http://www.gtamc.org/challenge-every-child.

Sign the petition in favor of restoring ability grouping and to protest the No Labels, No Limits movement that seeks to lump all kids together.

Montgomery County GTA is generally non-kooky and is left by thoughtful and committed people. There are a couple of kooky people who post, but they are not representative of the group as a whole.

There is a lot of discussion of this issue on this listserv:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GTAletters/

are there any organized (non-kooky) efforts to protest the drive away from ability grouping? If my local school ability grouped, I would be much more comfortable leaving DD in it when she gets to K in 1.5 years. I have got to imagine there are tons of middle class families on the eastern side who feel the same way.

PP, I agree with you. I have one kid in a middle school magnet and one in an ES immersion magnet. In both classes but much more so in the MS magnet, the group of kids is extremely diverse -- AA, Asian, Latino and white kids. The immersion is less diverse and it's done completely by lottery, although of course there are factors driving the makeup of the families that apply.

Am a huge proponent of differentiation and not of the one-size-fits-all-in-a-single-classroom approach of curriculum 2.0. I've got one child in the 2.0 guinea pig year and another who's older.

Here's what I don't believe with the tracking argument: That low SES/minority children are unfairly marginalized. In older child's very advanced math class in down county, there is a mix of family backgrounds and economic diversity. Is it a lot of the kids in the classroom? No. But then, the advanced class is something like 1/7th of the kids in the grade in general.

Without these advanced classes, fast learners get bored. We saw it with guinea pig boy. He expressed HATRED for not learning anything in math until school finally agreed to go back to differentiating outside main classroom. Now, math is back to being his favorite subject.

We parents DO need to speak up with MCPS and the BOE.

^^ PP here. By "this" I meant the practice of moving high ability kids into separate classes. People who object to this call it tracking, although in reality there is no tracking in MCPS -- kids can be moved in and out of different level classes.

Not everyone agrees, but there's a lot of ideological push behind the idea. People feel that this unfairly marginalizes children from low SES homes/ minority children, who are less likely to have access to higher level material and therefore are tracked into lower performance.

I am really torn about this. I think public schools have a public-interest role in leveling the playing field and making sure kids from low SES homes have a fair chance at accelerating, and that all kids deserve enriched material.

However, I'm not sure that I'm willing to use my own child as a tool for societal goals if it means she's denied the challenging material that she is ready for. And I don't think it's fair to teachers to ask them to teach five or six levels in one classroom -- I don't think it's possible and I believe the higher level kids will suffer.

Anonymous wrote:MCPS is moving away from any kind of differentiation into classes. The idea, as PP says, is to differentiate within the classroom.

IMO this is a really bad move for kids who need higher level material, and extremely hard for a teacher to do effectively in classrooms where there are more than a couple of levels.

I agree, and everyone I know agrees as well.

Given that, why is this happening? Isn't this school system accountable to the parent/student community?

Does anyone agree with this approach?

Anonymous wrote:MCPS is moving away from any kind of differentiation into classes. The idea, as PP says, is to differentiate within the classroom.

IMO this is a really bad move for kids who need higher level material, and extremely hard for a teacher to do effectively in classrooms where there are more than a couple of levels.

Agree. Differentiation within a classroom with say 5 or more different reading groups is difficult. In our experience, one teacher was able to do it well, however most have not. The kids who are meeting the benchmarks will get little attention from the teacher.

MCPS is moving away from any kind of differentiation into classes. The idea, as PP says, is to differentiate within the classroom.

IMO this is a really bad move for kids who need higher level material, and extremely hard for a teacher to do effectively in classrooms where there are more than a couple of levels.

You should check with the school to see if kids are separated into groups and pulled out for math and reading. At our school, they used to be (starting in 1st grade), but with the new curriculum they no longer go to separate classes. To clarify: in 1st they had 4 1st grade classes, so they split the kids by ability and each teacher taught math and reading at a certain level. Now in 2nd with the new curriculum, they are still split into groups, but they remain in their homeroom class. But this is just my school -- you should check each school individually since things are a bit in flux with the new curriculum.

Re: Piney Branch. Kids are in one homeroom and separate around for math. They group kids as needed. There are a large number of GT kids, so grouping them seems to be seamless (at least from my parent perspective -- school admins and teachers may feel differently!)

Anonymous wrote:Not to derail the thread, but in non-magnet, non-HG centers, are gifted kids pulled out of the classroom for certain classes, or do all levels remain in one class for the whole day? I recall from my days in a public school in another state that gifted kids were pulled out for math and science starting in 3rd grade.

I don't know if MoCo schools generally have gifted classes. Isn't there still a GT program at Piney Branch Elementary (grades 3-5) in Takoma Park? Then there are the HGCs, but you weren't asking about them.

Not to derail the thread, but in non-magnet, non-HG centers, are gifted kids pulled out of the classroom for certain classes, or do all levels remain in one class for the whole day? I recall from my days in a public school in another state that gifted kids were pulled out for math and science starting in 3rd grade.