instructional and institutional effects of ability grouping

Instructional and Institutional Effects of Ability GroupingAuthor(s): Adam GamoranSource: Sociology of Education, Vol. 59, No. 4 (Oct., 1986), pp. 185-198Published by: American Sociological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2112346 .

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INSTRUCTIONAL AND INSTITUTIONAL EFFECTS OF ABILITY GROUPING

ADAM GAMORAN

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Sociology of Education 1986, Vol. 59 (October):185-198

This paper attempts to uncover the mechanisms through which stratification in schools differentiates student achievement. Two types of mechanisms are considered: (1) technical conditions of differentially allocated instruction, and (2) institutional processes operating through symbolically defined categories. Using data from twelve first-grade classrooms, I isolated the instructional effects and found that they are both large and stable. Institutional processes account at most for a small grouping effect, which occurs early in the year but fades as the year progresses.

Many studies have shown that stratification in schools differentiates student achievement within schools and classrooms. Students in high-ranking groups and tracks tend to achieve more, even when prior ability is controlled (Schafer and Olexa 1971; Weinstein 1976; Alexander and McDill 1976; Alexander, Cook, and McDill 1978; Rosenbaum 1976; Rowan and Miracle 1983). But this finding is not universally supported (Jencks and Brown 1975; Alexander and Cook 1982), and the observed impact of within-school stratification probably varies by form of grouping (e.g., within-class or between-class), by grade level, and by research paradigm (Rowan and Miracle 1983; Slavin and Karweit 1985). How can these effects be more fully understood? Recent writers have examined not simply whether groups and tracks affect student outcomes but how such influences operate (Alexander and Cook 1982; Rowan and Miracle 1983). By studying the mechanisms that produce grouping and tracking effects, we may also discover how and why such effects vary. This approach follows a more general trend in studies of school effects by focusing on the processes of schooling (e.g., S0rensen and Hallinan 1977; Bidwell and Kasarda 1980; Barr and Dreeben 1983).

The research reported here contributes to the effort to document the mechanisms through which

stratification in schools affects student achievement. Ability grouping within classrooms is the focus of this paper. The data used measure reading instruction and classroom organization in twelve first-grade classes. With appropriate modifications, the conceptual framework developed here could also be applied to other forms of school stratification and to other levels of schooling.

I shall propose two mechanisms by which grouping may affect achievement. To consider these mechanisms, we must view ability-based reading groups through two different theoretical lenses. First, a reading group can be considered an organizational unit characterized by a technical process of instruction involving interaction between a teacher and students (Barr and Dreeben 1977, 1983; see also Parsons 1960, pp. 60-61). Differences between groups in the instruction each receives may create differences in learming.

At the same time, a reading group can be considered an institutionalized category whose social definition transcends individual classrooms (Meyer 1980). Students in higher groups may be "chartered" to learn more, irrespective of what they are taught, because they expect to enter high-status educational categories in subsequent years. In this view, the differential symbolic value of ability groups leads some students to perform better than others, even when their initial abilities and instructional experiences are held constant.

Instructional and institutional effects are tightly interwoven, because the status of a reading group is partly defined by the instruction it receives. The central goal of this paper is to disentangle instructional effects of grouping from institutional and other effects. I then examine the effects of grouping that remain after instruction is controlled to judge whether they derive from institutional sources.

INSTRUCTIONAL EFFECTS

Reading groups are organizational units nested within layers of the school system that extend from

The data used in this study were collected under a grant from the Spencer Foundation to Rebecca Barr and Robert Dreeben. The research for this paper was supported in part by the Graduate School of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The author grate- fully acknowledges the advice and criticism of Rebecca Barr, Charles Bidwell, James Coleman, Robert Dreeben, Christopher Jencks, Robert Hauser, Robert Mare, Ross Matsueda, John Meyer, Michael Olneck, and an anonymous referee. An earlier version of the paper was presented at the annual meetings of the Midwest Sociological Society, April 1984. Address all correspondence to the author at the Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin, 1180 Observatory Drive, Madison, WI 53706.

185



186 GAMORAN

the district level down to the school, class, group, and individual levels (Barr and Dreeben 1983). Because reading instruction occurs in groups, the quantity of instruction each group receives deter- mines the instruction each group member receives. According to this perspective, then, the technical conditions of instruction in each reading group determine how much students learn. If instruction varies by group, learning will vary accordingly.

Although researchers have been studying ability grouping for more than fifty years, few have linked achievement with instruction or with any other classroom or group experience. The ability- grouping literature typically compares the learning of students in homogeneously grouped classes with the learning of comparable students in heteroge- neously grouped classes, but researchers have yet to reach a consensus on which type of setting produces greater learning (see, for example, Goldberg, Passow, and Justman 1966; a collection of similar studies is summarized in Yates 1966). Several reviewers have pointed out that in the absence of instructional differences, there are no consistent achievement differences (Miller and Otto 1930; Cornell 1936; Ekstrom 1961; National Education Association 1968; Heathers 1969; Esposito 1973). The studies these reviewers read often acknowledge this problem. Researchers who are unable to find expected achievement differences between homogeneous and heterogeneous settings complain that there were no instructional differences (Cook 1924; French 1959; Goldberg et al. 1966). A researcher who discovers unanticipated differences that favor homogeneous grouping may blame it on instructional variation (Douglas 1964). Clearly, if the groups in a class vary in the instruction they receive, they may also vary in the achievement of their students. Differential instruction is thus one mechanism that produces differences in learning.

