There's a lot of research that suggests that tracking (different groupings according to performance) is helpful to the high-achieving kids but actually harmful to the middle- and low-achieving kids.

That said, on at least an anecdotal level I feel like grouping should work, if only we can figure out a way to do it without kids feeling like they're in the "dumb" class and therefore shouldn't even bother. The last two years (okay, one-and-a-half) I was in those classes, and boy did those kids know it.

And while differentiation within a heterogenous group is the current watchword (right alongside standardization @@), in practice I have yet to see anyone successfully do it in secondary math. We all agree that it's the goal, but hell if I know how to do it -- and I've observed some darn good teachers who also don't know how.

t /all-of-1.5-years-experience-knowitall

Oh, and Fay? Dressing like that is one of the perks of teaching that age group! Embrace it!

ETA: Mind you, tracking ends up putting kids who are behind in math in the behind-in-English classes as well, just because of scheduling, which is just dumb. So there's that problem too. So maybe the problem is with that kind of grouping, and not so much with within-class groups.

For instance, thinking one's mother is a bloody cow for no reason other than she's there is not healthy.

I think its perfectly reasonable, she's certainly been a bloody cow without you getting annoyed. It all balances out.

Students are tested regularly in multiple areas and are promoted to more challenging course work as their skills improve.

Oh, man. This is totally the dream. And if they've got administrative support for all the assessing and progress-tracking and designing different tracks and all of that? Hallelujah.

What usually happened to me in middle school and early high school was that I'd get annoyed at the teachers for requiring us to do work that I considered "too easy," and so I wouldn't do it. There were some teachers who figured this out, and started giving me more challenging stuff that was designed so that I'd have to do the regular work to be able to do it. Then there were others who refused to let me do anything else until I finished the regular work. (Then there was the algebra teacher who marked me down ten points whenever I did a test in pen rather than pencil -- my mom remembers some arguments with him where she was tempted to ask whether the 40-year-old teacher or the 12-year-old kid was being more immature.)

I had some great teachers. But most of the stuff that I thought made them great, it was clear that they were working outside the system of what they were "supposed" to do, and a lot of it was stuff that I recall the administration specifically telling them not to do.

it isn't normal to have every kid working on the exact same thing, surely?

In my commonwealth-educated experience, we were all working on the same thing the whole time. At least until it came to the point where we chose O-levels.

I'm having a fleeting memory of being streamed, but it wasn't for much or a long time.

Just to be clear, differentiation is not the same thing as grouping. There are a ton of techniques; the idea is simply to allow learners to progress at their own pace. Sorry about the confusion! Teaching, bbl.

One ref: [link]

My elementary school had an anti-elitist principal way back in 1977 when I started first grade, and he'd been there forever and was near retirement. I had a first-year teacher, and when I demonstrated, on the first day of school, that I already knew how to read on something like a 5th grade level, she borrowed some readers from the older grades and would let me go off by myself and read stories while the other kids worked on learning to read. This went on for several months, until Mr. Hill found out what the teacher was doing. Then my story books were taken away and I had to sit in the circle with the other kids, holding a first grade reader with 1-2 words per page, and listen to my classmates laboriously try to sound out words. Needless to say, this did not have the desired effect of making me anti-elitist and better integrated with my classmates.

Timelies.

Plei, I'm so sorry to hear about your aunt.

Sox, much strength to everyone there.

When I was growing up I'm pretty sure different reading, etc. groups within a class were the norm. It certainly was in my school. The "don't be eliteist" trend seems to be in the last ten or twenty years.

We had clear-cut streaming. Totally different classrooms. It was never called that but everyone knew that most subject teachers had a "smart" class and a "dumb" class. However, I think it was by subject, so a kid could be in the smart group for some things and not others. We all worked on the same stuff throughout the year.

Social studies was always mixed up though, which is why you had things like Friday's map day, when we had to fill in the blank US map every Friday until we got 100, and some people were doing it all year, and the kids who finished after a week or two had to sit there the whole time doing nothing.

DH's dad called - his aunt passed away late last night. It was quick - and we're all glad for that.

I know I'm in an awful mood, and I know there are things going wrong all at the same time, but how idon'tknowwhattocallit is it that when I told my boss about this just now, and that I didn't expect for there to be anything I could do about it until possibly Tuesday if there is a memorial (not her style - she left no instructions), her response email was 'Do what you need to do.' and that's it.

Tell me I'm being too sensitive and to focus on what's important.

eta - (family & Iris' birthday)