Like most kids my age would have, I assumed that because I was in the
advanced fourth-grade reading-class I was smarter than everyone else.
That is, not only had I achieved more, but I also had more potential. I
was going places.
I don’t remember ever taking a test. But I assumed that there was one
and maybe I had forgotten about it. Or maybe there wasn’t, maybe there
was some secret rubric that I had maxed out on due to my luck, pluck,
and virtue. It didn’t matter. I had potential and I was going places
and that was that.
Or maybe not.
A 1994 study led by Aaron Pallas compared the standardized test scores
of first graders to their reading-group placement. The results were
shocking.
One would have expected that the test scores for the advanced reading
group would have been the highest, followed by the normal ability
group, followed by the remedial reading group. Instead, Pallas found
that the test scores of all three reading groups were virtually
identical. Students in even the most advanced reading group had only a
slightly greater chance of having greater than average test scores.

The implications here are huge. To quote from the study, “Ability
grouping in classrooms has traditionally been viewed as a rational way
for schools to organize instruction. There is a growing body of
evidence, however, that (1) ability-group placements are fallible, in
that students with similar levels of academic potential may be placed
in different ability groups, and (2) that placement of children in
different ability groups may heighten inequalities in children’s
academic achievement.”
“We found that first-grade ability-group placement can have persistent
effects on children’s achievement in school over a period of several
years and may shape the expectations of children’s performance held by
significant others, such as parents and teachers. Whether these effects
are instructional, social, or institutional, they are real, and they
have implications for children’s future schooling trajectories. […]
Instructional grouping may have the unintended effect of increasing
inequalities in educational outcomes, largely by creating inequalities
in educational resources and rewards.”
That is, students who started off at exactly the same level of measured
ability in first grade will have vastly different levels of ability by
the end of high school. In my own experience I know that my peers in my
advanced fourth-grade reading group were the same ones that got into
the best colleges almost a decade later. Were we really smarter to
begin with, or were we made smarter after being accidentally selected
at random as a by-product of a broken system?
Pallas himself suggests the latter: “Children in higher-ranked reading
groups were perceived by their parents and teachers as more competent
than were similar children in low-ranked groups, often independent of
their actual performance.”
Not to get all angsty, but I do often wonder how much of my identity–
intelligence, personality, experiences, etc. – has nothing to do with
anything intrinsic within me, but is rather the result of a series of
stochastic events and selections.
That's what I like about being an entrepreneur; going forward I steer.
Pallas et al. “Ability Group Effects: Instructional, Social, or Institutional?” Sociology of Education 67 (1994). Fig. 1, p. 36.