> Mr. Mann also says or implies that the Minneapolis Schools
> track poor kids or kids of color.
>
> << ability-grouping as a means to put students on
> nonacademic curriculum tracks and increasingly unequal
> distribution of the most critical educational resources
> between schools that
> serve poor and wealthier neighborhoods>>
>
Here Mr. Schapiro quotes out of context, using a fragment of a sentence
from my first comment about Joseph Erickson's positions on K-12
education policy. This is what I wrote:
<The "academic achievement gap" has steadily grown wider since
the late 1980s due to changes in K-12 educational policy along the
lines proposed in the 1983 report, "A Nation at Risk," which was
prepared by a blue ribbon panel of conservative K-12 education
experts appointed by the Reagan-Bush administration. "A Nation
at Risk" falsely claimed that the academic achievement gap was
being closed at the expense of the high achievers.
>The gap has widened because of the promotion of ability-grouping
as a means to put students on nonacademic curriculum tracks and [an]
increasingly unequal distribution of the most critical educational
resources between schools that serve poor and wealthier neighborhoods.
[end of quote from first comment about J Erickson's positions]
> The ability grouping charge is just not true. There is no
> such policy. Do some teachers use groups? Yeah. Do some
> programs designed to improve skills (Success for All) group
> students some times? Yeah. A tracking policy? No. A gifted
> and talented track? No.
>
The MPS administration recommends ability-grouping and puts
pressure on teachers to ability-group their students. For example,
"Guided reading is a strategy for small group instruction. The teacher works
with a small group of students who are all reading at about the same level.
Guided reading groups are flexible. Students are grouped for work on a
particular story or text and may be regrouped for the next reading
selection."
[Minneapolis Public Schools *Grade Level Expectations, English
Language Arts* teachers edition, July 16, 1997, *Elem Reading notes*
in booklets for grades K, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. & 6. The first paragraph under
the heading *Guided Reading* ]
Another way the MPS administration pressures teachers to ability-group
is by requiring site management teams to set up gifted programs, even if only
one parent whose child meets the eligibility requirements wants a gifted
program.
> But even that muddies matters a bit. He states
> matter-of-factly that tracking has been shown to be
> counterproductive, which is based on about half the
> research. The other half shows some small benefit. Go
> figure. I don't know too many parents who lobby the school
> board to have their kids in classes with students
> functioning at much lower academic levels, so this is a
> significant political question, too.
>
There are parents who demand ability-grouping and have seen to
it that their kids will be placed in "high-ability" groups by sending
them to expensive preschool programs and / or private kindergartens.
As one SW Minneapolis parent put it, "I spent over $30,000 on a Montessori
preschool program so my kid could get into the gifted program here."
One thing that few education researchers dispute is that abillity-grouping
generally increases disparities in education-related outcomes between
high and low achievers. Ability-grouping seems to provide at least some
small benefit to the high achievers, but this effect can also be explained
as a byproduct of ability-grouping the teachers and a tendency to assign
the more disruptive students to lower-ability groupings without a careful
assessment of their academic skills.
Ability-grouping advocates usually contend that ability-grouping merely
accommodates innate differences in academic ability between students,
and that assigning kids to "low-ability" groups does them no harm
academically or otherwise. This assumes that school characteristics such
as class size and the level of exposure of students to inexperienced teachers
has little effect on education-related outcomes for children who are
identified
as low-ability learners.
How do you explain the fact the black kids are heavily concentrated in the
low-ability learner groups? Either they are stupid or ignorant. The
difference
between stupidity and ignorance is that you can't do anything about
stupidity.
Ignorance is a deficit of knowledge and skills that can be overcome through
appropriate educational interventions at school.
In my opinion, the public schools in Minneapolis are structured to produce
unequal outcomes that perpetuate myths and racial stereotypes upon
which an ideology of white supremacy is based. White supremacy is
basically a belief system and method of interpreting reality that justifies
white privilege. In this sense the Minneapolis Public School system
may be characterized as a racist institution.
-Doug Mann
Minneapolis School Board Candidate
http://educationright.tripod.com
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