The Windsor Journal

The most important thing to be done to improve student learning is to assure that teachers are given classes of students who have similar instructional needs. In this way, each teacher can devote herself or himself to instructing the entire class, all day long. The teacher can then give a single lesson in each subject to the entire class at one time, without having to break up the class into smaller groups to teach the same subject to different groups, or give them instruction that is not focused to their needs. Any question asked by a student would then have relevance to all other students. The teacher could give the same homework to the entire class and expect them all to be able to do it. This change will maximize the instructional time for the student, and maximize their learning.

But the current practice in public education in the USA, as well as in Windsor, is the opposite. Each elementary and middle school class is made up of students with the widest possible differences in instructional needs, with the consequence that every teacher is overwhelmed by the task of teaching to so many different levels at once. She or he simply cannot devote more than a fraction of a full day of instruction to any student. We, in effect, minimize the effective time of instruction.

The reason for the wide differences in instructional needs in each classroom is that, following the educational practice of the last forty years, the administration selects the students of each teacher’s class according to how different their academic performance is, such that each class of a grade has the same percentage of students of all the different performance levels. The students are selected for each classroom such that some students are high performing, some average, and some slow learners. This arrangement of students is typically known as “heterogeneous” grouping. Various theories are put forth to justify this practice, but in fourteen years on the Board, I have yet to hear or read a rational argument for it.

The reason why heterogeneous grouping leads to dissimilarities of instructional needs is that academic performance is the measure of instructional needs. A student in a grade who has difficulties learning has instructional needs that require detailed explanations, with several repetitions, and a slower overall pace. Another student who is of average performance and has more background knowledge requires a faster pace, with the use of broader abstractions and less repetition. Otherwise he is wasting his time. Finally, the student who is high performing begins each day with even more background knowledge than the average student, and can and should be taught at an even faster pace. These differences in performance, and hence of instructional needs, show up in the assessments of the students. Similar instructional needs are determined by similar academic performance.

This clearly implies that we need to place all students with similar academic performance in the same classroom – the opposite of our current practice. The schools would then have two, three or four separate classes, depending on the number of total students and the spread of instructional needs. If students are grouped and instructed this way, according to similarity of instructional needs, their effective instructional time will be enormously increased, since there will be only one instructional group per classroom. (Students who are better in one subject than another can change classes for the subject, as they do at high schools.)

As can happen, a student will occasionally change his or her performance over time, becoming either a higher or lower performer. In such cases, they should be moved to higher or lower leveled classes in the grade, accordingly, in order to maximize their instruction. No one should be “tracked,” i.e., placed in a predetermined permanent level for all time from and early grade. If they begin to perform well, determined by regular assessments, then they should be required to move up a level.

Therefore, the appropriate thing to do is for the administration to issue the minimum standards of performance needed for each level, and have the teachers determine by assessments where they should be placed.

The problem of wide differences in instructional needs in the same grade is aggravated considerably by the practice of “social promotion.” Like most other public school districts, Windsor typically retains no students from the second though the fifth grade, and very few in the first, sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. The consequence is that the spread of performance widens as the years go by, as several students who perform below grade level are regularly promoted. To minimize this problem, the administration attempts to provide special assistance to students who did not meet minimal competency by the end of the previous school year, with indifferent results.

Therefore, Windsor should retain all students not achieving minimum competency by years’ end. This will establish a true high standard, and provide struggling students with the opportunity to properly learn the background material needed to understand the subject matter of the higher grades. In this way, they will not be promoted to where they are doomed to continual failure.

In order to help the students and their parents understand how the student is doing early in the year, a standard report card should be used in all grades. Currently, a progress report is used in grades one through five. The progress report is confusing, and does not clearly communicate to a parent if their child is performing below their grade level. The parent needs to know early in the year, in no uncertain terms, that their child is on course to be retained, in order to be able to take actions to help their child, and to not be surprised if the child is retained at the year’s end.

More resources in the form of tutors or paraprofessional can be added to the lowest performing class of each grade, to minimize retention. But the main benefit is to have a full day of focused teacher instruction, all day long – something that cannot possibly be provided under the current practices of heterogeneous grouping with social promotion.

To maintain the standards for promotion, the teachers should be the final authority on retention – not the administration, as is the current practice. It is the teacher who deals with the student on a daily basis who can best judge whether or not they have met the minimum standards.

With a standard report card, and promotion standards carried out by the teacher, the student and parent will know that they must work with the teacher to avoid retention of the student.

With leveled instruction, students will know that they can do well in a class full of their peers if they pay attention and study, and that if they do not put in the effort, they will receive lower grades. School will no longer always be easy for some, and always difficult for others, as is the case now in grades one through eight. All students will be challenged, without being overwhelmed by material and instruction that they do not understand. Teachers will have the time to instruct, and will have the authority to be taken seriously by the students. It will be possible and desirable to give significant amounts of homework to students from the early grades, and expect them to do the work, accustoming them to hard, independent intellectual work needed for high school, college, and the workforce.

Paul Panos

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