 |
Excerpt from: Can Unlike Students Learn Together? Herbert J. Walberg, University of Illinois at Chicago; Arthur J. Reynolds, University of Wisconsin-Madison and Margaret C. Wang |
ORDER ONLINE This title available for sale online. Click here for more information RELATED TITLES Addressing The Achievement Gap Edited by Ronald D. Taylor, Temple University Advancing Education Productivity: Policy Implications from National Databases Edited by Herbert J. Walberg, University of Illinois - Chicago Can Unlike Students Learn Together? Edited by Herbert J. Walberg, University of Illinois - Chicago; Arthur J. Reynolds, University of Wisconsin-Madison and Margaret C. Wang, Temple University Efficiency, Accountability, and Equity: Issues in Title 1 School Wide Program Implementation Edited by Margaret C. Wang, Temple University and Kenneth K. Wong, Brown University Improving Educational Productivity Edited by David H. Monk, Penn State University; Kenneth K. Wong, Brown University and Margaret C. Wang, Temple University Optimizing Student Success in School with the Other Three Rs: Reasoning, Resilience, and Responsibility Edited by Robert J. Sternberg, Yale University and Rena F. Subotnik, American Psychological Association School Reform Proposals: The Research Evidence Edited by Alex Molnar, Arizona State University Successful Reading Instruction Edited by Michael L. Kamil, Stanford University; JoAnn B. Manning, Temple University and Herbert J. Walberg, University of Illinois - Chicago The Scientific Basis of Education Productivity Edited by Rena F. Subotnik, American Psychological Association and Herbert J. Walberg, University of Illinois - Chicago |
|
Pages 1-4. Copyright 2004 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW Herbert J. Walberg and Arthur J. Reynolds With the federal No Child Left Behind act and new education legislation in all 50 states, educators are pressed to raise academic standards and raise achievement test scores. These developments make the central issues of this book-tracking, ability grouping, and grade retention-all the more salient. They are obviously timely topics for research and comment, and this book, for the first time, considers them together since they bear on the central question of the book's title, Can Unlike Children Learn Together? Reasonable people of good will, including policy makers, scholars, and K-12 educators, have differing views of the possible benefits, costs, and problems of these issues. What are some of the issues? Tracking, most often practiced in secondary school, groups students into courses or sequences of courses of various levels of difficulty suited to their levels of achievement. Ability grouping, most often practiced in primary schools, assigns students within classrooms to homogeneous groups of like ability. Grade retention requires students who have not attained achievement standards to repeat one or more grades. All three practices are based on the theory that children of like abilities or levels of achievement can learn together more efficiently than can heterogeneous students. Tracking, grouping, and retention are widely practiced in the United States and in many other countries, and they are founded on both theory and research. Yet other theory and research suggest that these practices may be inefficient and unwise. Some scholars argue, for example, that students retained in grade may suffer declining self-esteem, which may deter their progress so that they are less likely to catch up with grade level standards. This may be attributable, in part, to the fact that by itself, grade retention does not address the causes of academic failure. Others argue that, to the contrary, such students would eventually fall further behind and drop out whether or not they were retained. To "socially promote" ill-prepared students would depreciate the value of the high school diplomas of those who meet rigorous standards. Similarly, some argue that it is more efficient to teach subjects such as mathematics when students are similar in initial mastery. It may seem difficult, for example, to simultaneously teach consumer mathematics, algebra, and calculus to a group of students who are variously prepared for these subjects. Still, it may be argued that, in some cases, faster students may benefit from helping slower students. Schools might also provide more classroom time and intensified instructional services to at-risk students for remediation or to prevent them from falling behind in the first place. Written by national authorities who do not necessarily agree on these issues, the chapters in this book summarize the most recent theories and research emerging from the analysis of tracking, ability grouping, and grade retention. The authors are diverse in their views and both sides of the most important issues are represented. In their chapter, Karl Alexander, Doris Entwisle, Susan Dauber, and Nader Kabbani use the Beginning School Study (BSS), a panel of Baltimore school children who began first grade in the fall of 1982 in 20 city public schools, to examine the relationship between grade retention in the primary grades and high school dropout. The authors explore the question, "When children are not keeping up, is it better to hold them back or