This paper argues that school practices that put at-risk students and limited-English students with grade-appropriate students in heterogeneous groups may in fact be abusive and discriminatory. Significant access to instructional content can occur only if the material matches the skill level of the children. If a lesson is presented to a group of children who exhibit great individual differences in skills and knowledge, the lower performers do not have access to the content because they lack skills and knowledge needed to learn the content. Placement abuses can be identified by noting where students are placed in curricular sequences that are greatly discrepant with the students' performance. Student abuse can happen when schools install newly adopted instructional material. The essay closes by making the argument that these abusive practices based on individual differences become discriminatory when particular sub-groups of a population are selectively subjected to the abusive practice or when the likelihood of the abuse is far greater for one sub-group of the population than it is for other groups. In particular, Blacks, non-English speaking students, and at-risk children receive serious injuries from misplacement in instructional sequences. (JB)