I think the second is preferable because it's malleable. I've regularly had instances when a really good student struggled with some concept and was in a lower group, and I've had kids who started out in the lowest group burn through the work for several groups and wind up with an A. I can tell my students that the goal is to move forward from where they're at, but how far they move forward depends a lot on them.
I gave out A's to kids who had never gotten an A before in math. I wasn't padding anything; they earned it, and their A meant exactly the same thing that the gifted kid's A meant in terms of knowledge gained. In a streamed situation, an A in a lower stream does not equal an A in a higher stream, so kids are left constantly feeling that there is nothing they can do to improve to that level. Meanwhile, failure is a Really Big Deal to the kid in the higher stream because failure involves leaving the prestige of the higher stream. A fear of failure leads to an unwillingness to take risks, and that's not exactly conducive to good problem-solving.
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Date: 2010-07-09 12:10 am (UTC)I gave out A's to kids who had never gotten an A before in math. I wasn't padding anything; they earned it, and their A meant exactly the same thing that the gifted kid's A meant in terms of knowledge gained. In a streamed situation, an A in a lower stream does not equal an A in a higher stream, so kids are left constantly feeling that there is nothing they can do to improve to that level. Meanwhile, failure is a Really Big Deal to the kid in the higher stream because failure involves leaving the prestige of the higher stream. A fear of failure leads to an unwillingness to take risks, and that's not exactly conducive to good problem-solving.