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Even as they bear the brunt of laws tailored to help more troublesome classmates, woodwork children get ripped off by practices designed to enrich their more studious peers. In most public middle and high schools, high-achieving students spend at least part of their day in accelerated classes filled with other high achievers, where teachers rarely have to tend to slow learners or misbehaving problem children. Although most schools have abandoned the older, cruder forms of "tracking" students--which separated children early in their school careers on the basis of test scores, resulting in segregation within racially integrated schools--a majority still "group" kids according to ability in particular subjects. Ability grouping has become a national assumption: more than 80% of American middle and high schools have at least two different levels of math classes for each grade.
To parents of high performers, it seems like a reasonable enough way to keep their kids challenged. "What do you do with the very high-ability student who's sitting in your classroom, who's ready to move on?" asks Peter Rosenstein, executive director of the National Association of Gifted Children. "The intuitive part of this is that you have to use ability grouping." And, claims Buffalo board of education head Marlies Weslowski, "a pittance is spent on gifted children." But money isn't everything. In schools that group by ability, the best students are more likely to have access to teachers who specialize in the subject, to newer materials and facilities, and perhaps most important, to higher expectations from teachers and a more challenging curriculum. "All the things we think matter in terms of a high-quality education, we disproportionately give to high achievers," says Jeannie Oakes, a professor of education at UCLA.
In Des Moines, for instance, middle and high school students who score in the 98th and 99th percentiles on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills can elect to spend part of the school day taking honors and advanced- placement classes at the city's Central Academy. Last year Central Academy produced more National Merit Scholars than the entire state of Minnesota. It is a superb school, but for average students like Brian Wennerstrum who remain behind, it represents a big part of the problem. "When you pull the best and brightest out for half a day, that leaves the average kids in the building," says Mary Wennerstrum. "Who are those kids supposed to emulate?"