Enhanced Ability Groups in 48 Arab Society Middle Schools

The 2018 PISA research results exposed a significant gap between Hebrew-speaking and Arabic-speaking students in Israel. The average result in mathematics for Arabic-speaking students declined by 12 points to 379 (one of the lowest in the world), in contrast with an average score of 490 for Hebrew speakers (which is also the OECD average). Looking only at the students who excelled in mathematics, the trend is even sharper with the Arabic-speaking students representing less than one percent of students excelling in mathematics.

This gap in achievement is among the many warning signs that led the new government in Israel to prepare a 30 billion NIS program to open more educational and economic opportunities for Israel’s Arab sector. More than 9 billion NIS of the program is devoted to education, with multiple goals, including reducing the gap on PISA test results by more than 30% by 2025. Government ministries and agencies are currently debating the operational measures of the program in preparation for its implementation.

In anticipation of this program moving ahead, and since the next PISA test will be administered in 2022, the Ministry of Education approached the foundation and the Branco Weiss Institute with a proposal to join hands in work on a collaborative project. Branco Weiss is now proposing a three-and-a-half-year program to work with 48 Arab schools from the Haifa and Northern Districts with two new enhanced ability groups opening in each of these schools. They intend to engage the mathematics teachers, department heads and school principals in order to open more opportunities for middle school students to study mathematics at a high level.

Each school will receive two additional weekly teaching hours from the ministry for each of the new enhanced ability groups that will gradually be opened in 9^th grade for a period of two years. To support this effort, Branco Weiss, in collaboration with an academic institution, will provide professional development for 80 mathematics teachers and 48 department heads. The professional development will include a 30-hour course together with bi-weekly instructional coaching during the first year, and professional learning communities in the second year. The professional development for teachers will focus on applying modeling and reasoning skills aligned with the top 5-6 levels of PISA in mathematics. Each teacher will be expected to teach at least 10 tasks in their enhanced ability groups throughout the year.

In addition, Branco Weiss plans to provide mentoring to school principals. The goal of the program is for 80% of the students graduating the new excellence classes to succeed on a diagnostic test, prepared by CET, which is aligned with the top 5-6 proficiency levels of PISA.