P941: Heterogeneous grouping and student achievement in high school chemistry

This studied explored the use of heterogeneous grouping on High School General Chemistry students’ academic performance. Students were given a pre-assessment at the beginning of each new unit and these data were used to assign students to heterogeneous groups for each unit. The groups were composed of one higher-achieving student, one lower-achieving student, and two mid-level-achieving students. The course performance for the heterogeneous sample was compared to matched samples from previous semesters. It was found that the drop/fail rate was reduced by 50%, suggesting that heterogeneous grouping can positively impact student achievement.