Several recent studies have found differences in the instruction provided to groups and tracks of different levels, although most have not measured the effects of instructional variation on student outcomes (see the reviews by Hiebert 1983; Good and Marshall 1984; for the high school level, see especially Oakes 1985). In a few cases, however, researchers have connected instructional activities with achievement. Barr (1973-74) found that in first-grade classes subdivided for reading, the pace of instruction differed between high, middle, and low reading groups, greatly affecting learning. In a study of fourth graders, Rowan and Miracle (1983) noted that the number of levels in the reading series a group covered during the year had a small effect on standardized test scores. Alexander and Cook (1982), in an investigation of the relationship between high school curricular track and achievement, found that coursework did not play an important intervening role. They suggest that

events occurring in earlier years of schooling may explain the relationship.

To explain learning, Barr and Dreeben (1983) used content coverage-the quantity of instructional content covered in the first grade-as an indicator of instruction. The teachers they studied adapted instruction with a single textbook series to a variety of ability levels by varying the extent of the curricular materials they covered in different reading groups. Barr and Dreeben discovered that content coverage has a major effect on how much children learn in first grade, even when initial aptitude is statistically controlled.

We can expect that the farther a reading group advances, the more its students will learn. Learning is differentiated by reading group partly because the content of instruction varies by group.

THE READING GROUP AS AN INSTITUTIONALIZED CATEGORY

The environment of a reading group is broader than the school district organization encompassing the group. Reading groups are embedded in a national system of symbolic educational categories that includes classes, grades, curricular tracks, and schools. Using Berger and Luckmann's (1967) concepts, Meyer (1977, 1980) suggested that such educational categories are institutionalized: They are imbued with symbolic meaning that is socially defined in a national context.

Institutionalized educational categories take on substantively real and potent properties as they become part of our socially constructed reality. Citing the literature on school effects (see Averch et al. 1972 for a review) as evidence that what students learn is not related to the organizational characteristics of their particular schools, Meyer (1977, 1980) argued that the institutional properties of schools govern the outcomes of schooling. Schools and the categories within them have socially defined missions, or charters, which specify the outcomes that the educational institution confers upon its graduates. The symbolic status of an educational category varies directly with the outcomes it is expected to produce and, according to this argument, may have real impact upon those outcomes.

Institutional effects on learning are likely to occur when students' current statuses are tied to future roles (Meyer 1980). One example of such a connection is the relationship between high school curricular tracks and subsequent educational and occupational careers. Students in academic pro- grams may achieve more because they expect to attain high-status roles in the future.

Ability grouping in elementary schools also has consequences for students' futures. It is a system that stretches across the years of primary schooling, feeding into the grouping and tracking systems



ABILITY GROUPING 187

of middle and high schools (Rosenbaum 1976, 1980; Alexander and Cook 1982). Students' ability-group placement in the first grade, for example, influences their placement in the second grade (Rist 1970; Gamoran 1984a, 1984b). Moreover, grouping within classes for reading instruction is a highly institutionalized practice in the early years of elementary school. Austin and Morrison (1963) estimated that in 80 percent of American elementary schools, teachers group students for reading instruction. The proportion in first grade is probably even higher. Top group and slow group have meanings that transcend the individual classrooms in which such categories are found. Even when groups are given names that hide their rank ("Bluebirds," "Robins"), students know that a hierarchy exists, and most have accurate ideas about their group's position in that hierarchy (Filby and Barnett 1982; Eder 1983).

This grouping system may create differences between status levels in student motivation and performance. Students in high-ranking groups, anticipating future placement in high-status groups, may be motivated to learn more. Similarly, students in low-ranking reading groups may have low expectations and thus achieve less.

Elementary school students may be affected by their institutional statuses without being consciously aware of the entire system of educational categories. The institutional perspective suggests that students receive cues from their environment about the worth of their present positions and their chances for the future. As Merton (1957) discovered, individuals may adopt attitudes and behavior appropriate to future roles without consciously or intentionally selecting them. Parents, older sib- lings, peers, and teachers may communicate their beliefs about what the levels within the school system signify for one's future chances. From such sources, children may learn of the shared institutional belief system in which certain students are expected to perform differently than others. For these reasons, the symbolic significance of institutionalized reading groups may affect student learning as early as first grade.

These two perspectives, one focusing on the technical conditions of instruction in reading groups and the other on the symbolic value of reading groups as institutional categories, are not mutually exclusive. Both can contribute to our understanding of how grouping affects achievement. In fact, instructional and institutional factors may affect learning simultaneously: Instruction provides students with the opportunity to learn, and the symbolic properties of reading groups influence the extent to which students are motivated to take advantage of their opportunities. To disentangle these two processes, we must quantify the status of reading groups in a variable that is distinct from a measure of the instruction allocated to each group.

