CURRICULUM REVIEW – SETTING AND GROUPING
POINTS TAKEN FROM ACADEMIC RESEARCH ON SETTING BY ABILITY
The following points are taken form a collection of academic research papers on setting by ‘ability’ (tracking in the USA). Sections in italics are quotations taken from the papers. The research papers were sourced when I had access to the electronic world of academic research. I collected as many papers as I could and all had the same message. I found no contradictory research papers.
Staff on a diagonal slice focus group have had the original papers and we have discussed their findings at a meeting in the first half of the Autumn term.
Richard Bramley
7th December 2011
For more than 70 years, ability grouping has been one of the most controversial issues in education. Its effects, particularly on student achievement, have been extensively studied over that time period, and many reviews of the literature have been written. (Slavin, 1990, 471)
Slavin used used “best-evidence synthesis, which incorporates the best features of meta-analytic and traditional reviews. Best-evidence syntheses specify clear, well-justified methological and substantive criteria for inclusion of studies in the main review and describe individual studies and critical research issues in the depth typical of good-quality narrative reviews (1990, 475)
His review compared 29 studies of ability-grouped classes and heterogeneously grouped classes using achievement data from standardized or teacher-made tests.
His findings were: the effects of ability grouping on student achievement are essentially zero (1990, 484)
In slightly more detail: All four of the British studies found no differences between streamed and unstreamed classes. Urban, suburban, and rural schools had similar outcomes.
Salvin goes on to say how can the effects of setting (tracking in the USA) be researched. One way would be to assign students at the margin to different tracks, something that has never been done. The other is to compare similar students randomly assigned to ability-grouped or ungrouped systems. This has been done several times, and, as noted earlier in this review, there is no clear trend indicating that students in high-track classes learn any more than high achieving students in heterogeneous classes, or that students in low-track classes learn any less than low achieving students in heterogeneous classes. (1990, 490).
Salvin concludes by saying :
Although there are limitations to the scope of this review and to the studies on which it is based, there are several conclusions that can be advanced with some confidence. These are as follows:
1. Comprehensive between-class ability grouping plans have little or no effect on the achievement of secondary students, at least as measured by standardized tests. This conclusion is most strongly supported in Grades 7-9, but the more limited evidence that does exist from studies in Grades 10-12 also fails to support any effect of ability grouping.
2. Different forms of ability grouping are equally ineffective.
3. Ability grouping is equally ineffective in all subjects, except that there may be a negative effect of ability grouping in social studies.
4. Assigning students to different levels of the same course has no consistent positive or negative effects on students of high, average, or low ability.
For the narrow but extremely important purpose of determining the impact of ability grouping on standardized achievement measures, the studies reviewed here are exemplary. Six randomly assigned individual students to ability-grouped or heterogeneous classes, and nine more individually matched students and then assigned them to one or the other grouping plan. Many of the studies followed students for 2 or more years. If there had been any true effect of ability grouping on student achievement, this set of studies would surely have detected it.
For practitioners, the findings summarized above mean that decisions about whether or not to ability group must be made on bases other than likely effects on achievement. Given the antidemocratic, antiegalitarian nature of ability grouping, the burden of proof should be on those who would group rather than those who favor heterogeneous grouping, and in the absence of evidence that grouping is beneficial, it is hard to justify continuation of the practice. The possibility that students in the low groups are at risk for delinquency, dropout, and other social problems (e.g., Rosenbaum, 1980) should also weigh against the use of ability grouping. Yet schools and districts moving toward heterogeneous grouping have little basis for expecting that abolishing ability grouping will in itself significantly accelerate student achievement unless they also undertake changes in curriculum or instruction likely to improve actual teaching.
Jo Boaler of King’s College London made the following points about political pressure and common-held beliefs..
