Ability grouping appears to be a logical means of organizing a student body with diverse academic skills. Many observers contend, however, that the practice favors students in high-ability groups at the expense of students in lower groups. An organizational conception of ability grouping clarifies the rationale for ability grouping but also illuminates its shortcomings: Grouping students leads to segregation on nonacademic as well as academic criteria, and differentiated instruction may lead to unequal results for students assigned to different groups. These issues are explored with data from 92 honors, regular, and remedial English classes in eighth and ninth grade. We examine the characteristics of students placed in different groups, similarities and differences in the quality of instruction across groups, and the links between instruction and achievement. The data show that rates of student participation and discussion are higher in honors classes, contributing to the learning gaps between groups. Rates of openended questions are similar across classes, but honors students benefit more from such discourse because it occurs more often in the context of sustained study of literature.
High school students who work intensively at paid jobs tend to have lower grades in academic courses. Prior research has not properly tested theories about the source of the relationship between student employment and grades (or other outcomes), and has not explicitly modeled the potentially reciprocal nature of this relationship. We focus on both the short- and long-term effects of adolescent employment on grades in academic courses and simultaneously consider the extent to which grades may influence employment behaviors. We find no evidence that high school employment has either short-or long-term effects on grades in academic courses or that grades in these courses influence employment activities. Pre-existing differences between more and less intensively employed students fully account for the association between employment intensity and grades in academic courses.
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