New York school district gets ‘creative’ by tracking students for reading instruction

Everything old is new again.  A Westchester County school district is trying a “new approach” of tracking students for reading instruction.

PORT CHESTER — After cutting a staff of reading specialists from the budget, the schools are starting a new approach for children who need extra help in literacy.

All four elementary schools will dedicate one period a day to specialized literacy instruction, based on students’ needs. That replaces a practice of pulling particular children out of classes for reading assistance.

“It’s pretty creative,” said Carlos Sanchez, director of curriculum, instruction and assessment for the district. Those with the greatest needs will be grouped accordingly, and those performing above grade level will take part in enrichment programs.

Tracking, or separating students into instructional groups based on their proficiency levels, begin to fall out of favor in the 1960s because it was considered inconsistent with “equality of opportunity”.  I remember hearing one local school administrator tell parents that grouping students by ability before 8th grade would permanently scar them.  But since it’s now portrayed as a “creative” method of “specialized literacy instruction”, it may have found new acceptance by the PC police.

The fact is that meta-analysis supports ability grouping.

The academic benefits are clearest for those in the higher ability groups, but students in the lower groups are not harmed academically by grouping and they gain academic ground in some grouping programs.

Today’s proponents of ability grouping stress that it should be based on proficiency levels and should offer flexibility so students can move between groups when appropriate.  Instead of “tracking”, a more descriptive term is “flexible proficiency grouping”.

Pull-outs and differentiated instruction are problematic

To replace grouping, schools have tried pulling students out of class for additional services and offering differentiated instruction within the classroom.  But there are problems with these alternatives.

“In a pullout program, kids miss something to get something,” Sanchez said.

“In this type of set-up, everybody gets what they need. Nobody’s falling behind because they miss a half-hour of curriculum,” Sanchez said.

Differentiation places an unreasonable demand on teachers, with a recent survey finding that 83% of them find differentiation difficult to implement in practice.  No surprise there, with many classrooms including students three or more grades levels apart in academic skills.

Lumping all students together is not the best option, and could be a factor in the growing achievement gap.

This approach stunts later achievement levels for many students of varying ability levels.  But it’s the students on the lower end of the distribution curve who probably suffer the most, with fewer resources to make up for an inadequate educational process.

Cutting costs while improving student achievement
The Port Chester schools turned to proficiency grouping after budget cuts forced staff reductions.  A silver lining to the new era of controlling public education costs may be that more schools begin to try new “creative” approaches.  Over the years, heterogeneous grouping fueled the need for smaller class sizes and bigger staffs, so an unexpected outcome of “new” instructional methods could be improved academic outcomes at lower costs.

Related:

• Increase class size while improving student achievement – it can be done (Education Quick Takes)
• The Efficient Use of Teachers by Steven F. Wilson

Are smaller class sizes better? It’s complicated

Class sizes have decreased by 40% since 1960 with no resulting improvement in achievement levels.  This historical data does not definitively prove anything about the effects of class size, but it certainly does not help support the cause for smaller class sizes.

In addition to class size, many other factors have influenced student achievement over the last 50 years.  Teacher caliber and preparation has changed, along with curriculum.  Classrooms have become more inclusive, presenting different challenges to teachers.  The home environment has changed, with a higher percentage of single-parent households.  Electronic distractions are a bigger problem today at the same time technology has made some aspects of learning easier.  It should be clear that reducing class size is not a magic bullet that will counteract all problems that public schools face.

Reducing class size is expensive.  Any decision to allocate funds to cut class sizes has implications that affect other areas of learning, as noted in a recent report, “Smart Class-Size Policies for Lean Times” released by the Southern Regional Educational Board

Complicating matters is the high cost of reducing class size — one of the most expensive education reforms. Lowering the nationwide average K-12 class size would cost $10 billion a year, the report finds. Furthermore, decreasing class size would require more teacher positions to be filled, and could lower average teacher quality in the process.

The benefits to reducing class size are unclear, as noted by Chingos and  Whitehurst in the research they conducted for the Brookings Institute last year.

… Despite there being a large literature on class-size effects on academic achievement, only a few studies are of high enough quality and sufficiently relevant to be given credence as a basis for legislative action. 

Nick Gillespie of Reason.com asks if we should hire more teachers, a political question of the season.

When it comes to teachers, in 2008 (the last year for which the federal government lists actual data), there were 15.3 pupils per teacher in public K-12 schools. That’s the lowest recorded number. In 1998, the number was 16.4 and in 1978, it was 19.3. Over this same time period, the amount of money per student has increased tremendously and scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) have stayed flat at best. Since 1970, the number of public-school students has increased by about 9 percent while the number of public-school employees (teachers plus everyone else) has increased by 96 percent. Something ain’t right there. It seems quite plausible that states and local school districts can lose a good chunk of teachers without significantly impairing the quality (that may not be the right word) of K-12 public education.

Related:

• Class Size Increases Should Focus On Higher Grades, Smaller Classes Critical In Early Years: Study (Huff Post Education)
• America Has Too Many Teachers (WSJ)
• 7 Class size myths — and the truth (Washington Post)
• Latest study: Reducing class size doesn’t benefit student achievement (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)