PROCEDURES

I applied this framework for sorting out the effects of ability grouping to a data set obtained in 1981-82 from three school districts in the Chicago area. Two schools in each district participated in the study, and two classes from each school were observed, for a total of twelve classrooms. The classrooms were observed twelve times at approx- imately three-week intervals over the course of the year. Information on the social and instructional organization of each classroom was recorded. In addition, students completed a reading aptitude test at the beginning of the year and were tested on their learning in December, March, and May. Finally, school records and teacher interviews provided information on student family back- grounds.

Background Variables

Age was calibrated in months, beginning with September 1981 (when students entered first grade). Missing values were assigned the district mean. Sex was scored 0 for males, 1 for females.

Socioeconomic status (SES) was estimated by rating the higher of father's and mother's occupations on a nine-point scale.' Missing values were assigned the class mean. In one school (located in the poorest and economically most homogeneous community), information on parents' occupations could not be obtained. For the students in that school, scores were estimated from census tract data.

Reading aptitude prior to first grade was computed as the combined score on two tests administered in September.2 One test, the Barr- Kibby Word Learning Tasks (Barr and Kibby 1981), measured reading readiness. Students were organized into groups of six and were taught several words and phonics concepts. They were

' I used the following scale: 9 = professional, technical, and kindred workers; 8 = managers, officials, and proprietors (large); 7 = the clergy and higher-level white-collar, clerical, and semi-professional workers; 6 = managers, officials, and proprietors (small); 5 = sales workers; 4 = public-service and lower white-collar workers and craftsmen, foremen, and kindred workers; 3 = operatives and semi-skilled workers; 2 = laborers and unskilled and domestic-service workers; 1 = unemployed persons and welfare recipients. Intercoder reliability of scoring was 83 percent.

2 Aptitude, as it is used here, refers not to a generalized ability or IQ score but to a specific capacity to perform in a particular area. Following Cronbach and Snow (1977, p. 6), I define aptitude as "any characteristic of a person that forecasts his probability of success under a given treatment." The aptitude measure is designed to predict success in reading, not success in other areas.



188 GAMORAN

then tested on their immediate learning and on their retention two days later. The other test, called the Wide Range Achievement Test, measured prior reading skills. Students were simply required to read a long list of words.3

Grouping

Each first-grade class was divided into small groups for reading instruction. The teachers' perceptions of student ability served as the main criterion for assigning students to groups, although other criteria such as effort and behavior may also have been considered (Borko and Niles 1984). The researchers made no attempt to influence teacher grouping decisions at any time during the year.

This study could not have been conducted with data from a single classroom, because within a class, higher-level groups generally go through the material faster, producing a near-perfect correla- tion between group level and instruction. With data from several classrooms, however, we are able to distinguish between instruction and relative group level. For example, the instruction appropriate for a high group in one class might be appropriate for the middle group in another class. Thus, it is possible to determine whether students who belong to differently ranked groups in different classrooms but who receive similar instruction learn similarly or whether their learning varies systematically according to their group placement despite the similarity in the instruction they receive.

To assign scores to reading groups, I constructed a scale of group rank within classrooms. Groups were scored between 1 and 6, according to their positions in the classroom hierarchy. Six, the highest rank, was the greatest number of initial groups in any classroom. Groups in classes containing fewer groups were scored at the appropriate points on the same scale. For example, in classes with three groups (the most common arrangement), the groups were scored 1.50, 3.50, and 5.50; in classes with four, they were scored 1.25, 2.75, 4.25, and 5.75. This procedure permits us to rate groups independently of absolute levels of aptitude and instruction.4

The rank of each student's group was measured twelve times during the year. The variable indicating group rank was constructed by summing a student's scores and dividing by four for the first measurement wave (September to December), by eight for the second wave (September to March),

and by twelve for the full-year measurement. Thus, group rank was measured cumulatively, corresponding to the instructional measures (see below). This formulation takes into account students who moved from one group to another by marking group position twelve times and by using an average score for the operational variable.

Instructional Variables

First-grade reading instruction is typically guided by the use of basal readers, which provide a controlled and cumulative introduction of words. Following Barr (1973-74, 1975) and Barr and Dreeben (1983), I measured instruction as the number of words taught between testing periods.

As a second indicator of instruction, I used the number of phonic skills each student was taught between testing periods. . Phonics are generally introduced through workbook activities in conjunc- tion with the words taught in basal readers (Barr and Dreeben 1983). This was true in all but one of the twelve classrooms; in that classroom, the teacher did not introduce any of the phonics corresponding to the readers.

Instruction was measured in December, March, and May-the three times learning was measured. Because of the nature of first-grade reading instruction, words taught and phonics taught were measured cumulatively.5 Learning may vary by reading group because higher groups move through the curriculum faster and because they have progressed farther at any given time. Moreover, lessons in the readers and workbooks are cumulative; i.e., the words and phonics introduced early in the year are used in later stories. Each new story introduces new words but also contains words that were taught earlier. Thus, the fall measure is the number of words taught from September to December, the winter measure is the number of words taught from September to March, and the spring measure is the total number of words taught from September to May.

My indices of instruction measure only the progress made by different reading groups; they do not measure between-group variation in teaching methods or instructional activities. Each teacher taught a range of levels within her classroom using a single textbook series; therefore, one could argue that the absence of such indicators does not bias the model, because while instructional quality and activities may vary across classrooms, they should not vary across groups within classrooms. But different reading groups provide different learning contexts (Eder 1981) and different teacher re- 3Data on race were also gathered, but only two of the

classrooms were integrated. Even in the integrated classrooms, race was unrelated to both grouping and learning, once aptitude and SES were controlled (Dreeben and Gamoran forthcoming).

