The 60-member Task Force on Equity and Excellence, convened by Superintendent Brian Osborne last spring to brainstorm changes to the district's policy on leveling—or the practice of grouping students into classes on the basis of perceived academic ability—issued recommendations that were presented at Monday night's Board of Education.

Most conspicuous among them was the recommendation to "collapse" levels 3 and 4 in seventh grade English, social studies and science classes, reducing the total number of levels from three to two and following the model of what was done with sixth grade in the 2004-2005 school year.

Recommendations by the task force—which were endorsed by Osborne—were presented to the Board by members of the subcommittees who reviewed leveling policy in elementary, middle and high schools. The Board won't vote on any of the recommendations until its June 14 meeting.

Here's an overview of the recommendations (a full version is available on the school district's website):

• Elementary schools: Presented by Karen Weiland, director of the Parenting Center, and Tina Lehn, principal of South Mountain, the recommendations call for expanding an enrichment program formerly available at South Mountain to only 40 percent of fourth and fifth graders (70 percent of whom were white) to all students in those grades and to fourth graders at Clinton and Jefferson next year. The plan stems from a pilot program that began in January and included all of South Mountain fifth graders, incorporating units taught by art, music and physical education teachers. Lehn noted that a survey conducted among fifth graders who didn't participate in enrichment asked for their response to the exclusion, which was expressed with words like "angry," "not smart," "left out" and "sad." "Student engagement plays a critical role in student achievement," she said, observing that stimulating lessons are perhaps more important for disengaged students. The subcommittee's recommendations also include a suggestion for instituting a math gifted program in the 2011-2012 school year but are pending the findings of the district's math audit. 
• Middle schools: The subcommittee recommends collapsing levels for seventh grade English, social studies and science and putting math up for review in the 2011-2012 school year, after the math audit can be taken into account. It also calls for eliminating the Read/Write seminar for sixth graders and eliminating sixth-grade Spanish, thus providing 25 percent more instruction time in core subjects of math, science, English and social studies. Finally, it calls for doing away with transition program classes for struggling sixth graders at Maplewood Middle School, assigning them instead to regular sixth grade core teams and expanding the number of teams from two to three, reducing class size. At South Orange Middle School, the transition program will continue, and there will be an effort to provide students with more instruction time in the area (Math or English-Language Arts) they most need. (Asked why the district wouldn't just standardize the plan, Osborne noted that trying multiple approaches to see what works best can be useful.) Eve Kingsbury, a sixth grade teacher at MMS and subcommittee member, observed that disciplinary problems had been eased with deleveling in 2004-2005, and she's hopeful that smaller class size will again produce that effect. "When you get 33 kids at any level, you'll have disciplinary problems," she said.
• High schools: Alan Levin, science supervisor for sixth through 12th grades, presented for the subcommittee, starting with the recommendation that the PSAT be administered to all 10th graders to provide "another source of evidence" for students wishing to make a case for moving up a level. Another recommendation is to expand summertime "step-up" offerings, like the three-week Physics course through which rising sophomores have been able to register for Level 4 Physics instead of Level 3. The subcommittee also recommended that collapsing levels for ninth and 10th grade science and social studies be considered for 2011-2012.

At the end of the presentation, Osborne noted that the administration would seek to ensure that collapsing seventh-grade levels doesn't result in diminished standards and less rigorous coursework by conducting "work product analysis" comparing student work before and after the change.

When taking turns to respond, Board members expressed approval regarding the aims of the recommendations and their overall approach, but in some cases were looking for more specifics. "I would like to see a number of resolutions" instead of giving approval to a broad set of recommendations, said Lynne Crawford.

The Board discussed whether to amend the official policy that discusses leveling and agreed to vote on changes at their next meeting. They also discussed breaking out the provisions of the recommendations that constitute the biggest structural changes—deleveling seventh grade and doing away with Read/Write and sixth-grade Spanish—into resolutions to be voted upon.

The voice most critical of deleveling came from the Board's non-voting student member, CHS student Seth Wolin, who spoke of the bad influence unmotivated students can have on a learning environment. "I really don't see what professional development is going to happen between now and September that's going to facilitate deleveling in the seventh grade," he said.

After midnight, when the Board was still discussing how to proceed with its vote on the recommendations, Osborne noted that he's not opposed to levels but finds it problematic when they're introduced to students at a young age. "The reason I think it's important we stop doing it so early is the correlations are showing we're writing students' high school transcripts when they're 11 and 12 years old," he said.