Mixed level school classes

[Spin Echo]

Not sure if thise would go here or off-topic.

My old middle and high school districts have at the moment three ability level of classes. The lowest level consisted of developmentally disabled students and usually only had around half a dozen students per year in it. The mid level consisted of what would be considered average students, and the highest level were the higher achieving students.

As of next year, the school districts are instituting mixed level classes, where the upper two levels are merged. The theory behind this is that the well achieving students will act as mentors to the lower achieving students, encouraging them to work harder.

My personal experience says this a crock of shit. By aiming for the middle, the people on the far ends of the bell curve get the shaft. The less able students can't keep up while the well achieving students are bored. However, I don't want to make judgment based on one data point, so I'm curious to see what other people's experiences and thoughts are on this.

Edit: Shouldn't post pre-coffee

[une]

I don't think it's a good idea. Those kinds of classes can only work in special situations. Otherwise, it's just like what you said, everyone will dragged down to the lowest common denominator.

In my opinion, this kind of teaching style is something that could work in upper division college level courses, like 300 level and above, but even then it's not good for every subject. It's definitely not good high school or middle school classes.

[Spin Echo]

I don't think it's a good idea. Those kinds of classes can only work in special situations. Otherwise, it's just like what you said, everyone will dragged down to the lowest common denominator.

I could see it working if the class sizes were small, such that the teacher could individualise the teaching and give each student the attention they need. But with the 35-40 student to teacher ratio in my old school district, I have a hard time imagining it work.

[Dartzap]

Its generally a matter of resourcing. If they are having budget problems they will just chuck everyone together and hope for the best. I'm not saying it's right off course, having suffered such a thing in my time at school, but I can understand the reasoning.

[une]

I don't think it's a good idea. Those kinds of classes can only work in special situations. Otherwise, it's just like what you said, everyone will dragged down to the lowest common denominator.

I could see it working if the class sizes were small, such that the teacher could individualise the teaching and give each student the attention they need. But with the 35-40 student to teacher ratio in my old school district, I have a hard time imagining it work.

You're absolutely right. I think motivation will also play a big role. A lot of the students, especially in the middle school, probably won't be the most motivated of students and thus they will slack off in class and hold everyone back.

Why is your school district bringing about this change? Is it because of budget issues?

[Spin Echo]

Why is your school district bringing about this change? Is it because of budget issues?

I'm not entirely sure; I'm rather out of the loop with what goes on here these days. The stuff I've read in the local paper says the motivation for the mixed classes is that it will promote better learning for all students, because the high achieving students will act as mentors and role models for the lower achieving students.

[The Jester]

The stuff I've read in the local paper says the motivation for the mixed classes is that it will promote better learning for all students, because the high achieving students will act as mentors and role models for the lower achieving students.

It's a complete load of horseshit. They're just trying to cut costs and use this as a cover. Since when do you see high-achieving high school students mentor low-achieving ones? Since when do low-achieving students use high-achieving students as role models?

[Stuart]

The stuff I've read in the local paper says the motivation for the mixed classes is that it will promote better learning for all students, because the high achieving students will act as mentors and role models for the lower achieving students.

I find it very hard to believe that people still produce that nonsense. I thought utopian ideology like that went out in the 1970s. On the other hand that sort of ideological absurdity comes and goes in roughly 30 year cycles so its about time it cropped up again I suppose.

My experience with such things is the same as yours. The high-end students got bored (and bored, highly intelligent schoolchildren are very innovative when it comes to disrupting classes) while the lower end children were struggling to keep up and this getting sullen and resentful. The end result was that the mixed classes did less well than the pre-mix middle group had. It's not dumbing down to the lowest common denominator, its going to a sub-common denominator.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

It depends on how large a scale you do it on and how structured it is. If they are simply slapping together two large groups, then no, it wouldn't work that way.

What they would require is an actual, formal mentoring programme where the higher skilled students help the lower skilled students through structured scaffolding. It would need to be a programme designed by the instructor or the administration and have specific rules, goals, etc.


Research I have seen doesn't show that people will spontaneously help each other or study buddy or use peer tutoring. It needs to be molded by the teacher in the classroom, and only then does it produce useful results.

Reciprocal teacher and peer tutoring with higher and under achievers does work, but not the way they seem to be doing it.

