Policy: Is the Bluebird a Phoenix?

This appeared in Reading Today.

I held her shaking body and cooed daddy/daughter things until she began to relax. When she finally caught her breath, all she could croak out was, “I’m going to be a bluebird.” I mouthed to Sharon, “What’s a bluebird?” Mystified, I held my despondent daughter until she could breathe normally.

It turns out; Lindsey had read poorly with Mrs. Richardson that day. Afterwords Lindsey convinced herself that she would be moved into the low group: the bluebirds. We assured her, as teachers ourselves, that first grade teachers would not move a student just because of one mistake.

After school the next day, Lindsey chirped that she was still a red bird. Parent/Teacher conferences were coming up, and we put this issue on our talk-list. At the conference, Mrs. Richardson explained that she grouped the students according to their ability to read so she could better meet their needs. We were stunned when she told us that none of the students knew which group was high or low.

When I was student teaching, my master teacher showed me how to teach reading. I learned about the three reading groups, placement tests, the basal reader and workbooks. I was told that if I followed the teacher’s manual, my students would become strong readers.

By the time my daughter entered Mrs. Richardson’s class I had long abandoned ability grouping when the weaknesses of the practice revealed themselves to me. The low students, who needed to do the most reading, actually read less. Middle students were trapped in a group that lacked the spark of the high kids. The high readers, since they were usually independent, got less teacher-time than they deserved. It just didn’t work.

I remember looking at my low group and musing that, although they shared a similar score on the placement test, that was about all they shared. Roman was bright, but recently arrived from Mexico. Margaret had low cognitive abilities, but her parents refused special education services, Jimmy had attention problems and couldn’t seem to function well on a test even though he loved to read. Ricky puzzled me. He did fine in math, but struggled to read fluently. The other members of the group also appeared so diverse, how could one lesson be appropriate for all?

Another element of ability grouping that irked me was when I noticed that, in order for my students to work independently, I needed to spend precious group-time teaching them how to do the workbook pages or seatwork. As a result, when I got a group back to the table, we would discuss their seatwork from the day before, then I would show them how to do the next pages, and finally, we would use the last few moments to try to learn a skill.

My teaching colleague, Mary, told me to teach them how to score well on the placement test so I could get them out of the low group. This logical idea seemed counter to the notion that I should be teaching them to be better readers, not better test-takers.

My principal loved to schedule morning assemblies that seemed to occur just when we were doing reading groups. When an announcement about the latest assembly came over the PA system, I noticed that my students seemed happy to miss their reading groups. Worse, I noticed I was happy to miss it, too. I realized that reading was the one subject my students and I didn’t enjoy.

Later, we had a three-day week due to Thanksgiving. Too short a period to run my reading groups. Instead, we began a whole class literature activity with a short story written just above the ability of my average student. After providing motivation and preparation to read the story, we had a fabulous lesson where my lowest students actually read more words in a day than they typically did in a week. The high kids loved the well-written story.

We decided to do literature the next week as well. I found it interesting that the whole class groaned when an assembly was announced. My students and I were enjoying reading.

Something was going right. Even though I witnessed obvious progress by all my students, I remained uneasy about bucking the ability-defined-three reading-group model; I looked to see what research said about the topic. Slavin’s research seemed to be the most thorough look at the subject, and I found it supported what I was doing. It surprised me that years later, Mrs. Greenseth hadn’t gotten the message.

Now my daughter is a confident, capable educator herself. I’m passionately loving my 36th year of teaching and still meeting the needs of my students without using ability grouping. Still, countrywide, classrooms are full of sincere, well-intentioned teachers like Mrs. Richardson, who attempt to diversify instruction by ability grouping.

Policy makers and educational leaders are tacitly or openly approving an ineffective strategy that outwardly meets the instructional needs of a diverse population. Publishers print materials that support ability grouping in response to the buying habits of these educational consumers.

New teachers look around at what their more experienced colleagues are doing and assuming that, despite what they learn in their education classes, ability grouping seems to be the right way to teach reading. Robert Marzano, in his 2001 book, Classroom Instruction That Works, points out that research does not support ability grouping and that it’s probably less common than in the 80’s.

However, I’m seeing pressure on teachers to resurrect this grouping strategy out of its own ashes. Educational leaders need to give teachers permission to abandon this ineffective teaching strategy. Leaders need to provide their teachers with materials and research that will help the Mrs. Richardsons make good educational decisions for their students. We need to put an end to the bluebirds.