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.When students are tracked into groups for instructionthroughout the day, overall achievement suffers.Lower achieving 180 CHAPTER TWELVEstudents learn substantially less because teachers expectationsfor them are lower, and, as illogical as it may seem, higher achiev-ing students do not learn more.In contrast, when students perform in mixed ability groups, theteachers expectations for all students remain high.High-achievingstudents do just as well as when they are tracked with other highachievers.The normally low-achieving students learn much more,apparently because they benefit from their interactions with moresuccessful students and from teachers higher expectations.In ad-dition, teachers tend to use a variety of approaches to help strug-gling students attain high standards when children are in mixedability groups.These conclusions about grouping may seem counterintuitiveto most people, but the research findings on this issue have been soconsistent over the years that it is hard to find educational scholarswho will argue in favor of grouping children by ability throughoutthe school day.The reason educators oppose tracking is not becausethey are disregarding its compelling common sense in a misguidedeffort to protect students feelings as Mr.Crowley suggested in hisarticle but simply because students learn less when they aretaught that way.My most memorable experience with ability grouping was as ateacher of sixth grade social studies and reading in a system thatgrouped children from the time they entered school.In every gradethrough the sixth, students were grouped in sections A through D.My approximately twenty students in Section 6D knew exactly howthe school perceived them, and they worked hard to live up to thatexpectation.Most of them had been in a low section since they be-gan school, and almost all of them had been retained at least once,some of them twice.A number of the boys (there were only twogirls) had already determined that they would drop out of school assoon as possible, and they often reminded me of that fact.Academically and behaviorally they were one of the most chal-lenging classes I have ever taught.So few of them were models ofgood behavior that negative behavior was more the norm than theexception.My next seven years of teaching were in a school that didnot use ability grouping, and children s academic achievement and THE SHORTCOMINGS OF COMMON SENSE 181social behavior were far superior to those in the school that usedtracking.When I became a principal in a different South Carolina com-munity in 1986, I entered another system that used the commonsense approach of ability grouping students in sections A throughD.I began my first year as principal after class rosters had alreadybeen established and did not challenge that arrangement a mis-take I have regretted ever since.Once school began, I immediatelynoticed that most of the white students were clustered in the A andB sections, and most of the C and D sections were entirely African-American.Further, the majority of the teachers for sections A andB were white.The next summer I quietly and deliberately went about thework of using every available piece of information about studentachievement to set up class rosters of mixed (or heterogeneous)ability.I also worked to attain racial balance in all sections.Know-ing that someone would approach our elected superintendent to ex-press dissatisfaction with these changes, I kept my plan underwraps until the beginning of school.About a week of school went by, and I was in the district officeone afternoon.As I tried to walk unnoticed past the superinten-dent s open office door, his sonorous voice called out to me, Mr.Smith, could you please come in here? Once I had taken a seatacross from his desk, he proceeded to chastise me soundly for us-ing an instructional approach that made such little common sense.Although I pointed to the research indicating higher achievementon standardized tests when children are grouped heterogeneously,as well as the district s focus on improved test scores, he remainedunconvinced.At the end of our conversation, he conceded that itwas too late to change class rosters and said he hoped my planwould have favorable results.He also made it very clear that I hadbetter not attempt to go against established district practices again.Although I saw many indications of an improved learning envi-ronment throughout the year, I knew that test scores were the onlymeasures that would convince my boss to let me continue usingmixed ability groups.Sure enough, our test performance improvedsubstantially in every area that spring.In fact, when I dug into past 182 CHAPTER TWELVEschool records, I could not find a single year when our scores hadbeen nearly as high or a year in which they had increased so signif-icantly from the previous year.More important, our school s collective self-image seemed tohave changed dramatically.We were no longer the poor, rural, un-derachieving school at the edge of the county.We were educatorswho were beginning to see that we could make a real difference inthe lives of our children, and our building possessed a new spirit ofpride and efficacy.One day shortly after the arrival of statewide testing data, I wasonce again trying to slip unnoticed past the superintendent s door atthe district office when he called me in to talk.This time our con-ference was quite brief.He congratulated me on our school s per-formance for the year and concluded by saying, Well, I still don tlike what you re doing, but since it seemed to work, I ll leave youalone. Obviously, heterogeneous grouping of students for instruc-tion still did not qualify as good common sense in the eyes of ourelected superintendent.Common sense may have been the culprit when California de-cided that the state s poor reading performance in the early 1990swas due to a shift to whole language
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