' Further details on the group-rank scale are available in Gamoran (1984b).

SWords taught and ph8nics taught correspond to basal content coverage and phonics content coverage in Barr and Dreeben (1983).




sponses to students (Weinstein 1976), even in the same classroom. My analysis measures the extent to which such differences affect the number of words taught, but future work would do well to consider additional measurements of instruction. I have used the coverage of words and phonics because it is known to be a key indicator of instruction in first-grade reading (Barr 1973-74; Barr and Dreeben 1983).

Reasoning that the more days students were absent from school the less likely they were to learn the words and phonics their group was taught, I constructed a variable for absences. This variable indicates the number of days a student was absent from September to December, from Septem- ber to March, and from September to May. Three cases with missing values were assigned school means adjusted by individual aptitude and SES.

Tests of Learning

In December, a separate test was constructed for each reading group in each class. The test consisted of a random sample of the words each group had been taught. Each child was asked to read the list of words aloud. The proportion of words read correctly from the sample of words that had been taught was multiplied by the total number of words that had been taught to determine the number of words learned.

Similar tests were constructed and administered in March and May. Thus, there are three measures of words learned: fall, winter, and spring.

The main benefit of using these measures of learning lies in their close correspondence to the indicators of instruction.6 By testing students on what they were taught, we maximize our chances of detecting instructional effects. The instructional effects found in this study are likely to be larger than those found in studies using standardized achievement tests to measure student performance. Moreover, this design provides an answer to a question of substantive interest: Net of certain measured conditions (i.e., grouping and back-

ground), how much of what students are taught do they leam?

Because the dependent variable has a ceiling (i.e., no student can score higher than the total number of words he or she was taught), this analysis cannot examine a first grader's global learning. This ceiling effect is less severe than one might expect, because a large proportion of first graders cannot read more than the words they have been taught anyway. Even at the end of the year, many first graders can read words that are in their readers but not words that are unfamiliar. Still, the analyses in this paper deal only with the learning of curricular materials and not with the acquisition of more general reading skills. Because the instruction that takes place in reading groups is based entirely on the curriculum contained in readers and workbooks, the measures of teaching and learning selected here seem most appropriate. Like the effects of instruction on learning, the effects of grouping are likely to be strongest for the words introduced in the reading groups.

I included in this study all students who were members of a reading group from the beginning of the school year until a post-test was given. The fall sample includes 260 students, the winter sample 248 students, and the spring sample 243 students. This pattern occurs because some students moved away during the winter and spring.

RESULTS

The data are presented in three cumulative waves: fall (September to December), winter (September to March), and spring (September to May). I used ordinary least squares (OLS) regression to estimate three models for each wave. In the first model, I used only the background variables to predict the number of words learned. In the second, I added group rank. When we compare the first and second models, we see how much of the apparent effect of background is actually due to the placement of advantaged students in higher groups. In the third model, I added the instructional variables. This model reveals the instructional effects of grouping. Any effects of group rank that remain will be examined as possible institutional effects.

When comparing results from wave to wave, we must bear in mind that the mean and variance of the dependent variable increase considerably over time (see Tables Al through A3). The background factors remain constant from period to period, but the school conditions (group rank, absences, words taught, and phonics taught) vary with time. Because standardized regression coefficients are sensitive to variance differences (13 = sXsy), it is best to use the unstandardized coefficients to compare effects for the same model at different time periods. Standardized coefficients may be

6 Despite the correspondence that exists between words taught and words learned because of the construction of the latter, the two variables are empirically and conceptually distinct: One measures what students were taught, the other measures how much they learned from that instruction. One can conceive of situations in which students who are taught more words do not learn more. I will address such issues toward the end of the paper.

The percentage of sampled words read correctly might itself have served as the dependent variable. This variable would indicate how well students were doing but not how much they learned. Because the latter issue is of greater substantive interest, I followed Barr and Dreeben (1983) and examined words learned.



190 GAMORAN

used to compare effects among models at one point in time.

Model 1: Background Effects

First, I regressed words learned on age, sex, SES, and reading aptitude. All four factors appear to contribute to learning in the fall (see Tables 1 through 3, model 1). Particularly noteworthy is the sizeable influence of SES (fall 13 = .30) in a model that also contains aptitude. Before any school conditions are controlled, an increase of 1 on the 9-point SES scale corresponds to 9 additional words learned in the fall, more than 15 by March, and more than 28 by the end of the year. These gains keep pace with the increase in mean number of words learned.

Still, reading aptitude remains the most powerful influence on learning in model 1 in each wave. Its standardized coefficient (fall 1 = .55) is nearly twice the size of the coefficient for SES.

Model 2: Grouping Effects

Model 2 is patterned after such tracking studies as Alexander and McDill's (1976), which measures the effect of placement in the educational stratification system on achievement. In this model, words learned was regressed on the background factors and group rank. Group rank appears to have a consistently significant effect on words learned. As one would expect, the higher the rank of a student's reading group, the more words the student learns.