The direct and indirect influences of political pressures have had a clear impact upon student grouping policies in schools. Unfortunately, the thinking behind such pressures does not seem to have been informed by research but by memories of times-gone-by in which setting played a predominant part in traditionalist school policies. The 'back to basics' policies of the Conservative Government and the anti-mixed-ability stance of the New Labour party derive from a widely-held opinion that setting advances achievement, particularly for high ability students. But this notion flies in the face of evidence collected from a wide variety of research studies. Indeed there is little, if any, research, anywhere in the world, that supports this notion. (1997,576)
Boaler conducted qualitative and quantitative research in two 11-18 comprehensive schools, named Phoenix Park and Amber Hill. .
Amongst her findings were the following:
A number of different results from this study cast doubt upon some widespread beliefs about setted teaching. For example, there was no qualitative or quantitative evidence that setting raised achievement, but there was evidence that setting diminished achievement for some students. A comparison of the most able students at the two schools showed that the students achieved more in the mixed ability classes of Phoenix Park than the high sets of Amber Hill (1997, 593)
The various forms of data also seem to expose an important fallacy upon which many setting decisions are based. Students of a similar 'ability', assessed via some test of performance, will not necessarily work at the same pace, respond in the same way to pressure or have similar preferences for ways of working. Grouping students according to ability and then teaching towards an imaginary model student who works in a certain way at a certain pace, will almost certainly disadvantage students who deviate from the ideal model.
There was much evidence that the students who were disadvantaged by this system were predominantly working class, female or very able. (1997, 593)
She concludes:
The consequences of setting and streaming decisions are great. Indeed ,t he set or stream that students are placed into, at a very young age, will almost certainly dictate the opportunities they receive for the rest of their lives. It is now widely acknowledged in educational and psychological researcht hat students do not have a fixed 'ability 'that it is determinable at an early age. However, the placing of students in academic groups often results in the fixing of their potential achievement (1997, 594)
Dylan Wiliam and Hannah Bartholomew, in their 2002 study of setting in mathematics classes in English schools found:
In brief, teachers teaching bottom sets were generally the least well-qualified to teach mathematics, had lower expectations of their students, frequently set work that was undemanding (often just copying off the chalkboard), used a narrower range of teaching approaches and hardly ever responded to students’ frequent requests for more demanding work. In contrast, top sets tended to be allocated well-qualified teachers, who tended to go too fast for many students (particularly girls). Most importantly, teachers teaching setted classes tended totreat the whole class as being of identical ‘ability’ and made little or no provision for differentiation. The same teachers, when teaching mixed-ability classes, used a wider range of approaches, took greater account of individual differences, and were, in our admittedly subjective view, better teachers, even though they disliked teaching mixed-ability groups.
The data reported here provide further evidence that ability-grouping does not raise average levels of achievement, and, if anything, tends to depress achievement slightly, which is entirely consistent withresults from studies conducted in the 1960s and 1970s in the UK, and with the more recent studies conducted in the USA .
More importantly, this study replicates a key finding from earlier studies (eg Hoffer, 1992; Kerchkoff, 1986; Linchevski & Kutscher, 1998) that while ability grouping in mathematics has little overall effect on achievement, it does produce gains in attainment for higher achieving students at the expense of losses for lower attaining students (see also Venkatakrishnan & Wiliam, 2003). This produces an increase in the spread of achievement within the age cohort. In this context is worth noting that every country that outperforms England in mathematics makes less use of ability grouping. Indeed, one of the key findings from international comparisons is that the greater the difference of achievement between classes of the same age, the worse that country’s overall levels of achievement in mathematics are likely to be (Bursten,1992)—again consistent with the pattern found here. (290-291)
In their research into teachers’ views of setting versus mixed ability in Scottish secondary schools, Smith and Sutherland concluded
Some of the perceptions of staff seem to be at odds with the research evidence currently available. It was felt by schools which utilised setting arrangements that motivation of those in the top sets was easier to achieve. There is some research evidence to suggest that the fast pace and competition that emerges in these top sets can prove to be an issue for the motivation of girls in particular. It also emerged from the rationale of those schools adopting setting that there was a belief that this would improve results. The research available would suggest that this is not the case.
