Comments on 'The Reform without Cost?'Author(s): James J. GallagherSource: The Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 77, No. 3 (Nov., 1995), pp. 216-217Published by: Phi Delta Kappa InternationalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20405531 .

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Comments on 'The Reform

Without Cost?'

BY JAMES J. GALLAGHER

There is a major policy issue present in this discussion, Mr. Gallagher asserts - but not quite the one that the authors present. The true policy question is, Should students, regardless of past performance or current aptitude or vocational interests, be receiving identical curricular experiences in secondary education?

T n HE ARTICLE by Dominic Brewer, Daniel Rees, and Lau ra Argys raises important edu cational and policy questions regarding the practice that is

referred to as detracking. The authors are quite correct in pointing out the design flaws or limitations of literature reviews such as those conducted by Robert Slavin and Jeannie Oakes.'

Many people have claimed that these reviews support the detracking position, but the various studies covered by the re

views offer no evidence that the grouped and nongrouped classes were taught dif ferent curricula. Yet one of the fundamen tal reasons for grouping students by apti tude for instruction, as pointed out in Teach ing the Gifted Child, is so that you can pre sent a differentiated curriculum.2 In addi tion, Slavin eliminated from his analysis all studies that dealt with gifted students, further limiting the conclusions that can be drawn from his review. When a syn

thesis of data has been conducted that fo cuses on gifted students and differentiat ed content, the results are quite different from those found by Slavin and Oakes.3

Grouping gifted students for special in struction appears to yield very positive re sults, a conclusion that supports the posi tion of Brewer, Rees, and Argys.

From their own and others' data, the authors argue that grouping or tracking students is beneficial to one group of stu

Illustration bv Jemi Sullivant

JAMES J. GALLAGHER is Kenan Profes sor of Education at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

216 PHI DELTA KAPPAN

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dents (high-track students), but detri mental to another group of students (low track students), thus placing educators in the unenviable position of helping some students at the expense of others. Worse yet, the students who are not being helped are the same students who have been and continue to be ill-treated by education and by society.

I believe that there is a major policy is sue present in this discussion, but it is not quite the one that the authors present. The true policy question is one that goes to the heart of the excellence versus equity ar guments. That question is, Should students, regardless of their past performance or cur rent aptitude or vocational interests, be re ceiving identical curricular experiences in secondary education?

The discussion here is complicated by some additional design issues that must be considered before accepting the authors' conclusions. There is no mention of what the test or tests were that were given to the 3,900 sophomores. Is that not relevant? Can we assume that, because all of the scores on diverse mathematics tests can be con verted into standard scores, we are using the same metric?

Were the students who were in the tracked or grouped sections, high-track and low-track, receiving the same math ematics courses? If they were not, would that not have some impact on their per formance on the tests that were adminis tered? Or were the students in the differ ent tracks administered different tests?

In the heterogeneous classes it is ob vious that these 10th-grade students, low track and high-track, were receiving the same curriculum. But why in the world

would low-track and high-track 10th-grade math students be receiving a similar cur riculum? Is this single curriculum the col lege-bound curriculum that would be de signed for the high-track students? Then

why should that curriculum be provided to low-track students? Certainly not in the interests of equity. Equity, here, does not consist of giving the same material to all students, regardless of aptitude or past per formance; rather, it means giving each stu dent what he or she most needs, and that would require differentiating the math cur riculum to meet the differing needs of these students.

If I am on my way to being a carpenter or a computer maintenance person, then shouldn't I be receiving applied mathe

matics courses designed to help me use ba sic mathematical concepts? If I am on my

way to being a theoretical mathematician or an electrical engineer, shouldn't I be re ceiving a curriculum requiring the mastery of advanced systems of mathematics?

We have been preoccupied for two dec ades with trying to avoid any semblance of

making educational decisions that might adversely affect students from low-income families or from minority groups. If more

minority group children fall in the low track group, then we will deal with that finding by establishing policies (e.g., in clusion) that wipe out the low-track group so that these youngsters will not be de nied the opportunity to learn what advan taged students are receiving. Incidentally, such actions as inclusion may also make the low performance of this group less no ticeable.

Furthermore, this errant policy argues, if sophisticated math programs are good for students who are advanced in mathe

matics, then such programs must be good for all students, regardless of mathemat ical aptitude or interest. This is a prescrip tion for mathematical mediocrity that does not materially improve the status of those low-track students whom such policies are supposedly designed to help.

The assignment of "more qualified" teachers to high-track classes has been pre sented as one more indicator of the biases of educational administrators against stu dents in the low track. A more practical explanation is that, if you are going to conduct an advanced course in spherical trigonometry or geometry, it might be a good idea to have a teacher who knows something about the subject. Such a teach er would generally be "better qualified"

or one with more math education. The authors are correct that the issues

in their study are at the center of an impor tant educational debate, but the situation is more complex and convoluted than they have presented it. The issues they raise should lead to discussion of what are ap propriate mathematics curricula for which students, a topic steadfastly avoided by those wishing to escape potential debates over unfairness and discrimination. The various policy issues of excellence ver sus equity have yet to be fully explored or digested by educators or by the gen eral public.

1. Robert E. Slavin, "Ability Grouping and Student

Achievement in Elementary Schools: A Best-Evi dence Synthesis," Review of Educational Research, vol. 57, 1987, pp. 347-50; and Jeannie Oakes, Keep ing Track: How Schools Structure Inequality (New

Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985). 2. James Gallagher and Shelagh Gallagher, Teach

ing the Gifted Child, 4th ed. (Newton, Mass.: Allyn and Bacon, 1994). 3. Susan Demirsky Allan, "Ability-Grouping Re search Reviews: What Do They Say About Group ing and the Gifted?," Educational Leadership, March

1991, pp. 60-65; and James Kulik and Chen-Lin

Kulik, "Ability Grouping and Gifted Students," in

Nicholas Colangelo and Gary Davis, eds., Hand

book of Gifted Education (Boston, Mass.: Allyn and

Bacon, 1991), pp. 178-96. K

P;hi D)clta Kappan 7Ile Professiona/Journa/for Eduictiiwi

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NOVEMBER 1995 217

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