Some writers have argued that grouping helps perpetuate social inequality by allowing high-SES students to learn more than low-SES students in the same classroom (Rist 1970). If the greater learning of high-SES students were due to their placement in higher groups, the coefficient for SES would diminish from model 1 to model 2, when group rank is introduced. This does not occur; the coefficient for SES is the same or greater after rank is controlled. Thus, the effect of SES on learning does not operate through grouping.7

The variable whose apparent influence does diminish from model 1 to model 2 is aptitude, which drops from .55 to .48 in the fall. Not surprisingly, some of the effect of aptitude on learning is due to the placement of high aptitude children in higher groups, where they learn more words. Still, the effect of initial aptitude on learning remains large.

As in model 1, the unstandardized coefficients for all variables except age increase from Decem-

ber to March to May in accordance with the increase in the mean number of words learned.

Model 3: Teaching Effects

Model 3 measures the simultaneous effects of background variables, grouping, and instruction. In addition to the variables in model 2, the equation includes words taught, phonics taught, and absences. Recall that absences is introduced along with the instructional indicators to account for students who did not receive all the instruction provided to their group.

Group rank has a small, significant effect on words learned in the fall. In a three-group classroom (where two points on our group-rank scale separate one group from the next), we see that when all other factors are held constant, students in the top group learn about 6 words more than students in the middle group and nearly 12 words more than students in the low group. Since the mean number of words leamed by all students in the fall was 91.89 (see Table Al), we could say that in addition to the gains they make from having higher aptitudes and being taught more words, top-group students learn over 12 percent more words than bottom-group students.

But this grouping effect dissipates as the year passes. By March, when the mean number of words learned has increased to 230.51, the unstandardized regression coefficient for group rank is only 3.81 and is no longer statistically significant. The spring coefficient drops to 1.70.

The appearance of an early effect of grouping independent of instruction is consistent with the institutional perspective. Institutional effects operate through anticipatory socialization: Students vary their performance in expectation of high- status future roles. Therefore, leaming is affected as soon as students are assigned to stratified groups. But the observed decline in the effect of group rank is more difficult to explain from this standpoint. If first graders were anticipating high-status positions in second grade and subsequent years, the salience of their group rank and its independent effect on learning would increase by the year's end, not decrease. It may be that only the anticipation of first-grade status, which occurs at the outset of the school year, affects learning and that students are unaffected by the potential consequences of grouping for subsequent years.

An alternative explanation for the initial appearance and subsequent decline of the effect of group rank derives from reference-group theory (Merton 1957; see also Richer 1976). Perhaps the initial reference group for students is the whole class and student motivation is affected by the initial placement. As time passes, a student's reference group may shift from the whole class to his/her reading group; therefore, success in learning is no longer affected by reading-group rank. In contrast

7 This finding suggests that SES was not the basis for ability-group assignment. It is consistent with evidence from other studies of within-class grouping in elementary schools (Haller and Davis 1980, 1981).




Table 1. Standardized and Unstandardized Coefficients from OLS Regression of Words Learned on the Background Variables, Group Rank, and the Instructional Variables, for Fall (September to December) (n = 260)

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

Intercept -235.38 -237.74 -25.49 Age

P .14 .13 -.00 b 2.54**** 2.37**** -.05 S.E. .70 .69 .28

Sex p .11 .09 .02 b 17.04*** 14.62** 2.83 S.E. 6.28 6.27 2.46

SES P .30 .32 .02 b 9.03**** 9.58**** .75 S.E. 1.34 1.34 .59

Reading aptitude p .55 .48 .12 b 3.49**** 3.01**** .78**** S.E. .28 .33 .14

Group rank p .13 .05 b 6.70*** 2.88*** S.E. 2.50 1.01

Absences p -.02 b -.37 S.E. .39

Words taught p .79 b .75 S.E. .02

Phonics taught p .08 b .33 S.E. .09

R2 (unadjusted) .61 .62 .94

*Significant at the .10 level. **Significant at the .05 level.

***Significant at the .01 level. ****Significant at the .001 level.

to the institutional-effects argument, which rests on expectations for future status, this position points to current peer comparisons occurring in day-to- day classroom interaction. Available data do not permit a clear test between these two explanations. To conduct such a test, we need data on student attitudes and expectations.8

As expected, words taught has the most powerful influence on words learned. For every word a student is taught, he or she learns about three quarters of a word (fall b = .75). This value remains remarkably stable over time (winter b = .74, spring b = .74). The effect of phonics taught appears to increase over time. An additional phonics concept is worth .33 word in December, .86 word in March, and 1.22 words by the end of the year. This increase is not due simply to the increase in mean words learned, for mean phonics taught increases at a comparable rate over time.

The strong influence of the instructional variables is responsible for the dramatic rise in total variance explained from model 2 to model 3. Between models 1 and 2, R2 increased from .61 to .62, but in model 3, it reached .94. The R2 coefficients are only slightly lower at other time periods. In the spring, the full model explains 90 percent of the variance in total words learned.

The effects of background characteristics decline

8 The effect of grouping is equally small when reading groups are ranked in a slightly different way. When students in the top group are scored 3, students in the bottom group 1, and all other students 2, the effect of grouping remains small, indicating that the symbolic characteristics of the top and bottom group did not affect learning. This finding is more consistent with the peer-comparisons explanation for the fall grouping effect than with the institutional-effects explanation.

