Peter E. Pflaum - Golden Globe - The Synergy Network
http://www.wiredbrain.net/  Pflaump@wiredbrain.com

We need stable group over a longer time period and hours per
day. The factory system represented by the Carnegie unit
credit dices the student into intellectual pieces where
nothing relates to anything else. You wouldn't expect that
your office staff should shift rooms several times a day,
have several supervisors with different goals and styles,
and expect them to be highly
productive. (Handy 6) 

                              Grouping

   Debate over grouping according to ability and achievement
measures has continued since 1920.  Sputnik (1957)
heightened interest in identifying and encouraging children
of high aptitude to enter scientific fields.  Ability
grouping often results in tracking where both students and
teachers in low classes easily can become discouraged.  Hall
and Findley (1971) suggest one defect of this system is the
small percentage of teachers who prefer to teach the low
achieving groups.

  Goodlad (1984) views tracking as a repulsive practice that
often begins in primary school.  Evidence shows
"higher-achieving students do not do better when together,
and lower-achieving students do much worse when together. 
Tracking clearly
discriminates and clearly perpetuates inequities among
students . . ."  (Glickman, 1991, p. 5).  

     Recommended alternatives are groups of various sizes
formed for special purposes and dissolved when the specified
purpose has been accomplished.  Goodlad reminds us of how
much we learn by teaching others.  Cooperative learning,
peer tutoring, and student leadership are just some
advantages of students helping each other.  Leadership can
change and rotate according to need.  These practices are
inherent to the structure of one-room and other small
schools.

   Anton S. Makarenko devised such a plan in the Gorky
Colony, a multiage school for wayward youth established in
the Ukraine in the 1920's.  After much trial and error,
Makarenko successfully arranged a system of mixed
detachments where all colonists except "the most glaringly
unsuitable" (Makarenko, 1973, p. 356) served as leaders. 
Depending on the project, mixed detachments were scheduled
and organized according to the job at hand.  Upon completion
of a task, the group was dissolved.  Mixed detachment
leaders were responsible for organization and quality
control.  A leader in one group served as a follower in
others.  Each
colonist also belonged to a permanent detachment with a
permanent commander.  Permanent detachments formed a
"nucleus for the colony" (Makarenko, 1973, p. 355).
Standardized Testing Today

  In an opinion paper on reorganizing American education,
Leona Tyler sees inadequate attention to individual
differences; an excess of compulsion.  Age grouping "is
perhaps the worst possible strategy for maximizing the
learning of individuals" (Tyler, 1985, p. 1).  "A Proposal
for Reorganizing American Public Education" cautions against
focusing on averages of standardized test scores rather than
on the spread of scores.  This author criticizes reporters
for lack of realization of a naturally occurring situation.
They continue to be shocked at the finding that half of any
group tested is below the average of the group.  Human
beings differ inherently in how much they learn and how
rapidly they learn it.  Yet we go on categorizing them by
age and treating them all alike.  What sense does it make to
assign the same tasks to all members of an age group and
expect them all to succeed equally well?  (Tyler, 1985, p.
2).

 Holweide Comprehensive School

   Located in Cologne, West Germany, Holweide Comprehensive
School is a contemporary example of quality education.  The
school began as an experiment in the mid- 1970's and serves
the equivalent of American grades 5 through 11.  Culturally
diverse students include children of foreign guest workers
and children from single-parent or poor German families. 
Almost all pupils are considered non- college bound.

   Teams of teachers remain with the same students for the
entire six years of Holweide schooling.  School
administration is composed of only one teaching principal
and two assistants who also teach.  Students are not tracked
according to assessed ability.  Teacher teams determine how
to group students and how to organize the school day. 
Readjustments are made as needed.   Because of this
structure, authentic accountability is possible.  Since
teachers have the same students for six years, former
instructors cannot be blamed for pupil deficiencies. 
Teachers cannot pass problem students along to others. 
Teacher teamwork increases chances of defining appropriate
ways to improve
schooling of individual pupils.  "Holweide's approach thus
turns the usual bureaucratic, assembly-line processing of
children into a teaching and learning enterprise, a moral
community" (Shanker, 1990, p. 351).  The School and Society