The Hamden school district is looking to break up traditional classes in the public middle school, creating heterogeneous groupings in all classes, except mathematics, according to a Hamden’s Board of Education statement, posted on Facebook Group Page Hamden Residents for Change.
In it, the update reads, “The members of the Board’s Curriculum committee agreed with and unanimously approved the shift toward heterogeneous groupings for all middle school classes.”
To better understand the meaning of the heterogeneous update, Carol Bainbridge, writer of this article on the comparison of heterogenous and homogenous learning, gives more clarity.
“Children of approximately the same age are placed in different classrooms in order to create a relatively even distribution of students of different abilities as well as different educational and emotional needs,” she writes. “Gifted children will be scattered throughout the various grade level classrooms, rather than all together in one classroom. Homogeneous grouping is the placement of students of similar abilities into one classroom.”
This means that academic levels will be removed and students will be placed in the same classrooms, except for accelerated math. The purpose of this is to not single out students who are struggling.
Credit: Andrew White
Karlen Meinsen has lived in Hamden her whole life, serves on the Hamden Diversity Advisory Council, and has taught in New Haven for 30 years. She has four children, one in Hamden Middle School. She gives deeper insight into why Hamden has decided to do this.
“Predominantly black and brown children from Southern Hamden, a place of low socioeconomic levels, struggle in classes,” she said. “So the town is segregated with homogeneous classes. But that’s the segregation that happens within a school.” That is not good. It’s not healthy. We are stopping the practice of grouping them by ability in entire classes,” Meinsen said.
Some feel this would be difficult to accomplish though, like Victoria Simiola herself.
“You’ve got different learning styles. You do have kids with special education needs. They learn differently,” Simiola said. “So how do you expect the teacher to accommodate a class of 30 on all different levels?”
Alyssa Murphy, a mother of a Hamden student, hadn’t heard of this yet, but still gave her insight as someone who has routinely been pleased with the Hamden public school system.
“In high school, you’re grouped based upon your level…there’s three different levels that at the high school, and that’s how you group,” Murphy said. “So why not get them started in that same type of learning environment earlier on in middle school.”
This story will continue to develop as more information comes forth from the Hamden Board of Education.
