In mixed-ability classes, teachers must cope with a huge range of skill levels, says Jonathan Plucker, a professor of education at Johns Hopkins University. “The idea that everyone benefits in a mixed-ability classroom is an ideological statement that flies in the face of all the evidence we have, which is very mixed,” Plucker says. “And not just for advanced students. It’s not clear that struggling students benefit either.”
A mother in affluent District 2 told Bielski her son’s experience during the pandemic at the unscreened Robert Wagner middle school “a disaster.”
In English class on most days, she said, 25 students spent much of the period reading a variety of unchallenging fantasy and sports books. So there was little opportunity for a dynamic class discussion around a compelling literary topic. Instead, the teacher walked around the classroom and briefly talked individually to students. They avoided tackling difficult authors from Toni Morrison to William Shakespeare whose works require more elucidation and class discussion.
The family plans to move to Connecticut.
[Public education has long been a poor deliverer of results, but the effort to quash achievement is creating a massive disaster for students and parents an order of magnitude worse than what preceded it. Parents who have the means to opt out are doing so in greater numbers, leaving economically disadvantaged families stuck in a collapsing state-run system. That’s the real inequity. — Ed]
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