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Writer's pictureJoanne Jacobs

1 classroom, 5 achievement levels: The learning chasm

Trying to teach students who are way above and way below grade level in the same classroom puts an impossible burden on teachers, reports Vince Bielski on RealClear Investigations (RCI).

In 70 percent of fourth-grade classrooms, student performance varies from second- to sixth-grade levels, a 2021 study found.


It gets worse each year. In a 2014-15 study of sixth graders in two large and racially diverse urban school districts, 59 percent of math classrooms and 82 percent of English classrooms had a gap of five or more grade levels.


"Pandemic lockdowns widened the spread even more" with "low-income students of color who spent more time in remote instruction" dropped even farther behind, according to a 2022 study, Bielski writes.


Reformers pushed to end ability grouping decades ago because students placed in remedial classes made little progress. Instead teachers are supposed to "differentiate" instruction for various achievement levels.

“If you want to be called a racist, go out and say that you're for ability grouping,” says Jonathan Plucker, a professor of education at Johns Hopkins University who studies and consults with schools on this issue. “But I’ve spent my career trying to help every kid grow academically, and I think the research says that ability grouping is a better way to do it.

In recent years, school districts have eliminated honors classes and exam schools in the name of diversity, write Bielski. Top students make less progress in mixed classrooms.

Some schools are trying “schoolwide cluster grouping” to motivate gifted and high-achieving students while avoiding the stigma of a remedial track, he reports. In one version of the model, a teacher would have three levels of students to handle. A cohort of gifted students and another of high achievers share a classroom with grade-level students. Another classroom might mix high achievers, average and below average students. The approach can motivate lower achieving students to advance to higher levels, he writes, and is "backed by an important paper that synthesized the results of 13 meta-analyses on ability grouping."

4 Comments


Malcolm Kirkpatrick
Malcolm Kirkpatrick
Mar 10, 2023

The Nobel-laureate economist James Buchannan attributed his success, in part, to his attendance in a one-room schoolhouse. Because the teacher could not address all age levels simultaneously, she turned the older students loose to work on their own lessons at their own pace.

Self-paced instruction and credit by exam would bust the $794.57 billion per year (2019-20 total) US K-12 credential racket.

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Guest
Mar 08, 2023

It's not the acheivement levels, its the developmental levels. Attempting differentiation when a large portion of the group does not have the ability to allow differentiation to occur is a disaster. The attention spans, the emotional needs of many are...inappropriate for the group task.

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Guest
Mar 08, 2023
Replying to

That gap is between students born the same day and year as well. Here, its interesting because the poorest students have much in common with the upper middle class -- extensive travel and nature experience, and a second language. The working poor are basically starving for life experiences as the grandparents are overwhelmed while parents work - they can't afford ecs, daycare, sports, or the gas to get to the library.


What's hardest here is the attention span differences and the frustration tolerances . Absolutely impossible for a K-2 class to get anything done when some students are in parallel play and using a toddler's vocab, while others are wanting to discuss the space program, dark matter, etc. and ge…

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