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yes! yes!! elementary schools in Rockford, Illinois started grouping students by reading ability instead of age. what happened? everything worked spectacularly. students happy, teachers happy, scores up. ability grouping works.

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Michael Petrilli

@MichaelPetrilli

HOORAY FOR THIS We Started Grouping Students by Reading Ability vs. Grade. Here’s What Happened the74million.org/article/we-sta @NAGCGIFTED @JonathanPlucker @ehanford @rpondiscio @MrDanielBuck

9:25 AM · Jun 18, 2025

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TracingWoodgrains

@tracewoodgrains

43m

policymakers and admins have been ignoring this sort of straightforward, effective policy for far too long. that must change.

Schools Should Pursue Excellence

From educationprogress.org

This was literally what they were doing in Podunk, Missouri in 1992, wild that they’re just suddenly discovering this as if it’s a revelation. I was in the “star readers” group in first grade.

it's not a revelation so much as an effective policy that's been systematically and deliberately neglected over the course of decades we've known what works for generations. time for people to get around to implementing it.

Schools Should Pursue Excellence

From educationprogress.org

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aquinas heard

@aquinasheard23

24m

“Ability grouping works” - of course it does. This is partly why my recreational gymnasts learned so much faster than my competitor’s gymnasts (he went out of business within 5 years of me opening).

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aquinas heard

@aquinasheard23

Sep 16, 2024

Replying to @owl_elc

My gymnasts, at my gymnastics center, learned quickly because I grouped them by skill/ability. I’ve also worked with gymnasts, at different gyms, in groups of wildly different ability. The overall progress is much slower…but it’s not my gym…..I only have so much say.

have you written that story up in longer form somewhere? if not, would you be interested in writing it up for

@CenterforEdProg

? this sort of cross-subject point helps hammer the topic home

Carlos That Notices Things

@QuetzalPhoenix

34m

How can you have this if equity is your highest value?

it's impossible to reach programs like this through a pure equity lens; unless you center excellence, you're not going to find them. I say much more about this here:

Schools Should Pursue Excellence

From educationprogress.org

I'm skeptical of the methodology. Education studies are hard. The treatment effect can usually not be distinguished from having well prepared teachers in unusual situations that would not be replicated by the policy. Their rules seem to show that. I want policies that

subject-specific ability grouping with appropriate curricular changes has been studied for generations. even at the peak of the "detracking" movement, researchers recognized subject-specific reading grouping worked and worked well. see eg

Ability Grouping and Student Achievement in Elementary Schools: A Best-Evidence Synthesis - Robert...

From journals.sagepub.com

But did it achieve equality of outcomes

even better: it got kids to learn

This seems like the most obvious thing in the world.

TracingWoodgrains

@tracewoodgrains

15m

it is! but it's been systematically neglected by admins and policymakers for decades. ability grouping is the most effective unfashionable policy around.

Connor

@blamblamtheman

26m

Ideally I think this should be supplemented with some social clubs that allow students to fraternize with those closer to their own age or maturity level.

TracingWoodgrains

@tracewoodgrains

23m

the schools that take ability grouping most seriously, like Telra, tend to keep some less hierarchical subjects more age-centered. ones that go even further like Alpha School provide individual pacing with non-academic time for students to mingle

Our Approach | Telra Institute

From telra.org

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As a (math) teacher this is broadly true! Thank you for advocating this policy

Wouldn't it be embarrassing for older kids to be placed with younger kids?

My school did this. There was a white class and three black classes with almost no overlap.

Growing up homeschooling, there was a lot of mixed age learning. Seemed to work well, socially too (was never intimidated by older kids)

gdsimms

@gdsimms

19m

When I was in elementary school, both reading and math were treated as 3 tiers: grade level, plus one, and minus one. During those subject times, kids would move classrooms and then return to their regular classroom. Is this not the norm anywhere anymore?

🅔🅝

@ben_mathes

what if a federated The Sort is good, actually? (it is)

Mark Milley’s Stylist

@Col_Crockett

55m

the lengths we will go to sometimes in order to avoid obvious truths is pretty remarkable

174

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Is there even much value left in traditional age-based grades? Especially by the time students are going around to different classes with different teachers.

Joe Norton

@joenorton

26m

We did this back in Montessori school. It was awesome to be in the older reading group.

Eli Braille

@megawhelmed

49m

Even if it worked well enough to improve outcomes for every single child people would still fight it for increasing inequality.

What's weird is my kid's school has "rotations" where they do exactly this and move kids to their level class on math and reading several times a week, and that's great.... but then they have split grade classes on the regular that are done by age and not by ability.

I'm not sure about the metrics they're using in this snippet. Their baseline is the "post-COVID low point", but that's probably an outlier. They should compare to pre-COVID performance and ideally to other similar school districts.

Leo Abstract

@Leo_Abstract

20m

read this as 'groping students' and thought 'ehh what else is new'

Quwin

@TheQuwin

"Grade levels" being by age literally never made any sense to me. It's not even a new idea, in high school we separate kids by ability level

darkness

@darknessatnite

16m

It will be seen as racist.

Zeitgeist

@BigFatSmugCat

Leveling from the bottom up is how you usually end up with just the bottom

Adam Franklin

@isaygooddaysir2

32m

But how will they hold back overachievers? Seems unworkable.

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Benjamin Bloom and the 2 Sigma Problem

From substack.com

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