Group items tagged

It also prohibits discrimination in ability grouping or tracking students.

Assignment to Ability Grouping and Tracking School districts have a responsibility to ensure that they do not use ability grouping or tracking practices that result in discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin. Ability grouping is the assignment of students to classes or instructional groups based upon the students' level of ability or achievement. Tracking is the assignment to different courses of instruction. Ability grouping and tracking sometimes result in courses with substantially disproportionate enrollments of minority or nonminority students. When that happens, the ability grouping or tracking may violate Title VI. To ensure that the ability grouping or tracking practices comply with Title VI, the criteria used by schools to assign students to ability groups or tracks must be nondiscriminatory. Students must be given the opportunity to move from one ability group to another, or in and out of assigned tracks according to their progress. If ability grouping or tracking results in classes with substantially disproportionate enrollments of students of one race or minority group, school districts must be able to demonstrate that there is a valid educational justification for their ability grouping or tracking practices.

school districts should be careful to use appropriate criteria and evaluation and testing methods before assigning students to specialized classes or courses of study. Tests must be educationally sound indicators of a student's particular needs and achievement, in order to avoid student assignment to inappropriate courses.

tracking's consequences for the allocation of students of differing abilities and income within and between public and private schools

socioeconomic status is a predictor of track assignment in public schools. For the entire population, public-sector tracking has small aggregate effects on achievement and welfare, but results in significant redistribution from lower- to higher-ability students.

I am always puzzled by the arguments of those who contend that excellence and equity are mutually exclusiv

Every one of these achievements is a result of the pursuit of equity. Excellence followed.

Our International Baccalaureate classes, which originally began as part of a gifted program, have been open for over a decade to any student who wants to enroll.

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,

ome forms of grouping can result in increased student achievement

academic, social, and psychological effects of a variety of grouping practices upon learners who are gifted and talented

there are varying academic outcomes for the several forms of ability grouping that have been studied (i.e., tracking, regrouping for specific instruction, cross-grade grouping, enrichment pull-out, within-class grouping, and cluster grouping);

full-time ability grouping (tracking) produces substantial academic gains; (d) pullout enrichment grouping options produce substantial academic gains in general achievement, critical thinking, and creativity;