[chitoryu12]

My personal experience says this a crock of shit. By aiming for the middle, the people on the far ends of the bell curve get the shaft. The less able students can't keep up while the well achieving students are bored. However, I don't want to make judgment based on one data point, so I'm curious to see what other people's experiences and thoughts are on this.

My school's already done this somewhat by lowering the standards for getting into Honors-level classes. I have above 100% in my Honors World History class when I spend most of it sitting there wandering off into my own thoughts, but there are students who maintained a D for most of the year. For every kid who doesn't have to even try to pass the class, there's someone who can barely keep up with the workload. All you need to get into a higher level is a teacher's signature (which is needed for all classes), and as long as you're passing, you get signed off.

Thanks to this system, it's generally assumed that if you're in standard, you're an idiot. If you're failing in standard, you're assumed to either care so little about school that you should just drop out for our benefit, or you're close to being legally disabled.

[Kodiak]

Time magazine did an article about this a few months back, regarding the education of "gifted" or exceptional students. Their findings have already been shared here: Putting above-average students with average students only hurts the average students. "Smarts" isn't enough to establish a mentor relationship, especially when most of the smarter students have no interest in being mentors and the average students have no interest in being mentored by a peer.

They included a study which stated that it would be as hard or harder for a "gifted" student, one who's IQ was 3 standard deviations above normal, to be in an "average" class than it would be for an average student to be in a class where the IQ is 3 standard deviations below normal. Also interesting to note that even though the difficulty of Gifted and disabled students integrating into a "normal" classroom environment are equal and the number of students on each side is roughly the same, the US spends 10x more on special-ed classes than accelerated programs. The point of the article was that if we don't give gifted students the chance to reach their potential it will have severe negative consequences in their development.

[Alerik the Fortunate]

It is most likely just a budgeting gimmick; honestly I'm not aware of any public school system that isn't suffering from a budget crisis of one form or another. In my high school, most of my teachers in my senior year were last minute replacements because the old teachers of AP classes left for one reason or another. Due to the teacher shortage, an entire class of trigonometry students "shared" our Calculus BC teacher during our math period, which meant that he basically taught them and left us to our textbooks. Perhaps if the textbooks had been as engaging as those by Michael Spivak, that might have worked a little better.

[Elmca]

I've taught on both. I like our current system of four distinct levels better.

At my school, we've got our self-contained special ed students, our general-ed students, Honors students and Governor's School. Governor's School is for the very advanced and you've got to pass tests and write essays and all sorts of stuff to get in.

We also allow students to take Honors classes or Governor's School classes in areas they're gifted in and regular classes in other areas, if that's what they want to do.

I like this way better because it allows the Honors level students to really reach their potential. I'm not thrilled with the idea of students regularly mentoring other students in a class because that means the Honors student doesn't really progress. She just learns it faster and then teaches it to someone else. That's not really a good use of her abilities as a student.

Our Honors students are active in a lot of research and independent projects, from working with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation in Science to working as interns for the local, state and federal government in Social Studies. That has GOT to be better for them than mentoring, in terms of what they learn.

[Darth Smiley]

We don't have levels exactly, but since there are so many AP Classes and alternatives to 'regular' class, it's a de facto sorting into levels. People who are really into literature go to a separate School of the Arts program, those who excel in scientific and technical fields go to Governor's School. Those who want to be challenged, are, those who don't, arn't.

The whole "put students together so they can mentor each other" is most likely rationalization the school board is putting together to justify their budget cuts. The sad part is that most of them may even have convinced themselves that it's true - I've seen school administration do things as if not more moronic.

[mjn6172]

This is just bullshit, and a desperate attempt for them to save money. The way you're describing this program it sounds like it will just drag the higher end students down and lead to more discipline issues (as Stuart was saying, highly intelligent students can be very . . . creative when they're bored.)

To be fair though, I have seen something vaguely similar to this work at the elementary level. My Fiancée co-teaches in several first and second grade classes at the local elementary school. Basically, it involves a mixed group of regular and ESE students (about 2 regular for every ESE). They all follow the same curriculum, and the ESE students get some extra support (a second teacher and an ESE aide usually) to help them keep up. So far it's been a success and all of the students involved are doing better, but it's also very expensive since you're essentially paying to have two full teachers and an aide in these classrooms.

