Despite push to scale back leveled courses, most Mass. districts retain advanced high school classes

But new data collected by the Globe show that while changes on the margins have been common in recent years, Massachusetts school districts still universally have some form of ability grouping, often beginning in middle school.

“You will see people wringing their hands in one direction or another,” said Kevin Welner, an education professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. But “everyone seems to have some stratification in their curriculum.”

The Globe issued surveys to the state’s more than 300 superintendents about ability grouping at their schools and received responses from nearly 130. (The others did not respond to repeated requests for information.)

Of those who responded, every superintendent whose district includes high school said there is at least some leveling in their system, including such options as honors courses and Advanced Placement. A slight majority said they introduce their first classes split up by ability in middle school. All have some amount of ability grouping in math. (A handful of respondents represented small rural districts with only younger grades.)

Still, the last five years have also seen widespread efforts to scale back offering separate courses based on achievement, including by reducing the number of levels (often from three to two) and postponing grouping until high school or even 10th grade. Nearly a third of respondents said they had made a change.

Examples of leveling include honors courses and other more rigorous coursework, or remedial courses for students believed to need more support. The terms leveling and tracking are sometimes used interchangeably, but a track is a year-by-year sequence of classes, such as an advanced math option beginning with Algebra 1 in eighth grade or a series of remedial courses for struggling students.

A handful of districts said their only sorting of students is self-selection into Advanced Placement or early college classes. Welner said even those, like him, who advocate for reducing tracking still tend to support keeping those options.

“Even if you’re committed as an educator to having a school that doesn’t have tracking, you don’t want to deny your kids opportunities to take college-level courses,” he said.

But most Massachusetts districts have more leveling than that. Beyond the universal sorting in math, more than 100 districts also separated students in the other core subjects — English, science, and social studies. More than 80 offered multiple tiers in world languages. Just a small fraction — 16 — said they also split up students in electives, such as art, music, and computer science classes.

Twelve districts said they reduced their number of levels while another dozen moved to start the practice in a later grade. Some also changed their eligibility procedures, often with an eye toward increasing representation of students of color and high-needs students in advanced classes.

Tom Loveless, a researcher with the nonpartisan Brookings Institution who has studied trends in tracking for decades, said Massachusetts has had widespread policy changes to reduce student sorting before. For his 1999 book “The Tracking Wars,” Loveless surveyed Massachusetts middle schools and found very similar results: Many districts were removing ability grouping in some, but not all, cases.

While some educators said they feel pressure from the state to eliminate separating students by ability, a state education spokesperson said the agency does not have an official stance on leveling. The state’s default math sequence has Algebra 1 in Grade 9, but the department has a guide to offering it in middle school or compressing the high school curriculum so students reach calculus.

Even mixed-level classrooms, like Newton’s, have become more common across the state, and not just in Boston suburbs. Sarah Jetzon, the curriculum and instruction director for the Mohawk Trail and Hawlemont regional district on Route 2 north of Springfield, said her district recently shifted to what they call “embedded honors.”

While Mohawk Trail and Hawlemont still has separate Advanced Placement classes, all students in ninth and 10th grade largely take their classes together, with some working toward honors and others toward standard credit. The change was driven by equity concerns.

“Who was in honors was really correlated with family income and not really necessarily correlated with student achievement,” she said.

Even when they allowed students to self-select into honors classes, the disparity by income persisted, Jetzon said.

As in other districts that have made similar changes, there was a backlash. But the change had support from the School Committee and a critical mass of staff. A heavy focus on professional development, clear grading criteria, and a shift in instruction away from passive, lecture-based learning has made the mixed classes work, she said. More low-income students are taking honors and Advanced Placement classes, she said.

“[Families] were worried that their students wouldn’t be challenged,” Jetzon said. “Our performance has sort of validated the approach, so that has tapered off pretty significantly.”

Welner said mixed-level courses have become a more popular approach in recent years, and while they require effort, they can work to ensure all students are challenged.

Indeed, while the loud public pushback in recent years has typically been in favor of more leveling or tracking, there are still advocates for the other approach. In Brookline, some spoke in support of a proposal last year to eliminate ninth-grade honors English.

Jennifer Roberts, a Brookline parent and a social worker in another district, argued to the School Committee the unleveled classes would promote community building across demographic lines and reduce student mental health problems.

“What I see as a high school social worker is the negative impact of stressed out and overwhelmed ninth graders who feel that they have to take the most rigorous classes or fear that they’re they won’t truly succeed in life,” Roberts said.

Still, the proposal was put on hold in the face of a greater volume of opposition. That, too, reflects what Loveless found in the 1990s, he said — when detracking initiatives became public debates, they were often slowed or even reversed.

There are also school districts going the opposite direction.

Bill Runey, superintendent of the Dighton-Rehoboth regional district just east of Providence, said his district has added an advanced level in Grades 7 and 8 math in the wake of the pandemic. The shift has made it easier for teachers to address the range of learning loss, which has meant students come into each class with a widening range of readiness.

“We feel it’s a better service to the student if there are multiple levels which kind of narrows how broad that range is in any given classrooms,” Runey said. “Teaching has always been a tough job. It’s now become even tougher after the pandemic.”

The district’s new advanced classes allow students to take Algebra 1 in Grade 8. According to the survey, that’s how it works in most of the state — about two-thirds of respondents said Algebra 1 is an option in middle school in their district. Twenty-four said it is not offered, while in eight districts such as Wellesley and Medford, every middle school student takes the class. Despite warnings from some experts and educators that not all students are ready for the class, the demand always appears to be there.

In Dighton-Rehoboth, the new middle school algebra option has been received positively, and the district is looking to expand it by allowing eighth-graders to take an honors version of the course at their high school next year.

“Giving some of our students who are more advanced especially in mathematics that boost as early as seventh grade is just feeding into that desire they have to market themselves to our colleges and universities to the greatest extent possible,” he said.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of the Mohawk Trail and Hawlemont administrator’s name. Her name is Sarah Jetzon. The Globe regrets the error.

Christopher Huffaker can be reached at christopher.huffaker@globe.com. Follow him @huffakingit.