The Enduring and Taken-for-Granted Impact of the Grade-Level Structure of American Education

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Wednesday 11:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Critical Theories of Educational Histories

Abstract

This paper examines how one of the oldest reforms of U.S. schooling, the shift to organizing education by grade level, has persisted and shaped both well-documented as well as less acknowledged racial inequities in policy and practice. Scholars have documented how the grade-level structure has shaped classroom organization, curriculum, teacher labor, and conceptions of student progress. These structures have also exacerbated racial and class inequities by reinforcing systemic biases in assessment, tracking, and promotion. Less exposed has been to show how the grade-level framing has shaped everyday conceptions of children, of classroom practice and discourse, and the work of teaching itself.

Authors

• Deborah Loewenberg Ball, University of Michigan

• Mike Henderson, University of Michigan