RESEARCH SHOWS ABILITY GROUPING HELPS, NOT HARMS UNDERPERFORMERS \doc\web\99\07\kulik.txt From: "Andrew J. Coulson" To: "ClearingHouse" Subject: [education-consumers] Re: Need Research on Leveling (Ability Grouping?) Date sent: Tue, 11 May 1999 08:18:50 -0700 Send reply to: "Andrew J. Coulson" ===================================================================== See two new Policy Briefings on how teacher training is accredited and how value-added assessment provides a better means of identifying well trained teachers. ===================================================================== The best research I've seen on homogeneous ability grouping is Kulik, 1992, but I haven't looked into this field in three or four years. Here's a brief description of his work and how it addresses the most common criticisms about grouping students by ability. ...... Begin extract ....... A great number of studies and literature reviews have been conducted on the subject of student groupings. Of these, the majority are unscientific in that they forego statistical analysis or fail to use experimental control groups. Among the remaining methodologically sound papers, the most recent and comprehensive treatment has been that of James A. Kulik at the University of Michigan... In his 1992 paper “An Analysis of the Research on Ability Grouping: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives”, Kulik identifies four distinct categories of grouping. The first, “Tracking” or “curricular tracking”, “refers to high-school programs in which students choose, on the basis of their educational and job goals, either college-preparatory, general, or vocational classes in English, mathematics, and other subjects” (Kulik, 1992, p. ix). The other three categories, collectively called “ability groupings”, are “(a) programs in which all ability groups follow the same curriculum; (b) programs in which all groups follow curricula adjusted to their ability; and (c) programs that make curricular and other adjustments for the special needs of highly talented learners.” (Kulik, 1992, p. xi). The belief that grouping by ability or interest is inherently harmful to low-aptitude students has been most notably presented by Jeannie Oakes, in her book “Keeping Track”. The evidence that she cites, however, does not support this conclusion. The problem is that she compares students in upper and lower high-school tracks to each other, rather than comparing initially equivalent students between tracked and untracked programs (Kulik, 1992, p. 14). Her results, while clearly showing a difference between college and vocational tracks, are not relevant to the hypothesis that tracking itself has a negative effect on students. Kulik notes in his paper that so little experimental evidence for this hypothesis is available that no reviewer has yet conducted a statistical meta-analysis1 of the findings. On the subject of ability grouping, by contrast, a great deal of evidence is available. Though critics such as Oakes suggest that separating students into bright, slow, and average groups hurts the self-esteem of the weaker students, the data show exactly the opposite outcome. Based on an analysis of the statistical studies of this subject, Kulik found that low-aptitude students enjoyed a small but significant increase in average self-esteem (+0.19 std. deviations). High-aptitude students suffered a smaller but still significant decrease (-0.15 std. deviations). The middle-aptitude students, and the overall average, showed no significant change. These results make sense in light of the fact that the bright students were no longer comparing themselves to the low and mid-level performers but rather to other equally talented individuals. Similarly, the slower students were less likely to be overwhelmed by children much further advanced than themselves. These studies involved programs of type (a), also called XYZ programs, in which all three groups follow the same curriculum. When academic achievement is examined, a definite pattern emerges among the different approaches to ability grouping. In XYZ programs, low and mid-level students learn the same amount as they would in mixed classes, while high-aptitude students either learn the same amount or fractionally more than they otherwise would. Programs which tailor the curricula to the different abilities of each group show significant gains for all three student ability levels, averaging between 2 and 3 months of additional learning per year, on a grade-equivalent scale. These gains are more or less equally enjoyed by high, low, and middle aptitude pupils. Finally, plans particularly aimed at classes of high-aptitude pupils show dramatic gains of approximately one full year for acceleration (teaching the same material in a shorter period of time), and between 5 and 6 months for enrichment (teaching additional material in the same amount of time), both on grade-equivalent scales. In other words, acceleration programs carefully adjusted to the abilities of very fast learners, generated a 100 percent increase in the rate at which they could cover the material. Enrichment programs which integrated new material into their curriculum yielded 40 to 50 percent increases in learning. These results confirm the common sense notion that the more an educational program’s speed and content are tailored to the abilities of its students, the more those students will learn, regardless of their aptitude level. Obviously a student who has difficulty with algebra and arithmetic will benefit far less from a class in calculus than he or she would from one focusing on the mathematical basics. Similarly, the progress of children with a good command of grammar and spelling is necessarily slowed when they are placed in the same English classes as students without these skills. Unfortunately for America’s school children, ability grouping has been falling increasingly out of fashion among public educators since the 1960s. ........... End extract ......... The full Kulik citation is: Kulik, J. (1992). An Analysis of the Research on Ability Grouping: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Storrs, CT: National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented, The University of Conneticut ===================================================================== EDUCATION CONSUMERS CLEARINGHOUSE networking and information for parents and taxpayers on the internet Subscriptions & Archives: http://education-consumers.com or You are currently subscribed to education-consumers as: arthurhu@halcyon.com TO UNSUBSCRIBE: Send a blank email to leave-education-consumers-989462S@lists.dundee.net ===================================================================== For less mail, click on the following link and choose 1) a daily digest, 2) a daily list of subjects, or 3) no mail (read postings on Web) http://lists.dundee.net/scripts/lyris.pl?enter=education-consumers For more help & info: http://www.lyris.com/help or