For an instructive but unsuccessful attempt to attribute the effects of grouping to such social processes as peer associations and teacher-pupil interaction, see Rowan and Miracle (1983).



192 GAMORAN

Table 2. Standardized and Unstandardized Coefficients from OLS Regression of Words Learned on the Background Variables, Group Rank, and the Instructional Variables, for Winter (September to March) (n = 248)


Intercept -184.56 -206.35 45.81 Age

fi .06 .05 -.04 b 1.97 1.83 - 1.27** S.E. 1.53 1.51 .61

Sex .12 .11 .02

b 39.39*** 33.76** 4.96 S.E. 13.82 13.81 5.55

SES p .26 .28 .00 b 15.76**** 16.77**** .01 S.E. 2.97 2.96 1.29

Reading aptitude p .55 .46 .12 b 6.97**** 5.84**** 1.47 S.E. .62 .74 .32

Group rank p .14 .04 b 15.27*** 3.81 S.E. 5.70 2.44

Absences r -.02 b -.67 S.E. .50

Words taught r3 .75 b .74 S.E. .03

Phonics taught r3 .14 b .86 S.E. .18


* Significant at the .10 level. ** Significant at the .05 level.

* Significant at the .01 level. **** Significant at the .001 level.

sharply when instructional influences enter the model. Only the effect of aptitude remains statistically significant in the fall, and its standardized coefficient drops from .48 in model 2 to .12 in model 3. Clearly, aptitude affects learning mainly because students with higher aptitudes are taught more words and more phonics.9

In sum, grouping has a small independent effect that appears early in the year but lacks perma- nence. The influence of grouping that is unrelated

'Note that the greatest decline in the aptitude coefficient occurs between models 2 and 3, when the instructional variables are introduced. The change in the size of the coefficient is not due to variation within classes, because grouping was already controlled in model 2. Actually, much of the covariation of aptitude and words taught occurs across schools. High-aptitude children are likely to be found in schools where more words are taught; thus, they are likely to learn more.

The same argument holds for SES. High-SES children leam more not because they are assigned to higher groups but because more words are taught in high-SES schools. This finding is enipirically documented, with these data,

elsewhere (Gamoran 1984b). I have not made much of these school effects because the sample of schools is so small.

The negative effects of age on words learned in model 3 in winter and spring are curious. The effects remain negative in a ridge regression, suggesting that they are not caused by undue collinearity among the independent variables. Since the older students are those who have been retained in first grade for a second year, they may be taught more words in the fall than the other students. This explains the significant coefficients in models 1 and 2 in the fall. By the winter, the other students have caught up, so no effect is evident in models 1 and 2 in the winter and spring; and students who have been retained may learn fewer words than would be expected from the number they are taught and from their readiness to read at the beginning of the year. This explains the negative coefficients.




Table 3. Standardized and Unstandardized Coefficients from OLS Regression of Words Learned on the Background Variables, Group Rank, and the Instructional Variables, for Spring (September to May) (n = 243)


Intercept -169.42 -211.36 23.05 Age

fi .04 .04 -.04 b 2.09 2.07 - 1.77* S.E. 2.17 2.15 1.03

Sex fi .10 .09 .01 b 46.48** 38.87* 5.42 S.E. 19.69 19.75 9.44

SES fi .34 .35 .03 b 28.39**** 26.69**** 2.79 S.E. 4.21 4.20 2.26

Reading aptitude fi .50 .42 .16 b 9.09**** 7.64**** 2.94**** S.E. .90 1.08 .54

Group rank fi .13 .01 b 19.71** 1.70 S.E. 8.26 4.07

Absences r3 -.02 b -.70 S.E. .71

Words taught r3 .70 b .74 S.E. .04

Phonics taught fi .15 b 1.22**** S.E. .24


*Significant at the .10 level. **Significant at the .05 level.

***Significant at the .01 level. ****Significant at the .001 level.

to instruction may be attributable to institutional processes but could also operate through reference- group comparisons. In any case, this effect is dwarfed by the powerful instructional effects, which are expected when we define reading groups as units of organization centered on technical processes of instruction.

DISCUSSION

This study has had considerable success in capturing the instructional effects of ability grouping. The number of words and phonics concepts taught to first graders, differentiated by reading groups, has a sizeable impact on student learning. The magnitude of this effect contrasts sharply with the findings of Alexander and Cook (1982) and Rowan and Miracle (1983), who also included instructional factors as intervening variables in their examinations of the effects of educational stratification on achievement. The largest instruc-

tional effect Alexander and Cook (1982, p. 634) found was the effect of physics courses taken on Math PSAT (3 = .173). Rowan and Miracle (1983, p. 139) found a standardized coefficient of .11 for the effect of the number of reading levels covered in fourth grade on Iowa Test scores. A parallel relation in this paper is the effect of words taught on words learned in the spring (p = .70). In this study, the instructional variables completely mediate the effects of grouping on learning by the year's end. This is not true in Alexander and Cook's and Rowan and Miracle's studies.

