Are students drowning in the stream?

A recent education report from Tokona Te Raki has argued the streaming, also known as ability grouping needs to stop as it disproportionately affects the academic performance of Māori and Pāsifika students. Having now read the report, the paper does have a statistically significant conclusion that Māori does not have the same long-term outcomes as non-Māori, however, this is a correlation and not necessarily the cause of this underachievement.

So yeah, I decided to go down the internet rabbit hole and see what the global situation was and if indeed streaming was a major cause of Māori educational underachievement. First things first let me define my terms so anyone reading knows what exactly what I am talking about. ‘Streaming’ is used to describe a variety of approaches by which students with similar levels of current achievement (note I do not say ability) are consistently grouped together for lessons.‘Streaming’ can involve grouping students into classes for all or most of their lessons or only for some, in particular Maths, English, and Science.

In the New Zealand context, most students in different streams follow the same curriculum. The purported aim of streaming is to enable more effective and efficient teaching by being able to focus on learners with similar achievement in those subjects, in the hope to improve or enhance that achievement (think gifted and talented). Although this approach is sometimes described as ‘ability grouping’, I would see this more as ‘achievement’ rather than ‘ability, as schools generally use measures of current performance, rather than measures of ability, to group their students.

So after wading through the research (see the reference list at the bottom), just how effective is streaming? On average, students whose classes are streamed make slightly less progress than students taught in mixed achievement classes. The evidence suggests that streaming has a very small negative impact for low and mid-range achieving students and a very small positive impact for higher achieving students.  So, the effects are small, and it appears that streaming is not an effective way to raise achievement for most students although it is unclear whether the achievement at lower ends is due to streaming or other factors.

Other effects on students must also be considered, however, such as the effect on their confidence. I remember the effect on my friends at high school when they were told they were in 9J "stingray", and being labeled stingers - the bottom feeders of the ocean. The research I looked at from the broader evidence base concludes that grouping students on the basis of achievement may have long-term negative effects on the attitudes and engagement of low achieving students, for example, by discouraging the belief that their achievement can be improved through effort and reinforcing the idea they were 'born dumb' and that intelligence is not malleable.

A 2012 OECD review concluded that streaming students is not associated with higher learning outcomes and that students from low-income families are likely to be negatively affected. Although the report did not go on to investigate the effect on local indigenous communities - though poverty is a large part of those community experiences globally.

But what of the actual research, is it reliable and can it be used to make inferences into best educational practice? The evidence on streaming that I read had been accumulated over at least 50 years and there are a large number of studies, some involving large student groups others with small. The conclusions on the impact of streaming are relatively consistent across different evidence reviews and meta-analyses. However, most of the reviews present relatively basic analysis and few investigated the different pedagogical approaches being used in the different extremes of the streamed classrooms. They do not explore whether effects vary between different interventions and the evidence base would benefit from new reviews which address these issues in more depth. Overall, the evidence is rated as limited.

One example of this is that the majority of the experimental evidence comes from the USA, and there are few rigorous experimental studies from other countries like New Zealand and the impact on indigenous communities. There was more evidence from secondary schools than primary schools, as streaming is more commonly used for older students. 

So there, you go, streaming has a small effect either way on overall learning for both low ability and high ability groupings and there is little support for the claim that streaming is the cause of Māori or Pāsifika underachievement - though such research is scant either way. So we must look to develop our pedagogy as educators to cater to the diverse needs of our students, no matter their present achievement 

References:

Collins, C. A., & Gan, L. Does Sorting Students Improve Scores? An Analysis of Class Composition.
(No. w18848). Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research. (2013)


Duflo, E., Dupas, P., Kremer, M. Peer Effects, Teacher Incentives, and the Impact of Tracking: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in Kenya American Economic Review 101 (5): pp 1739-1774. (2011)

Dunne, M., Humphreys, S., Dyson, A., Sebba, J., Gallannaugh, F., & Muijs, D. The teaching and learning of pupils in low-attainment sets. Curriculum Journal, 22(4), 485-513. (2011)

Hallam, S., & Ireson, J. Secondary school pupils' satisfaction with their ability grouping placements.
British Educational Research Journal, 33(1), 27-45. (2007)

Hanushek, E. A. & Woessmann, L. Does educational tracking affect performance and inequality? Differences-in-differences evidence across countries. CESifo working papers, No. 1415. (2005)

Henderson, N. D. A meta-analysis of ability grouping achievement and attitude in the elementary grades
Doctoral dissertation, Mississippi State University, Mississippi: Department of Curriculum and Instruction
(1989)

