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Small First Grade and Intervention Programs

By far the largest criticism of the Readington School District budget for 2006-2007 is the cuts made to the “intervention” and “small first” programs. At the March 28 board meeting when the budget was passed, this criticism dominated the presentation and it seemed that no explanation by the professional educators in attendance could convince parents that these cuts were the best choice under the circumstances. For those interested in finding the truth, this article will offer a little more depth than has been available during public meetings.

First, what are the “small first” and “intervention” programs? The small first program was instituted many years ago as a means to address the needs of some first grade students for extra support. The program has never been formally defined, and, indeed, its implementation has varied by school and by school year. In essence, though, the concept is to group first grade students deemed likely to need extra support in a single classroom under the guidance of a master teacher. The class size was kept as low as possible to allow the teacher to give that extra support. Very recently, the basic concept was extended to the second grade level too. There was no rigorous method of choosing the students who would populate these small classes. Instead, students were funneled to the small first based mostly on the intuition and judgment of teachers.

The “intervention” program is an extension of the same line of reasoning behind the small first program. Though, again, the intervention program has gone through many changes in its history, the basic concept is to pull aside individual children or small groups of children who need extra support under the direction of a master teacher. However, this program took more diverse forms over the years, as sometimes children were pulled out of their classrooms for special attention, sometimes they worked in the back of their classroom with an intervention teacher, sometimes the intervention teachers worked only with children formally recognized as needing extra support, and sometimes they worked with the general student population so as to reinforce specific skills. Over the last three years, the intervention program became especially fragmented as administrators with conflicting ideas and goals came to and left from the district.

So, how successful have these programs been? Many parents who have had their own children participate in the programs offer praise for the programs and for the teachers running the programs. They say that their children received the extra support they needed during a critical time of development and that the teachers were able to put their children on the right track when all else would have failed. Indeed, because the teachers involved in these programs have been experienced professionals especially tuned to the needs of struggling children, the success of the programs could hardly be in doubt. Children who needed extra support got it and became more academically successful as a result. Commendations and praise from parents, administrators, and other teachers clearly show a history of accomplishment for these programs.

But, the story doesn’t end there.

Critics of these programs say that they are actually an admission of district failure. The very existence of the small first and large scale intervention programs, according to this line of thought, makes clear that we don't have a full day Kindergarten where many of the developmental issues could be and should be caught and addressed, that perhaps not all of our early elementary teachers are capable or willing to create an inclusive and differentiated classroom, and that we have created a special class for system rejects who don't fit our standard mold. The small first and intervention programs have worked because some exceptional teachers made it work, but that doesn't mean it is the ideal way of handling challenging kids.

Sorting out these conflicting viewpoints becomes less difficult with a little attention to long understood educational theory. In both views, exceptional teachers have made the programs work, but the views diverge on whether the small first and the large scale intervention program are the ideal methods of serving children who need extra support.

In educational terms, the argument comes down to heterogeneous grouping & differentiation vs. homogeneous grouping and tracking/classification. Put into plain English, either we put all the kids together in one place and individualize the classroom experience or we separate kids by ability and potential and teach each group according to their supposed potential. The small first grade program, for example, separated children deemed to have some degree of special needs into a single classroom with fewer students where they could be watched more closely. The intervention program, at least in some implementations over the years, pulled aside or pulled out children based on ability or performance and taught them separately from the rest of the class. (Note that the intervention program in other implementations simply offered reinforcement of the standard curriculum to nearly all the students in a classroom, a practice which is very different.)

On an academic level, educational research is stacked against the idea of homogeneous grouping and tracking. Grouping children together by ability or perceived potential removes the advantage of children helping children. This is not some warm and fuzzy liberal fad, either. The benefits of children with different abilities and levels of development working together go back in American education to the one-room schoolhouses of lore. When a classroom is set up to take advantage of heterogeneous grouping—a key point—then children can learn from each other and reinforce the lessons. Children who master a concept quickly are eager to help other students who have not mastered the concept, provided the classroom environment is designed for such interaction. The students needing extra reinforcement get it and students who have mastered a concept have an opportunity to use their mastery. Critical to this interaction is a heterogeneous mix of students. A mixed group is far more likely to allow each student a chance at one time or another to play the role of “student-teacher” because different abilities and different interests mean a richer and greater academic depth. The small first program does not provide this academic depth, but, instead, relies on an exceptional teacher to overcome the deficit.