move them ahead?" Judy Temple, Arthur Reynolds, and Suh-Ruu Ou discuss their findings from the Chicago Longitudinal Study (CLS), an ongoing study of 1,539 low-income, minority students who attended kindergarten at various Chicago public schools in 1980. The study sample for the chapter includes the 1,267 students who were in Chicago public schools for at least six years and whose dropout status was known by age 20. The authors compared the dropout rates of students who were retained, those who were not, those who were retained and received academic intervention/remediation, and those who were not retained and received intervention/remediation. Shane Jimerson's chapter reviews research on the effects of grade retention as presented in studies in the last half of the twentieth century. He focuses on four seminal meta-analyses: Jackson's 1975 systematic review, Holmes' and Matthews' 1984 meta-analysis, Holmes' 1989 metaanalysis, and his own 2001 systematic review and meta-analysis. Robert Hauser, Devah Pager, and Solon Simmons explore race-ethnicity, social background, and grade retention. The chapter reports analyses of race-ethnic differences in grade retention, or enrollment below the modal grade level for a child's age, using data from the October Current Population Surveys (CPS) from 1972 to 1998. Their analyses focus on children at selected ages from 6 to 17-ages that span the period between entry to elementary school and the later years of high school. The authors observed typical developmental patterns of retention and of differentials in retention by looking at several ages. By combining data from the 27 annual surveys, trends in retention practices across three decades are identified. Maureen Hallinan, on the other hand, responds to claims that ability grouping is discriminatory because of data demonstrating that a disproportionate number of minorities are assigned to lower ability groups. She questions the claims that race is used as an indicator of assignment and suggests many other verifiable determiners of group placement. To further illuminate the effects of ability grouping on the achievement gains of Black and White students, she examines whether race affects the amount of change in a student's achievement if the student moves to a higher ability group. Adam Gamoran offers an insightful literature review of the studies exploring the tracking and de-tracking of students. He discusses many studies, most of which suggest that tracking and grouping are associated with unequal classroom instruction that results in unequal student achievement. Gamoran also explores alternatives to either strict tracking or de-tracking and offers evidence that finding a middle ground is the most ideal solution for students' optimal achievement. In order for progress to be made, Gamoran implores researchers to move beyond "existence proofs" to a more generalizable conclusion about the real advantages and disadvantages of policy choices. In his chapter on grouping, tracking, and de-tracking, James Kulik describes and evaluates experimental, correlational, and ethnographic evidence on the effectiveness of grouping and tracking systems. The experimental evidence comes from studies that examined educational outcomes for possibly equivalent students assigned to grouped and nongrouped classes. The correlational evidence draws from studies of performance differences in upper and lower tracks when characteristics of students selecting the tracks are statistically controlled. Finally, Kulik summarizes qualitative observations of upper and lower track classrooms for ethnographic evidence. While explaining the potential for invalid inferences, Lorrie Shepard summarizes research findings that show links between repeating a grade and dropping out of school. She reviews comparatives studies that evaluate the effect of grade repetition on student achievement, and she considers several recent large-scale studies on retention. Shepard concludes her chapter by using a model of the Federal Drug Administration's requirements for safe and effective treatment to consider how evidence of effectiveness should be weighed in making decisions about retention policy. The original versions of the chapters were commissioned for a National Invitational Conference "Can Unlike Students Learn Together? Grade Retention, Tracking, and Grouping," sponsored by the Laboratory for Student Success and the National Center on Education in the Inner Cities at Temple University Center for Research in Human Development and Education. The papers discuss research findings and point out the implications for policy, programs, and practices. We, the conference organizers, brought together education leaders and scholars known for their differing views. Also represented were teachers, principals, superintendents, and state and federal officials. In addition to addressing the key issues framed by the commissioned papers, the conferees devoted much of the conference time to small work groups, which discussed what is known from research, its practical applications, and next-step recommendations for raising achievement and closing the achievement gap between slower and faster learners. Their recommendations are presented in the last chapter of this book. | ||