There are three reasons for this paper's success in isolating instructional effects from other grouping effects. First, it uses a precise measure of the content of instruction received by each child through the reading group. Such a measure is much easier to obtain in first-grade reading, when instruction is readily expressed in terms of words taught, than in later grades. In higher levels of



194 GAMORAN

elementary school and in high school, curricular units may be far more complex.

Second, as I noted earlier, there is a tight link between the instructional measures and the test of learning. Testing students on what they were taught increases the likelihood of discovering the effects of instruction on learning. Note that the difference in findings between this study and the studies of Alexander and Cook and Rowan and Miracle are not simply artifacts of the data set; they reflect important substantive considerations. Be- cause the goal of this research was to disentangle instructional and institutional effects, I examined as closely as possible the instruction students were provided in their reading groups and then assessed how well they learned what they had been taught. This seemed to provide the greatest chances for detecting both instructional and other effects of grouping on learning.

A third reason for this paper's discovery of large instructional effects relative to other effects of grouping is that the aptitude test used here provides a particularly good control: It measures children on their success at reading words, which is the same skill demanded by the tests of learning. When the aptitude test is only loosely related to the post-test, part of the learning that is actually due to aptitude may be attributed to grouping, because group level and the unmeasured aspects of aptitude covary.'0

But the use of instruction as an independent variable has important limitations. The linear relationship assumed in my model between instruction and learning is likely to operate only within a limited range of instruction. We could not increase words taught indefinitely and expect learning to continue to rise at the same rate. At some point, the rate of return will diminish. Moreover, the range for which my estimates are reliable probably varies according to student aptitude levels. The lower a student's aptitude, the lower the limit to the linear relationship between teaching and learning. Because I found that teachers modify instruction according to the level of the group, I have presumed that the instruction in these classrooms does not surpass the point of diminish- ing returns, and thus my model is not inappropri- ate. However, simply increasing the number of words taught to low-aptitude students will not necessarily increase their learning.

On the other hand, if students in low groups are not sufficiently challenged, then faster pacing might be an appropriate strategy to improve their learning. The difficulty here, of course, is determining what level of instruction is appropri-

ate. This topic is beyond the scope of the current study, but it would be a worthy subject for future research.

We must also bear in mind that instruction is reciprocally related to learning. The number of words students learn in one week can affect the number of new words the teacher introduces in the following week. The behavior of teachers and students is interdependent, but I have examined only the response of students to teachers, not the reaction of teachers to their students. If the recursive model because of is misspecified due to a simultaneous reciprocal relationship between instruction and learning, then the effect of words taught on words learned might appear larger than it actually is because it includes the variation in the number of words taught caused by the number of words learned, and vice versa. At the same time, the effect of group rank might have been underestimated. If all the groups in a class are initially taught at the same rate but students in the highest-ranked group learn more than the other students because of their social and institutional advantages, the teacher may increase the pace of instruction to the high-group students because they learn the fastest. In this case, the effect of group rank on words learned could be hidden in a recursive model.

But there are a number of conditions temporally prior to learning which influence instruction, and these conditions may reduce the importance of the neglected feedback. When instruction is "interac- tive" (Jackson 1968), teachers respond to students by deciding what and how to teach. But first-grade reading instruction is partly "preactive"; i.e., it is determined with groups of students in mind but planned prior to specific classroom occurrences. Teachers begin to provide instruction to reading groups with general expectations about how much of the material they will cover in each group over the whole year. Two sources of expectations are particularly important. First, when they create groups based on student ability, teachers gain a sense of the capacity of each group. This judgment of the groups' ability levels, coupled with teaching experience, allows teachers to make preactive decisions about how to allocate instruction to the various groups. Second, teachers are guided by the demands of the curricular materials provided by the school and district administration. Especially with the top group, teachers may feel pressure from the district to complete the textbook series by the end of the year. Few teachers, however, advance beyond the first-grade materials. Finally, teachers' manuals provided by publishers of the reading series contain advice on activities and on how many pages, stories, or words to introduce in each lesson or week. The manuals may even include suggestions on how to modify instructional content for several ability levels. Thus, it is unlikely that by neglecting the influence of

10 The intentionally tight links between the aptitude tests, the instructional measures, and the tests of learning were designed by Rebecca Barr and Robert Dreeben, principal investigators of the larger study, following Barr's earlier work (1973-74, 1975; see also Barr and Dreeben 1983).




learning on teaching, we have missed important effects of grouping."

CONCLUSIONS

My results indicate that first-grade reading instruction is the chief determinant of word learning and that grouping has no direct effect on learning by the end of the year. Institutional effects resulting from assignment to stratified reading groups may be responsible for an independent grouping effect that appears early in the year but soon fades. But even this small effect cannot be unambiguously attributed to institutional processes. An alternative explanation suggests that a shift in students' reference group from the whole class to the reading group may have caused the effect of group rank to disappear. To distinguish between these explanations, we would have to directly measure student attitudes and expectations.

The process of learning to read may be considered institutionalized despite the weak direct effects of reading-group rank. Schools are value- laden institutions that define persons as members of educational categories possessing certain knowl- edge and skills (Meyer 1977, 1980). Instead of reading groups, we could consider first grade the meaningful institutional category, whose charter is to turn nonreaders into readers. Regardless of differences between schools, classes, groups, and individual students, virtually all the first graders were transformed into elementary readers over the course of the year. But the data show that the transition from nonreader to reader occurs not merely through a process of social definition but as a result of the technical activities of instruction.

