TWO KINDS OF FACTS: Speaking of American children!

FRIDAY, JUNE 14, 2013

Outstanding young lady turns 7: It isn’t every day that a cheerful young person turns 7.

For that reason, we’re on our way to Durham to look in on one such event.

Before leaving, we had planned to review a front-page report in the New York Times—the front-page report from Monday’s paper about so-called “ability grouping.”

Doggone it! We find we aren’t ready to do the piece justice. And so we will have to postpone.

Should “ability grouping” be used in American classrooms? We find it hard to imagine how such practices could be avoided, given the wide range of achievement levels in this country’s student population.

That said, Monday’s report by Vivien Yee contained some remarkable statistics about the use of “ability grouping.” The questions involved in her report connect directly to the concern voiced by Hacker and Dreifus about the new Common Core standards.

Does it make sense to have one set of “standards” for all the kids in a given grade? Given the nature of our student population, does that even come closeto making sense?

To us, that seems like a very important question. It seems like a blindingly obvious question. But it pretty much never gets asked.

Yee’s report was fascinating, in several ways. So were the attempts to comment offered at Slate and Salon.

Still and all, we’re going to have to postpone till next week. As you know, it isn’t every day that a cheerful young scholar turns 7.