[Darth Wong]

I've seen schools where this works. They teach material that's intentionally beyond the level of the lower-tier students, knowing that a lot of them won't get it. The second time around, they get it, and probably with better retention than they would if they only learned it once.

Mind you, this is taking place in a highly individualized learning program in a private school where the student:teacher radio is about 1:10. So if certain kids are getting bored, they just bump them up to the next level.

[Hawkwings]

The likely result of this in my school would be that all the advanced students get their work done and ask the teacher if they can leave to go do other stuff. Resulting in only the lower-tier students left in the room.

Also: advanced students like working with other advanced students. It's so much more engaging when you don't have to explain every step to someone, and walk then through it. If they wanted to institute this, they should pay the advanced kids and set up a mentoring program.

[Spin Echo]

Also: advanced students like working with other advanced students. It's so much more engaging when you don't have to explain every step to someone, and walk then through it. If they wanted to institute this, they should pay the advanced kids and set up a mentoring program.

This was something that bothered me about the whole "Advanced students can be mentors" idea. Instead of allowing the advanced students to work to their full potential, they're being treated as free tutors by the school system. I'm certain I wouldn't have achieved the things I have if I had to tutor other students instead of taking the advanced courses I did.

[Darth Wong]

That "advanced students can tutor other students" idea sounds silly. My son's school does split-level classes, but they don't do anything like that. Mind you, they have individualized education programs for every student, so if a student is ahead in subject A but behind in subject B, they'll bump him up in subject A and get him extra help for subject B. In that context, the split-level doesn't really mean anything anyway. I could see how it would be a bigger problem in the traditional cattle-style school.

[Mayabird]

Yeah, I had to deal with this, among all the other crap, in high school. When we were forced to work in groups at times and could self-sort, the smarter kids usually got in one group because we didn't want to have to put up with the idiots. In our own group, we could exchange witticisms and know that the other group members would understand what we were talking about. That smart group always then got broken up, with our members distributed to the idiot groups, presumably so I could tutor the other kids and enlighten them with my...something.

All this lead to was a lot of pain and annoyance to me and didn't help them any. Why should it be my responsibility to teach a bunch of lazy idiot hicks stuff that the teacher doesn't want to handle? It's not my job to try to explain to them that A Modest Proposal is actually hilarious satire, and then to explain what satire is, and why it is funny. (I note that they NEVER got it, though I wasn't about to try and see how many futile attempts it took until they did, or I started stabbing people.) Whenever there was work to be done, I usually let them copy off my papers because I just didn't want to have to put up with the crap, and so did the other kids. I doubt it helped the idiots any either, since all they learned is that they can be lazy and stupid and the smart person will do the work so it's okay.

Before anyone asks, rural Georgia schools do NOTHING right.

[Ohma]

Additionally that can help worsen the antagonistic attitude that many underachieving kids have towards the smarter kids in class. (and in my experience, to a lesser extent, the smart kids towards the...uh...not smart kids)

[Alan Bolte]

I recall one year in high school where, due to a scheduling conflict I had a time slot that could only be filled by "College Prep Math." Mind you, I was also taking a class called "Pre-Calculus." The latter class had three students. The former consisted mostly of students a year ahead of me, perhaps 30 of them. Because I could finish my work twice as fast as the rest, Mr. Nguyen enlisted me as an aide. I think it was rather embarrassing for those kids, especially considering that Columbus Alternative had a reputation as a school for smart kids. Public, though, so it's more like the total morons were pressured to switch schools freshman year. In any case, I suppose it was a waste of my time, but I didn't mind much.

There were more mixed-level classes was in middle school. However, I got the distinct impression that we weren't even expected to learn anything, it was more of a daycare while we got the worst of our hormones out of the way.

Elementary was... weird. They had classes of 80 with three teachers and at least one aide. They mixed the ages up, too. So grades 3-5 were all with the same set of three teachers. There were definitely some developmentally disabled kids mixed in as well. I got the distinct impression that it worked very well for some students and not at all for others, regardless of intelligence.

Anyway, I agree with the others, this is just marketing-speak for the worst sort of cost-cutting, possibly supported by honest belief in pseudo-psychology. Not that normal psychology's anywhere near perfect, but I've get the impression that educational theory has a tendency to be based on decade-old, occasionally misinterpreted psychological theory.