Ireson, J., Hallam, S. & Plewis, I. Ability grouping in secondary schools: Effects on pupils’ self-concepts.
British Journal of Educational Psychology 71. 2, pp 315-326. (2001)

Ireson, J., Hallam, S., Mortimore, P., Hack, S., Clark, H. & Plewis, I. Ability grouping in the secondary school: the effects on academic achievement and pupils’ self-esteem. Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, the University of Sussex at Brighton, September 2-5 1999. (1999)

Kulik, J.A., & Kulik, C.L.C. Effects of ability grouping on student achievement. Equity and Excellence in Education, 23(1-2), 22-30. (1987)

Tereshchenko, A., Francis, B., Archer, L., Hodgen, J., Mazenod, A., Taylor, B., Pepper, D., & Travers, M. C. Learners’ attitudes to mixed-attainment grouping: examining the views of students of high, middle and low attainment. Research Papers in Education, 1-20 (2018)


Comments

Matthew Mac said…
Thanks for doing the heaving lifting on this issue.

My own opinion remains though: Streaming has very little effect. Therefore moving back to mixed ability (achievement) classes will have little effect. I AM COMPLETELY OK WITH THIS HAPPENING. What I want to get across is what I think you are also saying. It wont fix the underlying issues for Maori achievement.

In fact, if all schools went back to mixed achievement you can bet classrooms will attempt to become "differentiated", and systemic racism and negative stereotyping will still put Maori kids in these bottom groups. Those same kids interviewed in the paper at the top of your blog that quoted that they were scarred from streaming, will be replaced by another set of disenfranchised kids that are blaming differentiation for their bad educational experiences.

Meanwhile, the government will pat themselves on the back that they have solved Maori underachievement, and it will be a wasted 10 years before we have enough data to realise that stopping streaming did not really do much to solve any problem.

So, once again, I have no problem with stopping streaming. My issue is that the "Maori Futures" paper (that inspired this blog), is strongly claiming that cancelling streaming is the silver bullet that will solve Maori underachievement.
Doctor_Harves said…
Yeah, I actually chatted with Carmen about this about an hour ago. Unless we develop effective pedagogical techniques to assist all learners, which I intimated at the end, then the change either way will mean little. I also find more experienced teachers tend to want to take top sets rather than putting their experience to good use in what they perceive is a more challenging task of teaching lower achieving students,
Anonymous said…
Kia ora
Thanks for the blog Michael. I'm glad you talked about the academic and the attitudes aspect of this issue because of course, students are so much more than a grade on a page. Now that some major players in our country actively support no academic streaming or grouping e.g. NZEI (https://www.nzei.org.nz/NZEI/Media/Releases/2021/04/Education_union_endorses_new_report_opposing_outdated_practice_of_streaming.aspx) and I know I've seen an MOE statement that they discourage academic streaming but for the life of me their websites are not easy to navigate to find anything let alone re-find something. The questions are...How do we support our teachers to teach more academically diverse students in the same group? What do they feel confident with? What do teachers see as their own learning needs in this area of their practice?
Carmen
gmoney484 said…
I'd suggest we already have effective pedagogical techniques to teach Maori and Pasifika students because there are many schools where these students achieve as well as, and in many cases better than their peers, while teaching exactly the same content in exactly the same way. Our school is an example and I can name plenty of others (I am amused by how selective research tends to be and the way they ignore the large or small, highly performing academic schools.. oh well).
The problem as we all well know it are the challenges that happen outside the classroom that impact what happens inside the classroom. Streaming or removing streaming is not going to change that.
Personally I have seen many, many positive benefits of streaming, and also seen it used in horrible ways - I was in charge of streaming boys for quite a few years at one of NZ's largest schools.
I agree with all your comments, that fixing streaming will not fix the problem.

With regard to Carmens comments, the RAS is going to do exactly the opposite of what she questions - "How do we support our teachers to teach more academically diverse students in the same group? What do they feel confident with? What do teachers see as their own learning needs in this area of their practice?" - There will be little support to include/implement Matauranga Maori, and teachers will be less confident and ultimately, the students will be the losers. I have spoken to so many people in the last 12 months and they all agree - there will be few resources, there will be little PD, there will be little support - and these are people on SEGs. I have even had a quote from someone on an SEG saying that to teach Matauranga Maori properly, you have to write your own resources - you have to do the mahi yourself - thats not going to work for the majority of teachers.

How is removing streaming going improve things when the battle is so much larger?
Doctor_Harves said…
Thank you for your comments, moving to mixed achievement classes will not change up things much, if at all. The research is clear on that. Without teacher support about developing effective teaching strategies, it will just move the endemic problems elsewhere. Unless we address the root problems of Māori and Pasifika underachievement, things will not change - streaming or not.
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