Comment

Based on my years of experience in working with high schools to improve the academic achievement of the students who upon leaving high school will go to work, go to a community or technical college, or go to a second-tier four-year university, no justification can be made for maintaining the practice of grouping as it presently exists in schools. The present system sorts poor and minority youth into low-level, watered-down courses. In my view, middle-class parents in most communities will not permit grouping based solely on levels of academic achievement because they will insist that their children be enrolled in higher-level courses. Therefore, as is recommended in Maureen T. Hallinan's paper, pure homogeneous grouping based on academic ability is impossible to create. The assumption that academic ability is fixed underestimates the intellectual ability of poor and minority students. If educators and policymakers are serious about closing the achievement gap by getting more students up to a standard level of achievement, a new approach is needed.

Southern Regional Education Board's Making Middle Grades Work initiative recently tracked more than three thousand students from grade eight to grade nine in forty-four middle schools and thirty-eight high schools across ten states. From eleven of the middle schools, about 75 percent of the students were placed in college preparatory or honors-level core academic courses in language arts, mathematics, and science in high school. In the remaining thirty-three middle schools, between 25 and 30 percent of the students were placed in the advantaged college preparatory or honors curriculum. Based on the eighth-grade National Assessment of Educational Policy (NAEP)-linked exams in reading, mathematics, and science, the achievement of students from the eleven middle schools with a high percentage of students in college prep courses (eleven high schools) matched closely the achievement of students from the remaining thirty-three middle schools. In the middle schools with high enrollment in college prep courses, the percent of students who were minority ranged from 1 to 89 percent and on free and reduced-price lunches ranged from 14 to 84 percent. The percent of students who made at least a grade of "C" or higher was virtually the same in the two groups of schools.

Regardless of students' reading, mathematics, and science achievement levels in grade eight, in both groups of schools the ninth graders placed in higher-level courses had lower failure rates than students with similar achievement levels who were placed in lower-level courses. Two exceptions were found: Students scoring in the lowest quartile in mathematics and science achievement when placed in higher-level mathematics and science courses had a failure rate slightly greaterthan students placed in lower-level mathematics and science courses. However, students scoring at the remaining three quartiles when placed in higher-level mathematics and science courses had a failure rate much lessthan students placed in lower-level courses. The present system of grouping in high schools underestimates the intellectual ability of many students.

High schools with the greatest number of students enrolled in college preparatory classes are more likely to require students with a grade of "C" or lower to attend extra-help sessions (62 percent) than schools with fewer students enrolled in higher-level classes (36 percent). Therefore, schools do not need a program of extra help when they use a placement system that is designed to find a comfortable niche for each student. Hallinan seems to endorse an approach to placement that would fail to challenge students. Students need extra help and academic support when they are enrolled in challenging classes that require them to achieve at a higher level.

Hallinan's paper fails to address the impact of socioeconomic and racial factors on current placement practices. In a study of the course-taking patterns of more than forty-two hundred graduating seniors from fifty-one rural high schools, High Schools That Work found that a white student whose...