A few days back, Skeptic wrote in with news that the City Schools of Decatur had recently announced at a Renfroe School Leadership Team meeting that they had made a decision to discontinue Advanced Content classes at the middle school. 

Yesterday, I received CSD’s 8-page FAQ (pdf) about the change, which explains in significant detail why the school has decided to rely on “cluster groups” within classes to serve “gifted” and “high-achieving” students, instead of separate Advanced Content classes, with the exception of math. 

Why did CSD decide to make this change?  From page 1 of the FAQ….

Read the rest of this entry »