I deeply hate this entire mentality. I don’t care about reading groups in school. I hate the idea that we should ditch hierarchies because they hurt feelings. It’s ok for people to know that there are things they can’t do. It’s ok to be excluded. It’s ok to be aware that intellectual limitations exist. It’s ok to know that some people are a lot smarter.
Hierarchies Are Good
Clarissa's Blog 
“All must have prizes!”.
And yet the evidence is under everybody’s yes, if people want to see.
Who cares how many US high schoolers are functionally illiterate? As long as no one’s feelings are hurt, why should it matter?
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And what? We should sort them covertly instead? We should force everybody to read Dick and Jane forever because Andy in 1st grade got dropped on his head and can’t seem to get past them? We should just keep going and let Andy flounder on things he can’t dream of ever reading because we don’t want to make him feel bad by admitting he can’t keep up?
Or are we going to take Andy and put him in a special smaller class with more help so maybe if he’s capable of getting better, with help, he’ll have some prayer of doing so?
Why are people so hung up on feelings they can’t see performance?
ethyl
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I still remember my reading group in the 2nd grade. “The Condors” I was proud to be in the top tier! No Robins or Bluebirds for me
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In my primary years (1950s) one year we had flower names for the groups. The top was orchids, I still remember.
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Was in the same era, we had no formal grouping, students were assisted as needed. But we were sometimes allowed to participate in outdoor field and sport events as our classroom tasks were considered satisfactory, which no doubt allowed teachers to concentrate on others needing additional help. And yes, on hot afternoons.we did want to escape ;-D
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“When a child is put in the lowest reading group, they usually know it”
I remember when, in the third or fourth grade, the year was divided (roughly) into the smart kids, the average kids and the dumb kids. The teachers IIRC had some line about it being arbitrary but all the kids knew. And, at the time and place being an average or dumb kid didn’t correlate with any real loss of peer status and they did have strengths that the smart group lacked (the average and dumb groups had arguably more prestige among the kids).
Since then, intelligence (over which children have no control) has been hyped up as the Only Thing that Matters in the Meritocracy. Of course meritocracy is dead (or dying) but people are still trying to turn intelligence into a virtue rather than a genetic fact and so they have go through weird kabuki to have that make some kind of sense….
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Some of this may be IQ, part of this may be genetics. Some may be environmental, both nutrition and presence or absence of books in family. Some may be simply age, childrens’ brains are still developing, and gender certainly matters. Some teachers grasp that, but sadly, some don’t.
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