April 26, 2016 Dr Nancy Chamberlain Testimony

4-26-16

My name is Nancy Chamberlain, and earlier today I sent the following email to the school board.  I would like to read it into the public record.

Please find attached an addendum to the Save Our Challenge Recommendations and Rationale.  The addendum has two parts: a 6 page "Middle School Philosophy - a Brief History", which traces the historical antecedents, rise, and ultimate decline of this model for Middle Schools.  Although the Middle School Philosophy as espoused by the AMLE was widely adopted in the 1980s and early 1990s, the simultaneous advent of standards and accountability through standardized testing meant that student achievement could be tracked over time.  There is irrefutable evidence that the academic achievement of students declined during this time: 4th graders who started far above the international averages in reading, math and science slid to below the averages just 4 years later when retested after middle school.  This result repeated over the course of several rounds of testing.  Eventually, schools moved away from the Middle School Philosophy: after reaching a peak in the 1990s, less than a quarter of Middle Schools now follow this model. Middle Schools have decreased their use of heterogeneous classes, and increased tracking.  In the last round of testing, the outcomes for 8th graders have rebounded, with reading showing the first increase in 20 years.

The second section of our addendum is12 pages of "Recent Research on Tracking and Student Outcomes".  Here we are using Tracking as a proxy for the Self-Select Challenge Program, even though tracking is technically an assignment BY THE SCHOOL.  Nevertheless, the Academic Subcommittee read a few papers on tracking and outcomes, but missed a slew of recent research papers and literature reviews.  The papers are divided into categories:

• Interventions for Closing the Achievements Gaps: Tracking
• Case Studies of English Language Learners
• New Research on Heterogeneous Classrooms vs Tracking and Student Outcomes
• Tracking and Student Outcomes - Literature Reviews
• Peer Tutoring - Best Practices
• Teacher Attitudes Toward Differentiation and Tracking

This section can be summarized as follows:

• Tracking or ability grouping has net POSITIVE effects on MINORITIES, FRL and high-ability students

• There are NO NEGATIVE EFFECTS for ANY student groups examined

• The US DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION OFFICE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS recommends AGAINST serving underrepresented groups in heterogeneous classrooms.

• “In sum, recent research indicates that high-achieving students may benefit from tracking and suffer losses from heterogeneous grouping.” – Loveless (2016)

• PEER TUTORING, a strategy used in heterogeneous classrooms, takes extensive training of teachers and peer tutors for successful implementation, or neither student will experience gains.

• Surveys of Teachers has shown that over 80% believe differentiation is difficult to implement, and over 70% believe high-achieving students are best served in homogeneous (tracked) classes.

In sum, Save Our Challenge, and the over 1300 people we represent, believe that the students of NSD would be best served by keeping the self-select Challenge Program, providing additional supports for our struggling learners, and encouragement for more underrepresented students to select into Challenge classes.