Why grouping students by ability makes sense

The Washington Post reports that a recent post by Joanne Yatvin argued against ability groupings of students, saying: Teaching to the presumed level of a whole class never works as well as hoped because students still have significant differences in work habits, paces of learning, and outside of school experiences.  But there is another, more serious problem: the effects on students in the low level classes.  Those kids know who they are, why they are there, and resent it.   Other kids know, too.  In the end, low-level classes can be a self-fulfilling prophecy: “Everybody thinks I’m dumb.  I’ll show them just how dumb I can be!”

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