On a social level the benefits of a heterogeneous classroom are just as great and perhaps more obvious. A diverse mix of students is fertile ground for social interaction that becomes the basis for dealing with people later in life. Grouping children by ability or perceived potential can be devastating to a developing ego not yet confident in his or her self. Children fully understand the adult codes for ability-grouping, and calling one group the “Bluejays” and another group the “Robins” doesn’t prevent the children from understanding that they were picked for one or the other based on a particular value system. Children grouped because they needed extra support are labeled the “dumb” ones and children in the other group are labeled the “smart” ones. Ironically, it is often the children who are advanced academically who need more development socially. Again, it is the interaction between a diverse group of students that can provide this. Academically advanced students often learn lessons of social interaction from less academically advanced students, while the socially advanced students learn academic lessons in turn. Only a heterogeneous mix can provide this unique benefit. The small first program and the “pull-out” intervention programs go against this principle.

On a moral/ethical level the idea of grouping children together in a small first grade or another form of grouping goes against commonly held American values. Grouping and tracking can very quickly turn elitist and discriminatory. It is one thing to identify children who need extra support and careful watching, but it is an entirely different thing to round them up and put them in a “special” place. In the realm of special education, under which fall children who have acute learning issues we are not addressing in this discussion, the concept of mainstreaming became law decades ago. Mainstreaming postulated that all students, regardless of their special needs, should be placed in the least restrictive environment. In large part this was an ethical issue—it is no more right to stick children with special needs in a hidden classroom than it was to institutionalize children who had much more potential years before that. The same ethical principal applies to children in the “normal” realm. There is no ethically defensible reason to marginalize children into a small first or second grade who happen to need a little extra support.

On a professional level—the level of educators in our school district—the case against homogeneous grouping in the form of the small first grade and intervention programs is the greatest and yet probably the least understood.

Years ago American car manufacturers had special teams staffed with expert workers whose sole job was to pull poorly built cars off the assembly line, fix what was wrong, and return the cars back into the line after the issues were addressed. They did a great job and saved lots of lemons from getting into the hands of customers. Meanwhile, the Japanese manufacturers took a different approach. The Japanese manufacturers insisted that the assembly of cars be perfected as a process and that the cars be correctly built in the first place. Any quality issues were addressed as part of the whole process and design flaws in the engineering or manufacturing were fixed before cars were made. Both the American and Japanese approaches assured some quality control, but the American approach inserted a layer of extra cost and gave designers and line workers an easy out should problems arise. Lo, and behold, more problems did arise. The Japanese approach resulted in streamlined production and higher quality year after year.

Children are not cars and schools are not factories. However, the organizational principle is the same. Namely, when an organization is understood to be successful as an entire process rather than the sum of its current production, quality and accomplishment will be better assured in the long term. By supporting a small first and a large scale intervention program, the school district institutionalizes a method for teachers to relinquish responsibility for challenging students. Just as an automobile line worker knows that the special team will handle an ill-fitting quarter panel down the line, a teacher knows that an ill-fitting student will be handled by a small first grade teacher or an intervention teacher down the line. In fact, the teacher is even in a position to recommend such an outcome. It certainly seems straightforward enough—students who need special attention are forwarded to the specialist who will give that attention, and the rest of the class can get on with their work.

The trouble is, though these forwarded students do get the extra help they need from master teachers, there is now little incentive for the “regular” teachers to differentiate, to individualize, or to take advantage of all the known benefits of a heterogeneous mix of students. Some teachers will differentiate anyway, but others will naturally take the easier and officially sanctioned way out. Over time, the small first and intervention programs grow and become self-fulfilling. That is, the programs are fed more and more students by teachers who come to understand that this is the way it is to be done. An extra layer of cost—still growing—is inserted into the budget, and the quality of the whole organization over the long term suffers.

Instead, there is no reason that “regular” classroom teachers cannot support a few challenging students in their class. In a heterogeneous grouping, there is not a concentration of especially needy children, and teachers need not be master teachers with decades of experience to handle the load. Like the principle used by the Japanese car manufacturers who considered the organization as a whole, if we concentrate on hiring and creating flexible teachers who can differentiate without resorting to specialists at the drop of a hat, then we will raise the bar for the whole district. That requires more support for existing teachers in the form of staff development, peer coaches and the like.

At the March 28 school board meeting administrators struggled somewhat to communicate to a hostile public the reasoning behind cutting money for the small first and intervention programs. It isn’t that the teachers involved in these programs have done a bad job. To the contrary, they have done a spectacular job under conditions that would make many other educators shudder. The problem lies with the process as a whole. Quality schools require all educators involved in the process to be able to differentiate and individualize and to take advantage of the benefits of heterogeneous grouping. Quality schools in 2006-2007 also require educators to do minimize costs so as to maximize limited dollars. It is time to put the small first and large-scale intervention programs aside and to concentrate on the whole organization and the perfection of the entire process. Our children, whether academically challenged or advanced, deserve no less.