Reading groups are an important element of the technical process, for they constitute the organizational unit in which instruction takes place. And while membership in first grade may distinguish readers from nonreaders, it does not reveal why some students learn to read better than others, any more than reading-group membership alone does. Instead, variation in learning is explained by variation in instruction.

I stated at the outset that my conceptual formulation could be applied to other forms of stratification in schools (such as tracking and grouping between classrooms) and to other levels of schooling. First grade may be too early to seek institutional effects on learning, but such effects may operate with greater strength at higher levels of schooling. In high school, for example, institutionalized categories such as college and vocational tracks may be more meaningful and clearly tied to future prospects for students than ability groups in elementary school. College-track students, who anticipate college attendance and other rewards of educational performance, might learn more than vocational-track students, independently of variation in the instruction they receive, because they may be more motivated in school.

At least two additional kinds of institutional effects might be studied in elementary and secondary schools. Elsewhere, I have suggested that a student's reading-group assignment in one year may serve as an institutionally legitimized signal to teachers and administrators when they decide on the student's ability-group placement for the following year (Gamoran 1984a). Similar processes are even more likely to operate at the high school level, when rank and certification become salient criteria in attempts to gain access to colleges and jobs (Kamens 1977; Meyer 1977, 1980). Second, the allocation of instruction may itself be institutionally constrained if teachers attend as much to the symbolic value of reading- group ranks as to the actual compositions and success rates of groups when deciding what to teach.

Finally, what can be said about the relative importance of instructional and institutional effects on learning? The evidence for first-grade reading heavily supports the instructional argument; there is little evidence that institutional or other mechanisms lead students in higher reading groups to learn more. Discovering the importance of instruction for word learning may help redirect the attention of sociologists studying the effects of schooling toward the very technical conditions that the institutional perspective rejects. If we want to understand why some students leam more than others, in ability groups or in any other type of setting, we should examine the instruction they are provided. But institutional effects may operate with greater power at other levels of schooling and in ways not examined in this paper.

I IOne solution to this problem is to estimate a nonrecursive model in which words taught and words learned affect each other simultaneously. I carried out such an analysis using both two-stage least squares (2SLS) and maximum likelihood (ML) methods. I assumed that individual-level variables have direct effects on words learned but not on words taught, and I used group-level conditions (mean aptitude, mean number of absences, and an indicator of textbook difficulty) as instruments for words taught. The 2SLS and ML estimates closely replicated the recursive OLS findings. I found little evidence that the effect of group rank had been underestimated and no evidence that the effects of words taught had been overestimated. Thus, there was no reason to revise my conclusions. These analyses are available upon request.

Unfortunately, the simultaneous equation model is suspect. First, it estimates effects on words taught with individual-level data. Because there is no within-group variation in words taught, this estimation is inappropri- ate. Second, the assumption that individual-level variables affect words leamed and that group-level variables affect words taught seems to preclude an effect of words learned (which varies at the individual level) on words taught, thus disallowing the nonrecursive specification.



196 GAMORAN

Table Al. Correlations, Means, and Standard Deviations of Variables, for Fall (September to December) (n = 260)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

1. Age -.12 .04 .09 .10 .06 .21 .18 .19 2. Sex .11 .00 .10 -.04 .12 .05 .13 3. Sex .48 .16 -.31 .57 .42 .58 4. Reading aptitude .54 -.22 .64 .54 .71 5. Group rank -.15 .40 .20 .46 6. Absences -.20 -.23 -.24 7. Words taught .70 .96 8. Phonics taught .72 9. Words learned Mean 75.24 .46 5.05 23.80 3.61 2.59 106.02 24.71 91.89 SD 4.47 .50 2.65 12.59 1.48 3.29 82.90 18.59 79.15

Table A2. Correlations, Means, and Standard Deviations of Variables, for Winter (September to March) (n 248)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

1. Age -.12 .04 .07 .05 .04 .13 .14 .09 2. Sex .11 .02 .12 -.02 .16 .09 .16 3. SES .49 .20 -.31 .55 .45 .55 4. Reading aptitude .58 -.26 .63 .53 .69 5. Group rank -.21 .46 .23 .48 6. Absences -.27 -.29 -.31 7. Words taught .79 .95 8. Phonics taught .80 9. Words learned Mean 75.29 .46 5.18 23.95 3.72 5.55 266.31 42.79 230.51 SD 4.51 .50 2.64 12.56 1.47 5.81 161.89 25.15 158.20

Table A3. Correlations, Means, and Standard Deviations of Variables, for Spring (September to May) (n = 243)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

1. Age -.12 .04 .06 .02 .01 .12 .13 .07 2. Sex .10 -.00 .12 -.01 .14 .10 .13 3. SES .48 .19 -.28 .59 .37 .59 4. Reading aptitude .57 - .24 .60 .38 .66 5. Group rank -.22 .43 .19 .45 6. Absences -.27 -.22 -.29 7. Words taught .70 .93 8. Phonics taught .72 9. Words learned Mean 75.25 .47 5.21 24.06 3.81 7.70 438.37 58.63 376.13 SD 4.51 .50 2.64 12.28 1.44 6.84 210.53 27.54 222.60

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