence and Equity (Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2008). 23 Burris and Garrity, Detracking for excellence and equity. 24 Burris and Garrity, Detracking for excellence and equity. 25 Jeannie Oakes et al., “Curriculum Differentiation: Opportunities, Outcomes, and Meaning,” in Handbook of Research on Curriculum, ed. Phillip W. Jackson (New York, NY: Macmillan, 1992), 570–608; see also Adam Gamoran, “CES Briefing: Standards, Inequality & Ability Grouping in Schools,” The University of Edinburgh, September 2002. 26 Oaks et al., “Curriculum Differentiation,” 570-608; see also Samuel R. Lucas and Mark Berends, “Sociodemographic Diversity, Correlated Achievement, and De Facto Tracking,” Sociology of Education 75, no. 4 (2002): 328. 27 Demetra Kalogrides and Susanna Loeb, “Different Teachers, Different Peers: The Magnitude of Student Sorting Within Schools,” Educational Researcher 42, no. 6 (2013): 304–16.
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