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Debunking destreaming
A new study from the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation finds that Massachusetts schools that track (stream) their grade 8 students get better math results. The executive summary can be found here and the full report here (registration required).
Some of our readers may remember Ontario’s ill-fated experiment with destreaming grade 9 in the early 90’s. The policy was ideologically driven by ivory-tower theorists in the ministry of education, and their plan was to destream grade 10 in a few years once the destreaming of grade 9 had proved to be a roaring success. Well, the best-laid plans of mice and men gang aft aglay, and the destreaming of grade 9 was universally acknowledged to be a disaster. There were tales of grade 9 math students crying in the back of the class, for example. It was awful. One Toronto high school was the darling of the ideologues because it destreamed all of its grades. I spoke to a teacher at that school a few years later, asking him how destreaming was going. “Oh”, he said. “We’re not doing that any more. It didn’t work.”
Consistent with common sense, homogeneous groups are easier to teach and the kids learn more. This is one reason why child-centred learning should be de-emphasized, as it results in much less homogeneity.
This reminded me of two other Ministry of Education blunders from the late 70’s & early 80’s. Metric A4 paper & 4-ring binders were used for Ministry publications for about 10 years before joining the real world of letter size paper & 3-ring binders. And there was the infamous IKON ‘dream computer’ that a computer person at the time told me was to be built from the ground up without using IBM or Apple components. Which museum displays these expensive IKON’s now?