Linchevski and Kutscher (1998) investigated the effects of teaching mathematics in a mixed-ability setting on students' achievements and teachers' attitudes in schools in Israel,. They concluded:
placement of students in mixed-ability mathematics classes was not detrimental to their achievements when compared to achievements of students of similar ability levels who had learned in separate same-ability classes. On the contrary, the average and weaker students' achievements showed significant gains, whereas the loss in achievements of the stronger students was negligible.
Ireson, Judith & Hallam, Susan ( 1999) reviewed the literature on setting versus mixed ability with an emphasis on British research in their study “Raising Standards: is ability grouping the answer?”. The final paragraph reads:
To conclude, the current intense debate in the USA and Canada, where there is considerable pressure to discontinue tracking because of its undesirable social consequences, suggests that a return to a national system of selection and structured grouping is, in the long term, no more likely to succeed in the UK now than it did earlier this century. Educators and researchers, in collaboration with parents and other interested parties in the wider community, need to develop alternatives which will carry us forward into the 21st century and will encourage the development of the skills and expertise of today's young people for the future, not for the past.
Venkatakrishnan and Wiliam’s study of GCSE students in a London comprehensive school finished with the following:
What is clear from this study is that the effects of grouping students by ability are highly complex, and current theorisation is inadequate to account for them. What goes on within classes, whether tracked or setted or not, is as important as how those classes are constructed. This study has replicated some findings of earlier studies, notably that the advantages of grouping by ability are limited, restricted to the highest attaining students, and secured at the expense of disadvantages for the lowest attainers (Sukhnandan & Lee, 1998). However, at Shackleton School, the decision to retain SMILE, and to try to treat all students as similarly as possible in terms of work rate, ameliorated the restriction of curricularo pportunity,a nd the inappropriatep acing found in other studies. The Government's uncritical support of homogeneous ability grouping, irrespective of whether the students are taught individually or as a whole class, and of the scope and flexibility of the grouping structure, is certainly not grounded in evidence. To the extent that the evidence points either way, in fact, it is towards the greater use of mixed-ability grouping, in which case the advice to schools should be that: Unless a school can demonstrate that it is getting better than expected results through a different approach, we do make the presumption that mixed-ability grouping should be the norm in secondary schools.
Lady Lumley’s School is currently engaged in two projects led by Dr Barry Hymen based on Professor Carol Dweck’s work on Open Mindsets. The leadership of the school passionately believes that ability is learnt, not inherited. In my opinion, schools can only justify their existence based on this premise.
All the academic research points in the same direction – setting is ineffective at raising achievement and denies many students their life chances.
I will conclude with a quotation by Steven Jay Gould from his book The Mismeasure of Man used by Susan Hart in her 1998 paper:
We pass through this world but once. Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without but falsely identified as lying within.
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Sources:
Boaler, Jo (1997) Setting, Social Class and Survival of the Quickest
Hart, Susan (1998) A sorry tail: ability, pedagogy and educational reform
Ireson, Judith & Hallam, Susan ( 1999) Raising Standards: is ability grouping the answer?
Linchevski, Liora and Kutscher, Bilha (1998) Tell Me with Whom You're Learning, and I'll Tell You How Much You've Learned: Mixed-Ability versus Same-Ability Grouping in Mathematics
Slavin Robert E (1990) Achievement Effects of Ability Grouping in Secondary Schools: A Best-Evidence Synthesis
Smith, Chris and Sutherland, Margaret (2003) Setting or mixed ability? Teachers’ views of theorganisation of pupils for learning
Venkatakrishnan, Hamsa and Wiliam, Dylan (2003) Tracking and Mixed-ability Grouping in Secondary School Mathematics Classrooms: a case study'
Wiliam, Dylan and Bartholomew, Hannah (2002) It’s not which school but which set you’re in that matters:the influence of ability-grouping practices on student progress in mathematics.
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